An editor at the anti-Trump outlet The Bulwark, founded by Bill Kristol, is calling on Democrats to abandon policy debates entirely and devote themselves exclusively to tearing down President Donald Trump’s political standing.
In a November 11 piece headlined “Destroy All Monsters: This isn’t the time for negotiation. It’s the time for ruthless aggression,” Bulwark editor Jonathan Last argued Democrats should “have one mission and one mission only for the next two years.” He wrote: “Destroy Trump’s political standing. You think he’s finished? That he’s had enough? No. Hit him again.”
Last’s broader goal, according to the piece, is to push Trump and his populist allies out of the Republican Party altogether and remake the GOP along different lines — more open to immigration, more aligned with investor interests, and committed to an expansive global military posture.
Last extended the warning to Republican lawmakers who continue to support the president. “The job of this next Democratic Congress is to make Trump pay for his unpopular actions and then make Republicans pay for staying with him. Relentlessly. Remorselessly,” he wrote. “Democrats only get to build a better world later if they get this job done first.”
Carville strikes a similar note
Democratic strategist James Carville expressed a comparable sentiment in a November video, saying the Democratic base’s top priority isn’t a policy program but something more personal.
The main thing the Democratic base wants, I can report this to you, it’s not Medicare for all. It’s not DEI. It’s not any of that shit. What they want is to humiliate Donald Trump. That’s right! The Democratic base, more than anything, wants to humiliate that son of a bitch at every point that we possibly can. We want to watch him wither in anguish, in misery, in pain.
Carville also urged scrutiny of people around Trump, saying: “And for God’s sakes, follow those idiot kids that he has. Follow the idiots that are surrounding him. Follow the people in the United States government that are engaged in treasonous behavior.”
A view on immigration-driven growth
In the same piece, Last defended continued high levels of immigration as a necessary counterweight to what he described as the decadence that sets in among established populations. He wrote that after several generations in a free, capitalist society, people tend to become “decadent, lazy, spoiled,” and that waves of immigrants — from Italy, Ireland, Russia, and now Mexico — “really want to work hard and really want to succeed and really want their kids to live better lives than them.”
Last himself holds a biology degree, a field in which federal visa programs — including the F-1, J-1, and H-1B categories — have brought in large numbers of foreign workers, a trend critics say has made it harder for American-trained biologists to find jobs in their own field.
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