Gerard Baker—once upon a time the editor-in-chief of the Wall Street Journal—had a remarkable essay in the paper yesterday.

Remarkable in its prissiness, foolishness, and cowardice.

Let’s do two things today. (1) Understand that, as a rule, obsessing over anti-anti-Trump simps like Gerry Baker is a bad use of time. They do not care and it is bad for the disposition of our souls.

That said, (2) I’m going to go to work on the homes here with a pair of pliers and a blowtorch. Not because Gerry Baker by himself is special. But because there are going to be people jumping off the Trump train and we should be careful not to assume that their maneuvering is a belated embrace of liberal democracy. They should be vetted.

So let’s get medieval on his limey ass.

Gerry—whom I used to know a little bit¹—titled his piece “Help—I Feel a Bad Case of TDS Coming On.” The joke is that Baker has spent a decade apologizing for Trump, attacking Trump’s opponents, and deriding anyone who believed Trump was a danger to the liberal order. Now he’s having second thoughts.

On first blush, we should welcome this change. Defeating fascism requires holding hands with people we may not like. We should praise Baker and make space for him at the table, not cast him out like a leper, correct?

Well, no.

In general we should welcome converts. But let’s look at what Baker has to say:

Thanks to a self-indulgent tariff fixation based on a profound misunderstanding of international economics, an insouciance about public finances that has widened the deficit, and a reckless military adventure that has choked off global energy supplies, inflation and interest rates are higher than they were in November 2024.

The bolding is mine because I want you to pay attention to how Baker describes Trump’s failures. In his mind, Trump is not a moron, or an authoritarian, or a criminal. He is not authoring America’s most consequential military defeat in generations.

Oh, no.

He’s self-indulgent. The victim of a misunderstanding. A profound one, even. He has been reckless.

He’s insouciant. Fucking insouciant.

You pathetic worm. You mewling quim.

Donald Trump practices actual, honest-to-God, national socialism. He condemned hundreds of thousands of poor brown people around the globe to death. He weakened our military by fixating on pushups instead of mastering drone warfare. He abandoned the Pax Americana as fast as his edematous legs let him. He ushered in the return of preventable infectious diseases that have killed American children.

He created a masked secret police force that answers only to him and routinely guns down innocents in the street. He embraces Vladimir Putin and fellates Kim Jong-un.

And he’s insouciant?

Don’t forget about the attempted coup. Here’s Baker’s description of that unpleasantness:

Even after Jan. 6, 2021, removed any doubt about the threat Donald Trump might pose to our constitutional norms and rules, I thought the institutions of the U.S. would be strong enough (as they were then) to constrain his worst instincts and intentions.

Removed doubt about the threat Trump might pose to norms and rules.

There were no doubts. It was not a matter of what threat Trump “might pose”—it happened, in the real world. And it was not a threat, it was an attack. This attack was not on norms and rules. It was on the law, the constitutional order, the vice president, members of Congress, and specific policemen, whose names we know and whose blood we saw.

At the very end of his piece, Baker explains why he’s finally had it with Trump. It isn’t that Trump is objectively evil. Or that his actions are, on their face, wrong, corrupt, illegal, dangerous. Oh no...