F**king Mondays: Trump Shames America, Tucker's Meltdown, and JK Rowling's Radicalization

Welcome to another edition of F**king Mondays, the ultimate roundup to start your week off! In the column today:

Trump shames America

If you haven’t watched the full press conference between Donald Trump and Volodymyr Zelenskyy, I highly suggest you sit through the full 50 minutes to get the full context of the fallout:

Here was my takeaway from the unfortunate event:

1. Zelenskyy badly misread the room and made a very serious strategic error for his country. He opened the meeting up by stating facts about Russia’s brutalization of his country, from killing thousands of people to stealing children and torturing prisoners. This was not want Donald Trump wanted to hear so the meeting was likely doomed from the start.

2. Zelenskyy tried to defend Europe from Trump’s baseless attacks that they haven’t funded Ukraine’s war efforts. Again, Trump does not like hearing facts that counter his narrative so Zelenskyy’s stock continued to diminish as the meeting went on.

3. Trump thought the presser was going to be about what a magnificent deal maker he was, so he took Zelenskyy’s continued corrections as a sign of disrespect. At one point Trump claimed that all of Ukraine’s cities had been destroyed by Russia. Zelenskyy corrected him saying that Ukraine’s cities were functioning quite well. Again, stating objective facts doesn’t play well with Trump, so this worked against Zelenskyy.

4. Vance’s interjection was pure performance, aimed at stroking Trump’s ego rather than furthering negotiations. For Zelenskyy, this was an insult—Vance has opposed military aid, smeared him, and even called him a dictator. His remarks triggered the presser’s descent into chaos."

5. The Trump administration has absolutely no idea what it is doing. Trump’s fantasy world where he has “stopped many wars” and is the only person capable of doing a deal might play well with the MAGA crowd, but the rest of the world thinks he’s a delusional narcissist. He has insulted Zelenskyy in public, called him a dictator, lied about how much aid America has sent, and regularly praised Putin. Expecting Zelenskyy to suck up to him was a serious miscalculation on his part too. As soon as the press conference started getting contentious, a serious leader would have cut the spectacle short and ordered the press out. But Trump saw the opportunity for TV ratings so allowed it to descend into an ugly brawl. Great for the MAGA crowd, great for TV, not so great for negotiations.

6. All of this works in Vladimir Putin’s favor, at least in the short term. The world knows the Trump administration stands with Russia and is willing to publicly humiliate a US ally. This gives Putin immense confidence that he will be able to extract more concessions in negotiations. He is in no hurry to make peace with Ukraine given their massive advantage in troop numbers, and he is calculating that he can hold on longer than Zelenskyy.

7. Trump believes alienating allies and cozying up to strongmen projects dominance. In reality, it makes him look weak and manipulable. As Kamala Harris said of Trump during their first debate: “Donald Trump has this desire to be a dictator. He admires strongmen and he gets played by them because he thinks that they’re his friends. And they are manipulating him full time and manipulating him by flattery.” Harris’s statement never looked truer.

8. President Zelenskyy needs to shore up European support and smooth things over with the Trump administration. This was his screw up in part too, so he has to put his pride aside and get what he needs from the US, which is security guarantees and a potential path to NATO membership. He will have to kowtow to Trump and apologize for what happened in public, but it will be a price worth paying.

Tucker Carlson’s fragile reality

Conservative political commentator Richard Hanania posted a fascinating private interaction between himself and Tucker Carlson over lies Carlson has been spreading about Ukraine. The spat got started after Carlson claimed that Ukraine had been selling “huge quantities of American weapons on the international black market at twenty cents on the dollar,” to groups like “Hamas, the Mexican drug cartels and the forces now controlling Syria.”

“God knows what the Ukrainians have done with the pathogens in American biolabs in their country,” Carlson continued. “Even US intel agencies aren’t sure. The Ukrainians have also murdered a number of people in various countries in political assassinations, and tried to murder others, including American journalists and a European head of state. This is all true, and it’s all going to come out at some point. Better to start blaming it on Zelensky now.”

Hanania posted this in response:

Tucker Carlson then reached out to Hanania privately, calling him “ignorant” and “a child” for failing to agree with his assertions:

Carlson of course has no credible sources for his claims because there aren’t any. The Ukrainian military has categorically not sold huge quantities of NATO weapons to Hamas or any other terror group on the black market. When Hanania pushed Carlson to provide some evidence, he couldn’t so the conversation ended.

Hanania’s explanation for Carlson’s lies is that “his brain doesn’t really distinguish between truth and falsehood like it does for normal people”.

I am not so sure.

I’ve followed Carlson for many years and have watched his descent into right-wing ethno-nationalism. Carlson is a highly intelligent, extremely talented performer who is highly attuned to the current political zeitgeist. Carlson recognized Trump’s political appeal early on and quickly converted from small-c conservative to full alt-right in a remarkably short period of time. From observing Trump he also learnt to court controversy, promote conspiracy theories, and attack the establishment. This formula made him the highest-rated show in cable news and gave him access to the highest levels of power in the MAGA movement.

So I don’t think Carlson believes anything he is saying. He is too smart for this to be blind belief. He lies because it benefits him—spreading disinformation strengthens his power in the MAGA movement and keeps him indispensable to Trump

Tucker Carlson’s brain works just fine. He’s just a truly despicable person.

JK Rowling’s radicalization

I cannot count the number of people who have told me that JK Rowling is the victim of a radical left smear campaign. She is not, they assure me, an anti-trans bigot. Given I am highly critical of identity politics and have real concerns about how far trans activism has gone, I wanted to make my own mind up about Rowling. After following her for some time, my takeaway is that…. she really is an anti-trans bigot.

Some argue Rowling is simply defending women’s rights. But it’s not just what she says—it’s the way she says it. Her timeline is filled with relentless, snarky attacks on trans people, making it clear this is about more than just policy concerns:

Rowling tweets about trans issues on an almost hourly basis, which seems a lot for someone who maintains they are definitely not anti-trans.

So why has Rowling become so militantly anti-trans? Political commentator and video game developer Brianna Wu, who is trans, put up an interesting post giving some context behind Rowling’s radicalization. Wu was subjected to horrendous online abuse during the Gamergate scandal that saw hard right gamers intimidate and harass women and LGBTQ people, and she believes this kind of abuse has had radicalized Rowling to the point of no return. She writes:

Why has JK Rowling become radicalized? I share many of her concerns about trans issues, especially around sports and locker rooms. But there is a reflexive cruelty to her opinions. I advocate the same policies, but I don't need to dehumanize or degrade trans women to do it.

There's no reason to aggressively call trans women men, we are trans women. That term is neutral and accurate. She knows it's needlessly degrading, frames us in terms that make participation in public life harder, and so does the cult that worships her. It's not just about sports or prisons; it’s about social exclusion at every level. And she knows the impact of her rhetoric.

How did she get here? Well, I understand that firsthand from Gamergate. The threats I got back then radicalized me and turned into the worst version of myself in many ways. I was fighting for a good cause, but I did it in ways that INFLAMED A CULTURE WAR instead of SEEKING PUBLIC POLICY SOLUTIONS. This is why it's not just morally disgusting for trans people to treat her the way we have, sending endless threats. It's creating a supervillain with rich resources to hurt us.

There have been many studies that show extreme wealth lowers your empathy. Dacher Keltner at Berkeley found that as people gain wealth and power, they become worse at reading emotions and less likely to consider the perspectives of others. Essentially, the more resources someone has, the less they need to rely on social cooperation, which can make them detached from others’ struggles.

It took me many years to reflect on Gamergate and realize my emotional reactivity was making me deeply unhappy and hurt the causes I cared about. I doubt she'll reach a similar epiphany, but I hope she does. Trans activists can oppose her effectively, but it has to be through smart, strategic engagement, not just unfiltered rage. Because right now, the movement is making her more powerful, not less.

This observation extends to the hard left in general. While they are not solely to blame for the rise of Trump and the alt-right, their radicalism certainly hasn’t helped. This doesn’t excuse being an anti-trans bigot, but it does help explain it. Food for thought.

Hope everyone has a great week!

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