The Hypocrisy Is the Point

How Donald Trump turned flagrant reversals on foreign wars, the swamp, and inflation into the ultimate test of MAGA devotion.

When Britney Spears’ younger sister, Jamie Lynn, got pregnant at 16, Bill O’Reilly routinely assailed her parents on Fox News and slammed her as a “pinhead.” It was evidence of Hollywood’s moral rot, the godless left, the collapse of American values. There was a particular relish to it — the kind of gleeful condemnation that suggests Bill O. had been waiting years for some ingenue to make exactly this mistake.

A couple of years later, Sarah Palin’s teenage daughter, Bristol, showed up pregnant on the 2008 campaign trail. As John McCain’s running mate, the Alaska governor brought new fire to his sagging campaign against Obama with her religious-right fervor (and penchant for pricey stilettos).

So when it came to Palins’ predicament, O’Reilly demurred that teen pregnancy was “a personal matter.” Bristol was showcased at the Republican National Convention as proof of her mother’s wholesome, pro-life, God-fearing values. A beacon of morality for shunning abortion. Proof that America still had its soul.

Because the Palins were in the club, what used to be considered a sin was recast as virtue.

This is the Republican playbook, and it predates Donald Trump by decades. Reagan Education Secretary William Bennett wrote The Book of Virtues and spent years lecturing America about the rampant immorality of the left — all while blowing more than $8 million in Las Vegas and Atlantic City slot machines and video poker tables.

Rush Limbaugh castigated Kurt Cobain and other celebrities for their drug use, while quietly destroying his own hearing with a years-long opioid dependency. The list of “family values” Republicans caught in affairs, gay relationships, financial corruption, and more is so long that at some point you stop being shocked, and start keeping a spreadsheet.

But with Trump, the hypocrisy isn’t an embarrassing accident to be managed. It’s the architecture. And it’s not accidental — it’s a key pillar of authoritarianism.

There’s a saying mob bosses live by: for my friends, everything; for my enemies, the law. Trump has elevated this into a governing philosophy. The message to his base is clear, even if it’s never spelled out: we get to do what we want. Rules are for other people. And if you’re in the club, you get to watch us break them — and know you might be able to, too. But if you’re not in the club, the rules will crush you.

So you can either swallow whatever Trump shoves down your throat or find yourself humiliatingly cast aside, like former MAGA Lieutenants Marjorie Taylor Greene, Thomas Massie, and Nancy Mace.

This is why Trump can spend the better part of three years hammering Joe Biden and Kamala Harris on inflation — probably the primary issue that won him the 2024 election — and then turn around and announce, “I love the inflation” when his own Iran war and tariffs send prices spiking.