From the French word “petite,” meaning “small,” comes the English word “petty,” which describes the Trump administration. This is greatness as restored by the midgets of MAGA:
Secretary of State Marco Rubio was in the room when the U.S. foreign policy of 80 years was jettisoned, and he was thrilled. This small occupant of an office once held by big people (from Thomas Jefferson, John Marshall, James Madison, James Monroe, John Quincy Adams, Henry Clay, Martin Van Buren, and Daniel Webster to George Marshall, Dean Acheson, and Henry Kissinger), swooned on X: “Thank you @POTUS for standing up for America in a way that no President has ever had the courage to do before.”
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Do Rubio’s muscles cramp during prolonged genuflections? He is, however, right, in his fashion: No president has ever before “stood up for America” this way, by turning U.S. foreign policy 180 degrees, away from supporting democracies toward rewarding war criminals. (Nine days before Donald Trump’s Oval Office berating of Ukraine’s president, the Financial Times website presented video of Russians murdering unresisting Ukrainian prisoners of war.) In a future X post, Rubio might elaborate on how courage featured in this reversal. Or in Trump’s pique about what he considers Ukraine’s insufficiently reiterated gratitude for the assistance Ukraine received from the Biden administration.
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So smitten is Trump with Vladimir Putin (“genius”), he cannot fathom that the Russian leader surely considers him a weakling. Putin knows that Trump knows, but is too servile to say, who invaded whom on Feb. 24, 2022.
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Vice President JD Vance is earning the description Winston Churchill applied to Dwight D. Eisenhower’s secretary of state, John Foster Dulles: a bull who carries a china shop around with him. Vance recently suggested on X that Europe’s largest war since 1945 is just another product of those tiresome Old World “ethnic rivalries.”
Elon Musk, who, like Trump, confuses hyperactivity with achievement, is, like Trump, incapable of imagining how his incessant spouting off is making him smaller. When, last week, an X lunatic (“I know Barack Obama is a Kenyan”) said, “It’s time to leave NATO,” Musk had time and inclination to respond: “I agree.” Even while busily trying to erase mistakes made by the Constitution’s framers (e.g., creating Congress and the separation of powers), Musk has time and inclination to notice and opine about everything, including the need to end history’s most successful collective security organization.
Protectionism is another manifestation of Trump’s courage. He has plucked from the air a number — 25 percent seems to entrance him — as a properly muscular way to (in Rubioese) “stand up for” America with tariffs against two of its economic tormentors. MAGA means protecting America (2024 GDP: $29.16 trillion) from Canada ($2.21 trillion) and Mexico ($1.84 trillion).
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Some mornings during the autumn of 1933, when the unemployment rate was 24 percent, the president, before getting into his wheelchair, sat in bed, surrounded by economic advisers, setting the price of gold, to which the U.S. currency was pegged. One morning he said he might raise it 21 cents: “It’s a lucky number because it’s three times seven.” His soon-to-be treasury secretary, Henry Morgenthau, wrote that if anybody knew how gold was priced “they would be frightened.”
Today’s president has had the (to continue in Rubio-speak) courage to protest something that previous presidents and generations were too unpatriotic to recognize as a national humiliation: the Gulf of Mexico being named that. One of Trump’s minions, trade adviser Peter Navarro, appears to have been inspired by Trump, who has stood up for America by suggesting that Canada should become the 51st state. Last week, the Telegraph newspaper in Britain reported that Navarro “is pushing U.S. negotiators” to seek revisions of the U.S.-Canada border. Make America 1843 again.
That was the year “54-40 or Fight!” was the cry of precursor MAGAites, then called “war hawks.” They insisted that the border between Oregon Territory and Canada must be at latitude 54 degrees, 40 minutes. Though America was then seriously expansionist (ask Mexico), it compromised.
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Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has removed from Pentagon hallways the official portraits of former secretary Mark T. Esper and retired Gen. Mark A. Milley, former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Both offended Trump during his first term. MAGA means erasing history.
In 1966, Alabama’s Democratic Gov. George Wallace said: “Hell, we got too much dignity in government now, what we need is some meanness.” Problem solved.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio was in the room when the U.S. foreign policy of 80 years was jettisoned, and he was thrilled. This small occupant of an office once held by big people (from Thomas Jefferson, John Marshall, James Madison, James Monroe, John Quincy Adams, Henry Clay, Martin Van Buren, and Daniel Webster to George Marshall, Dean Acheson, and Henry Kissinger), swooned on X: “Thank you @POTUS for standing up for America in a way that no President has ever had the courage to do before.”
Make sense of the latest news and debates with our daily newsletter
Do Rubio’s muscles cramp during prolonged genuflections? He is, however, right, in his fashion: No president has ever before “stood up for America” this way, by turning U.S. foreign policy 180 degrees, away from supporting democracies toward rewarding war criminals. (Nine days before Donald Trump’s Oval Office berating of Ukraine’s president, the Financial Times website presented video of Russians murdering unresisting Ukrainian prisoners of war.) In a future X post, Rubio might elaborate on how courage featured in this reversal. Or in Trump’s pique about what he considers Ukraine’s insufficiently reiterated gratitude for the assistance Ukraine received from the Biden administration.
Advertisement
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2025/02/20/trump-martin-justice-department-cheung/
So smitten is Trump with Vladimir Putin (“genius”), he cannot fathom that the Russian leader surely considers him a weakling. Putin knows that Trump knows, but is too servile to say, who invaded whom on Feb. 24, 2022.
Follow George F. Will
Vice President JD Vance is earning the description Winston Churchill applied to Dwight D. Eisenhower’s secretary of state, John Foster Dulles: a bull who carries a china shop around with him. Vance recently suggested on X that Europe’s largest war since 1945 is just another product of those tiresome Old World “ethnic rivalries.”
Elon Musk, who, like Trump, confuses hyperactivity with achievement, is, like Trump, incapable of imagining how his incessant spouting off is making him smaller. When, last week, an X lunatic (“I know Barack Obama is a Kenyan”) said, “It’s time to leave NATO,” Musk had time and inclination to respond: “I agree.” Even while busily trying to erase mistakes made by the Constitution’s framers (e.g., creating Congress and the separation of powers), Musk has time and inclination to notice and opine about everything, including the need to end history’s most successful collective security organization.
Protectionism is another manifestation of Trump’s courage. He has plucked from the air a number — 25 percent seems to entrance him — as a properly muscular way to (in Rubioese) “stand up for” America with tariffs against two of its economic tormentors. MAGA means protecting America (2024 GDP: $29.16 trillion) from Canada ($2.21 trillion) and Mexico ($1.84 trillion).
Advertisement
Some mornings during the autumn of 1933, when the unemployment rate was 24 percent, the president, before getting into his wheelchair, sat in bed, surrounded by economic advisers, setting the price of gold, to which the U.S. currency was pegged. One morning he said he might raise it 21 cents: “It’s a lucky number because it’s three times seven.” His soon-to-be treasury secretary, Henry Morgenthau, wrote that if anybody knew how gold was priced “they would be frightened.”
Today’s president has had the (to continue in Rubio-speak) courage to protest something that previous presidents and generations were too unpatriotic to recognize as a national humiliation: the Gulf of Mexico being named that. One of Trump’s minions, trade adviser Peter Navarro, appears to have been inspired by Trump, who has stood up for America by suggesting that Canada should become the 51st state. Last week, the Telegraph newspaper in Britain reported that Navarro “is pushing U.S. negotiators” to seek revisions of the U.S.-Canada border. Make America 1843 again.
That was the year “54-40 or Fight!” was the cry of precursor MAGAites, then called “war hawks.” They insisted that the border between Oregon Territory and Canada must be at latitude 54 degrees, 40 minutes. Though America was then seriously expansionist (ask Mexico), it compromised.
Advertisement
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has removed from Pentagon hallways the official portraits of former secretary Mark T. Esper and retired Gen. Mark A. Milley, former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Both offended Trump during his first term. MAGA means erasing history.
In 1966, Alabama’s Democratic Gov. George Wallace said: “Hell, we got too much dignity in government now, what we need is some meanness.” Problem solved.
