In a tour de force of sophistry, George Will says Trump is really one of those god-awful progressives.

[Celerity]

https://prospect.org/blogs-and-newsletters/tap/2025-05-30-conservatives-on-trump-dont-blame-us/



As my colleague Bob Kuttner noted earlier this week, Wall Street Journal editorialists have been regularly chastising Donald Trump for his deviations from conservative orthodoxy, which almost nobody defends so faithfully as the Journal’s editorial scribes. But even the Murdoch minions must take second place when it comes to the care and feeding of paleoconservatism’s foundational beliefs. Their fiercer and more literate defender, today and for the past half-century, is George Will.

Both Will and the Journal agree that Trump has trampled one conservative axiom after another: free trade, opposition to entitlements, the freedom of established institutions (elite universities, major corporations, white-shoe law firms) to do as they please, and resistance to the growth of state and, most particularly, presidential powers. The Journal will periodically lump Trump’s misdeeds with what they see as the executive overreach of Democratic presidents since Franklin Roosevelt, though Will locates the original sin in the presidency of Woodrow Wilson. (Neither really traces it back to Lincoln, where it rightly and quite justifiably belongs.)

This past Wednesday, Will delivered the Summa Theologica of the paleocon case against Trump, in a column sure to be remembered as a tour de force of blinkered argumentation. Will termed Trump’s administration “the most progressive in U.S. history,” not merely enumerating Trump’s various heresies, but also ascribing them to progressivism run amok and thereby exonerating conservatism from any responsibility for Trump’s tin-pot presidency.

The Will bill of progressive particulars included Trump’s belief in “government’s ability to anticipate and control the consequences of broad interventions in modern society’s complexities”; “presidential supremacy ensured by using executive orders to marginalize Congress”; and “constructing coalitions of government-dependent factions, as Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal did with the elderly (Social Security, 1935), labor (the 1935 National Labor Relations Act favoring unions) and farmers (the 1933 Agricultural Adjustment Act).” He further classifies as progressivism-gone-wild Trump’s takeover of the Kennedy Center and his attempts to dictate university curricula.

snip

[GiqueCee]

1. Will is...

... was, and always WILL be, a worthless piece of shit.

[ProfessorGAC]

2. He's Officially Nuts, If...

...he thinks anybody is buying that tripe.

[SheltieLover]

6. But it will get under slobby's thin skin.

[ProfessorGAC]

14. Well, There Is That!

I suppose that's Will's shining moment in his black hole.

[SheltieLover]

16. Yup lol

[madinmaryland]

20. Trump doesn't understand all of the multi syllable words Will uses.

[dutch777]

3. Always loved Will's logic and oratory while disagreeing with much he liked for government policy.

Republicans should have got the message when Will left their party.

[dweller]

4. Mental deterioration ?

Or has he lost his will ?

🤔



✌🏻

[SheltieLover]

5. This with chicken TACO might cause slobby to blow a gasket

Maybe tomorrow, the answer to Orrex's question will be a resounding YES!

[EYESORE 9001]

7. Wrong. And nazis weren't socialists either, you vacuous twit.

[unblock]

10. That's it exactly

[Paladin]

8. That's nice, George Will.

Now shut the fuck up, for the rest of your miserable, repulsive life. Your feeble efforts to blame trump's atrocities on progressivism would be laughable, if they weren't so stomach-turning.

[hadEnuf]

9. George Will is a dill weed.

'Nuff said.

[elleng]

11. Well, he likes baseball.

[hatrack]

12. More full-on sophistry from one of America's most annoying, pompous hacks . .

I can think of precisely one way in which he can make this country a better place.

[johnnyfins]

13. wow. i thought he died

Fucking hack.

[biocube]

15. Completely delusional

But hey, I'm enjoying the tears of those calling themselves Reagan conservatives as they discover their economic policies were never all that popular.

[red dog 1]

17. George Will hates Trump, calling him "a bigger threat than Hillary Clinton" in 2016,

and urged conservative voters to "help him lose 50 states -- condign punishment for his comprehensive disdain for conservative essentials." (Wikipedia)

Back in 1980, William Casey committed treason for:
1) (October Surprise) Arranging a meeting with top Iranian officials and asking them NOT to release the 52 American hostages until after Reagan became
POTUS.
2) (Debate-Gate) Arranging for CIA agent Donald Gregg, (who had access to the White House) to steal and make copies of President Carter's top-secret briefing papers for his 2nd debate with Reagan (while Carter was out of town) so that George Will could coach Reagan before the 2nd debate, knowing exactly what Carter was going to say beforehand ["Well, there you go again"]
So with George Will's help, Reagan "won" that crucial 2nd presidential debate in 1980.

IMHO, George Will, William Casey, and Donald Gregg should have been charged with treason.

[struggle4progress]

18. See George cross the sill of the Door to Dementia

[JHB]

19. Will is doing everything he can to avoid the fact that he worked his whole life to make this happen.

It's just blowhard, long-winded version of "I didn't vote for this!" when it's obvious to the whole world, "Yes you DID!"

[JHB]

21. Someone has been wearing his bow tie a little tight, it's cutting off oxygen to his brain.

Then again, he accuses people who support using trains of being socialists, so it's been tight for a while.

[pat_k]

27. What's with so-called "conservatives" (actually just reactionaries) and bow ties anyway?

[JHB]

31. Camoflage. It makes them look more staid and reserved, providing better cover for their RW radicalism.

[pat_k]

32. I always wondered if they were emulating some reactionary hero...

... but never came across any obvious candidates.

Maybe Geo. Will was that hero for Tucker Carlson when he was a big bowtie wearer. There was a while there in the 90's that it seemed like a whole bunch of young conservatives were big on bowties.

There also seemed to be a connection to reactionaries emerging from the University of Chicago. Apparently Leo Strauss was known for wearing bow ties, although I can't find a photo of him in one. Reactionary historian Daniel Boorstin was another University of Chicago bowtie wearer.

Affecting a bowtie -- particularly as a sort of "uniform," always struck me as a "look at me" thing. In earlier decades, I think it was seen as a mark of intellectualism, which might explain it's fall from favor among the current crop of anti-intellectual radical reactionaries.

[tanyev]

22. Gosh, maybe the Republican party shouldn't have chosen him as their presidential candidate THREE TIMES.

😒

[Johonny]

23. George Will never understood politics, discovers he doesn't hate liberalism but

instead hates conservativism. Unfortunately fails to discover his made up version of conservatism doesn't and never did exist.

This is a common theme of all conservative never Trumpers. They all long for the non-existent good conservatism that isn't just a watered-down version of MAGA.

[Solly Mack]

24. They called GHW Bush a liberal.

[Wiz Imp]

25. Will is actually partially right.

Trump is not now nor has he ever been a traditional conservative. Almost none of his actions as President (beyond tax cuts for the rich) have anything in common with long held conservative orthodoxy. But it's not just Trump - the entire Republican party (or at least 99.9% of it) embraces the MAGA agenda. While the MAGA agenda has little in common with historical conservative "values", given that the entire traditional conservative party has embraced that agenda so much so that it's only fair to now consider MAGA politics as being the "new" conservative.

Of course trying to paint Trump as some sort of liberal or progressive is insane. The only political ideology (beyond conservative) that applies to Trump & MAGA is fascism. The fact that Will fails to acknowledge that shows how pathetic he is.

[Ritabert]

26. Will needs to stick to baseball commenting.

His columns on politics are long gone.

[marble falls]

28. Will needs to wave goodbye and go to the beach and read novels.

[spanone]

29. Will needs to go....

[Tarzanrock]

30. Stuff a baseball in Will's big loud mouth ...

and then strike that baseball with a 36 ounce Louisville Slugger MICKEY MANTLE K55, 125, 32", 36oz Flame Tempered baseball bat.