Exaggerated Flattery and the MAGA Aesthetic

In her most recent media briefing, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt went full North Korea with a number of worshipful monologues about Trump. Yet at around the same time, another journalist’s criticism of Trump caused him to explode in a wild, triggered fury that undercut the image Leavitt tried to project of a leader who is strong, calm, and in command of events. We think this tension is a regular, deeper feature of Trumpism. So we talked to Salon’s Amanda Marcotte, who knows how to read MAGA pathologies—particularly male ones—like nobody else. She discusses the “MAGA aesthetic,” the gap between Trump’s feeble-mindedness and the picture of strength portrayed by his sycophants, and the larger purpose all this serves as propaganda for the MAGA masses.

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