Know Your Enemy - Late-Stage Trumpism's Morbid Symptoms [Teaser]

Matt and Sam assess the absurd, dangerous morbid symptoms of Trump's rapidly failing second term.

Duration: 5m
Broadcast on: 28 Sep 2026
Audio Format: other

Listen to the rest of this premium episode by subscribing at patreon.com/knowyourenemy.

A sundowning, octogenarian president radically out of step with the country's mood, surrounded by Yes Men (and Women), cowards, and idiots, whose administration and party are plunging in popularity as war rages on: it's deja vu all over again, this time expressed through the pathological personage that is Donald Trump. As his second term fails and his attacks on the very foundations of effective government becoming ever-more apparent, the morbid symptoms are piling up—Trump's fantastical retreat into building projects, his posting through the A.I. revolution, ongoing obsession with JFK and the Kennedys, and more—we take stock and discuss the perils of this moment, as people who believe in nothing surround a president who knows nothing, and the situation gets desperate.

Listen again: "The Kennedy Imprisonment" (w/ Jeet Heer), Nov 17, 2023

Sources:

"Trump Renames A.I. and Threatens to 'Annihilate' Iran in U.N. Speech," ABC News, Sept 22, 2026

Ryan J. Foley, "AP Exclusive: ICE Hides Locations of Thousands of Detainees with Final Removal Orders," Associated Press, Sept 21, 2026

Greg Jaffe, Eric Schmitt, Helene Cooper, & Adam Entous, "Hegseth’s Purge of Top Generals Leaves the Army Rudderless," New York Times, Aug 25, 2026

Christine Hauser, "U.S.S. Abraham Lincoln Sailor Says Father Was Arrested by Border Patrol," New York Times, Aug 24, 2026

Gina Ragusa, "Trump's White House Event Fails as Audio Cuts Out During Helipad Unveiling," Yahoo News, Sept 21, 2026

Miranda Jeyaretnam, "DOGE Initiative Resulted in Federal Employees Getting Paid Billions to Not Work, New Government Report Finds," Sept 15, 2026

John Ismay, Helene Cooper, & Eric Schmitt, "Concerns Grow Over Conditions on Navy Carrier," New York Times, Aug 13, 2026

Michael S. Rosenwald, "David George Gordon, Apostle for Bugs on the Dinner Plate, Dies at 76," New York Times, Sept 21, 2026

Leo Strauss, Thoughts on Machiavelli (1958)

See, another aspect of this I've been thinking about is that as kind of the walls close in, right, like as the failures of Trump to him point out become more apparent and the polling follows, right, like this is an almost shockingly unpopular administration that's on the wrong side of so many issues, keeping none of its promises, none of the commitments it campaigned on, the bottom seems to be falling out of it. People are leaving, either being fired in the case of the military officers we were just discussing or just being like I'm out of here and the kind of capacities of the federal government become more threadbare, I just kind of wonder like they're still going to do horrible things but they might even do them kind of even more horribly and like here's an example that just a day ago the AP put out a story about ICE now electronically quote unquote disappearing people in the agency's custody, right, who have final orders of removal. Anyone jailed by ICE with a final order of removal as of lastly will not appear in the online detainee locator system so you can't really track these people anymore if there's a detainee who can be located in some family member some lawyer tries to help them that creates work right for the agencies they're just saying to hell with it fuck it and what incentive do the people working in this administration what incentive do they have to try to say you know what this is massively unpopular we should try to turn this around that's not an attitude I think you're gonna get in the Trump administration at this point like all the normal incentives for being a normal decent human being in the sense of well I would like to work again right after my time in government or I would like my reputation to be somewhat intact that shot that possibility is not there for these people and what does that incentivize them to do unfortunately what this makes me think about is all my reading about the Hitler regime where I think a fundamental insight of the best scholars of Nazism is that the terminal point of Hitler's ideology is suicide as such because basically you constantly push the limit and every time you encounter a problem you use force and violence which goes against the existing norms in order to resolve it and you get to a point where you know you've done too much you either win or you die right you either establish the a thousand year right and your power and authority and capacity to coerce is sufficient that nobody can ever hold you accountable or you die you die in a war or you kill yourself in a bunker or you eat the sine night pill as many many of Hitler's top coterie did suicide is in some fundamental sense the essential terminal disposition of fascism yes I think one of the things I really wanted to express in this conversation is that in some ways like this is a moment where I feel less despair than I have in a while in terms of Trump's second term precisely because we've all been waiting for like some kind of contact with reality to like register and it seems to be registering right in all the polling both of the midterm elections but also Trump's popularity itself and so in a way that is encouraging or like I said it's lifted some despair it's like oh there is this possibility but what I want to underscore is that that could be the tipping point moment that you were just describing because from our perspective this is a moment of possibility from the maga hardcore die hearts and the people in the administration they feel the walls closing in right they see that at this point I feel confident saying this is in some fundamental way an unredeemable administration who has fucked so much already that like there is no path to emerging from the Trump administration with a kind of reputation intact in any way they're not going to get their way their revolution has failed and they're in power but they know it's failed and I think that's a dangerous moment because it is the moment where kind of all bets are off and the people who are feeling the walls close in knowing that they're failing feeling it slip away more and more every single day what in their desperation might it lead them to do I do kind of console myself with the fact that there's so many people involved in this I could think of a few people who would wait to the end bite the cyanide bill but you know for better for worse I don't think Trump is one of them I think that he unlike Hitler is not committed to a project over and above his own well-being we see it all the time that he like gives up on some effort at asserting more authoritarian rule when it appears to harm his own self-interest and the reason that fascism's terminal moment is suicide is because you don't give up in those moments you encounter a pushback and you push through and you think okay well whoever

Transcription truncated.

Matt and Sam assess the absurd, dangerous morbid symptoms of Trump's rapidly failing second term.