The Carolinian

Keeping up with the news probably isn’t one of your favorite pastimes. It’s not one of mine either, but I try to stay in the know anyway. For me, the best way has been through podcasts. Specifically I listen to The Daily, a half-hour show from The New York Times that usually focuses on one big topic for the day. Over the past couple months, there’s been a theme that caught my attention as I’ve listened. Interviews about important members of the presidential administration included a lot of info about these politicians’ pasts. In fact, the discussions were showing that political actions were directly linked to personal experiences. I found this is the case with three people in particular: Laura Loomer, Russell Vought, and Marco Rubio.

One way to describe Laura Loomer is as “The Right-Wing Provocateur Who has Trump’s Ear.” That was the title of The Daily’s August 21st episode. The Daily’s Natalie Kitroeff interviewed Ken Bensinger, a NYT reporter that covers media and politics. Bensinger has spent a lot of time in person with Loomer, read her book, and studied her social media, trying to understand who she is. Social media and gotcha journalism is what first put her on the map during President Trump’s first term in office. It also took her off the map after multiple sites deplatformed her in 2018 for some very extreme inflammatory posts.

But, as Bensinger explained, Loomer got back on social media in the fall of 2022, and used it to support Trump’s re-election. A specific viral post that threw dirt on Trump’s opponent Ron DeSantis, caught Trump’s attention. He then invited Loomer to his Mar-a-lago estate in early 2023. At that meeting, Trump was impressed by Loomer’s loyalty to him and started the process of hiring her to be on his campaign. But others already in the Trump campaign had concerns about Loomer and blocked her from being hired. That was a tragic blow. She told Bensinger how it affected her: “I was upset. I was so depressed. I cried so much. I locked myself in my apartment for like a month. I lost like 15 lbs.” Bensinger told Kitroeff that this event comes up on Loomer’s social media more than almost anything else.

So between being de-platformed in 2018 and being rejected by the Trump campaign, Loomer has reason to feel strong bitterness. Bensinger explained what she does with it: “So she takes the feelings of this rejection and channels them through her grievance into a new . . . mission to rid his (Trump’s) campaign and his administration of anyone she considers an enemy.” And she’s been successful. Earlier this year, Trump noticed Loomer’s investigation against Deputy National Security Advisor, Alex Wong, and invited her to the White House to discuss who else might be unloyal. Loomer gave Trump a list of a dozen names. He fired half of them within a day, including National Security Advisor Mike Waltz. Loomer also influenced Secretary of State Marco Rubio to pause Palestinian visas. Loomer feels that bringing Gazans who need medical treatment to the US is a terrorist threat. Rubio may or may not share that view, but he likely acquiesced because of the power Loomer has over who stays in the administration. Bensinger said he believes Republicans have a feeling of “abject terror” when they encounter Loomer.

Russel Vought, unlike Loomer, is an official member of the Trump administration. He’s the Director of the White House Office of Management and Budget. He was the subject of The Daily’s October 6th episode—“The ‘Grim Reaper’ of the Government Shutdown.” It’s Coral Davenport, a Washington correspondent for the NYT, that explains to Kitroeff what Vote’s policies are, and where they stem from. Vote is focused on shrinking federal government and cutting spending. He wants to accomplish this by putting more financial power in the President’s hands. Part of his strategy is based on a concept called impoundment. It’s something that presidents have used in the past that has some legal basis. Simply put, it’s the idea that congress can limit how much the federal government and the President can spend, but it can’t force funds to be spent. The President decides how little or much to spend as long as it’s under the congressional limit.

Davenport talked about how dedicated Vought is to his elimination of government spending. She said Senator Phil Graham, who Vought worked for early in his career, told her that Vought worked, “Almost too hard.” Davenport also said she thought Vought is “. . .driven by radical ideological fire and ultimate preparation.”

As Davenport explained, it seems Vought’s obsession with cutting back the size of the federal government is rooted in his family past. Vought’s father was an electrician, and his mother was a public school teacher. Those jobs combined with seven kids meant money wasn’t very abundant in the Vought household. The Daily played a clip of Vought speaking publicly about his parents struggle and how it’s related to big government: “I know what they went through to balance their budget and save for the future. My parents worked really long hours to put me through school, but they also worked long hours to pay for the high levels of government in their life.” Davenport, who’s studied Vought and his work closely, acknowledged that same link between past and policy: “I think he really genuinely sees the burden of paying for taxes and government as weighing so heavily on families like his own.”

So far, in the current administration, Vought’s big wins have been to influence congress to cut billions of dollars of foreign aid and cut funding for the corporation for public broadcasting. In the first Trump administration he worked to block military aid to Ukraine and divert Pentagon funds to Trump’s border wall project. Kitroeff and Davenport’s discussion focused on how Vought would use the government shutdown as an opportunity to permanently eliminate some federal agencies.

Family and past is also a part of the policies of Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, especially when it comes to the relationship between the United States and Venezuela. This came up in The Daily’s October 23rd episode, “Is the U.S. Trying to Oust the Government in Venezuela.” NYT reporter Anatoly Kurmanaev explained to Kitroeff how the Trump administration is approaching relations with the Venezuelan president, Nicholas Maduro. Maduro is a clearly authoritarian leader. Kurmanaev described the presidential election in Venezuela last year. Although Maduro’s opponent received over 70% of votes, Maduro made up fake numbers and kept himself in power. When Trump first got back into the White House this year, he started working on a deal with Maduro. According to the deal, the US would allow Maduro to stay in power, and, in return, Venezuela would export it’s oil and other natural resources exclusively to the US and allow US companies to operate in Venezuelan mines and oil fields. The deal also included Venezuela reversing contracts it had with China, Russia, and Iran regarding it’s natural resources.

So where does blowing up ships carrying drugs off Venezuela’s coast fall into this agreement? It doesn’t. Kurmanaev explained that Trump’s initial negotiations with Maduro were halted thanks to Marco Rubio. Rubio does not want Maduro to remain in power. Kurmanaev explained why. “For Rubio it’s personal. Marco Rubio is the son of Cuban immigrants who became part of this large community of Cuban Americans in South Florida who view Latin America through the prism of Cuban influence in the region.” Part of that Cuban influence is its alliance with Maduro’s government. Getting rid of the authoritarian leader in Venezuela would weaken the institution of authoritarian communism that Cuba has been central too for decades.

To get rid of Maduro, Rubio had to justify a different approach to US-Venezuela relations that Trump would like. “He flips the Venezuelan issue from being a struggle over democracy and human rights towards being a struggle against drugs,” Kurmanaev told Kitroeff. Rubio has said that Maduro is actually not a government official, but the leader of a cartel. Kitroeff said, however, there is no hard evidence of this. In a clip featured on The Daily, Rubio also made a rather surprising claim about reports which say Venezuela is not involved in drug trade. He said, “It’s fake reporting, and I’ll tell you why. It says that somehow Venezuela is not involved in the drug trade because the UN says they’re not involved in it . . . I don’t care what the UN says. The UN doesn’t know what they’re talking about.” That he doesn’t care what the UN says isn’t hard to believe, but that they don’t know what they’re talking about is a bit of a hard sell.

Nonetheless, it has made sense for Trump to let Rubio have his way. The new focus fits Trump’s domestic political platform, since he’s made it very clear that drugs from Latin America are a big issue he wants to eliminate. Plus, as Kurmanaev explained, Maria Corina Machado, the opposition leader in Venezuela, has an economic reconstruction plan in mind that would include many of the provisions of Trump’s initial negotiations with Maduro. So if Maduro is ousted under Rubio’s plan, Trump would, theoretically, still get economic benefits for the US and, allegedly, be a hero in the war on drugs. Hence, the numerous strikes on boats, plus a newer development in the conflict. According to the NYT, on October 15th, Trump told reporters that he had authorized covert CIA action in Venezuela. Rubio’s agenda has turned US relations from diplomatic negotiation to military operations involving personnel on the ground in Venezuela.

After recognizing this theme of personal interests in the policies of the current administration, I started wondering what it meant. Is this something with historical precedent? Is it good or bad for American government? What does it say about where we are as a country? To get some answers, I reached out to a political science professor here at Upstate, Dr. Allison Ellis. The classes she teaches focus on American politics and political behavior. A big focus of her teaching and research is political communications. She’s currently working on a paper comparing President Trump’s use of Twitter in his first term to his use of Truth Social in his current term.

To Dr. Ellis, personal interest has always been a big part of the decisions politicians make, although she noted that how we are seeing that play out currently might be different from the past. In her view, which she acknowledged is a cynical one, politicians are usually in government for self-interested reasons. “Very few people get involved in politics because they just are altruistic,” she said, “They might say ‘I want to make the world better. I want to make the country better’ or whatever. But people typically have their own agenda, and they have their own things they’re trying to accomplish.” Dr. Ellis isn’t alone in this view. She quoted a famous political scientist, David Mayhew, who deemed members of Congress, “Single-minded seekers of reelection.”

What’s interesting is how politician’s self-interests play out when they have to run the government together. Dr. Ellis explained that a politician will often compromise their principles in order to accomplish their ultimate goal. So we shouldn’t be surprised when they contradict what they’ve previously said. She said they may rationalize these contradictions by thinking, “If I didn’t compromise my principles in this way . . . then I couldn’t accomplish this thing that I think is the best thing that needs to be accomplished.” That sort of contradiction and rationalization is very evident in the case of Rubio. The idea that Maduro is a drug cartel leader isn’t well supported, and focusing on drugs takes the focus away from the human rights issues in Venezuela. Those rights are probably the main concern of people like Rubio with a Cuban background. But because Rubio has to make a case that fits Trump’s agenda, he compromises principle to achieve the ultimate end of getting rid of Maduro.

Dr. Ellis said the kind of deal making like what’s going on between Rubio and Trump has definitely gone on throughout American history. The same is true for personal interests influencing policy. But she said Americans might be more aware of these things because information and media have become increasingly inescapable. She said we also might be more aware, because the range of political views people hold has widened in recent years. She said, for a long time in the US, people were either slightly left or right of a central, common ideology, but now differences in opinion are quite drastic. That means any sort of deal or personal interest-based action in government is going to seem outrageous to some portion of the population.

But how did this powerful polarization come about. Dr. Ellis thinks there’s multiple factors, but a big one is social media. She said the protection of speaking from behind a screen makes it easy for people to make statements that don’t consider other’s perspectives. Real conversations are becoming less common. She said social media also makes it easier to seclude yourself from opposing views. That’s thanks to algorithms that learn what we like and feed it to us exclusively, not to mention the ability to block content and people directly in apps like Facebook. When we get into that sort of social media echo-chamber, it begins to feel like everyone thinks like we do and anyone who doesn’t must be some strange quack.

Another issue Dr. Ellis thinks has increased polarization is a general distrust of media—the concept of fake news. That’s happened as traditional media sources like newspapers or nightly TV news have started to fade amid the rise of social media and other internet news. While news used to come mainly from professional journalists trained to stick to the facts, news comes from all sorts of people now. And, yes, much of it is fake, but with the prevalence of fake news, there’s now a distrust in all news and a blurring line between what is fact and what’s opinion. Because it’s so easy now to dismiss anything as only someone’s opinion, it’s harder to have meaningful conversations. That’s not good. As Dr. Ellis explained, “Unfortunately, the more that people don’t talk to each other, then the more polarized we get and the less likely we are able to resume having civil types of conversation.”

The big takeaway from the discussion around why we are more polarized, is that we need to start talking to each other more—talking to people we don’t agree with. But that’s obviously not easy. I asked Dr. Ellis what some approaches might be to having productive conversations. First off, she said, “I think before you have a conversation, you as a person need to be kind of secure in why you feel the way you do and have some sort of a basis for it.” She noted that some people’s opinions might be based only on what their parents or other people they are around think. Something else Dr. Ellis has found is that there’s usually some sort of fear that underlies a very strong allegiance to a certain policy. Loyalty to the policy is actually based on something the policy addresses, not the policy itself. She gave the example of people who feel strongly about the need to limit immigration. The underlying fear may be that a surging immigrant population will lead to job loss. In that case, Dr. Ellis said, it really is more appropriate to focus on the issue of job creation, not immigration reform.

Another important part of having productive political conversations, Dr. Ellis said, is being open-minded to the other person’s perspective. “Recognize that different people have different experiences and that their opinions are probably informed by those experiences, which might be very different from yours.” Let’s think back to Loomer, Vought, and Rubio. Digging up dirt to get people fired from their jobs, slashing the federal government, and bombing Venezuelan boats without a strong basis, might all be things you strongly disagree with. But we can understand how rejection that caused a month of acute depression would lead someone to be vengeful. We can understand why someone whose family struggled to pay bills wants to cut taxes. And we can understand why a person whose family lived under an oppressive authoritarian regime wants to overthrow a dictator.

In the same way, I think we can come to understand the opinions of the people around us with whom we disagree. And, from that understanding can come what Dr. Ellis feels like is a critical thing we have lost in recent years: respect. Without respect, discussions, public and private, become shouting matches and fights rather than productive conversations. But if we can get out from behind our phone screens, think about where our own views come from, and listen to where others’ views come from, there’s a chance we as a nation can start moving forward again instead of apart.