Greetings and welcome into this mid-February performance of the Carnival of Fools, gentle readers! I would like to remind you that we are only 20 days into the second Trump administration. How many years older do you feel after stepping across the event horizon? Honestly, I feel rejuvenated myself, if only because for once I was able to kick back and enjoy a weekend when nothing more unexpected happened than the Philadelphia Eagles’ utterly whomping the Kansas City Chiefs. (I found other amusing ways to spend my idle time, as it turns out.) We’ve adjusted quickly to the new pace of things around here, folks, and relative to recent expectations, this was our idea of a slow news week.

This week’s Carnival will be therefore be light as a feather, for the biggest news is Kendrick Lamar’s decision to freelance on behalf of the Trump administration, continuing America’s brutal campaign of aggression against Canada, in the form of an unprovoked rap attack upon notorious Toronto-area hip-hop chump Drake at the Super Bowl. (The Canadians must have known it was coming; before the half-time show began, the entire province of Ontario ran an ad politely requesting that Americans take their very serious northern allies very seriously.) So, let’s talk for a moment about a new kind of fantasy politics.

Things That Will Never Happen

You may not remember this, but on February 4 — halfway through a joint press conference with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu — Donald Trump announced that he intended for the United States to occupy Gaza. Maybe annex it. Temporarily or permanently? We’ll see. Oh, and everyone currently there will have to go, of course, so that the Americans can build resorts. If this whole idea sounded somewhat half-baked, that’s because it apparently was, according to the New York Times — an idea Trump has had floating around his head that he never bothered to run by his aides prior to deciding to go public with it. (I guess the good news is that he hasn’t changed one bit since he last left office.)

Other than Phil Klein’s utterly bemused reaction on the night of the announcement, you may have noticed that we at NR have written comparatively little about what would typically be reckoned as a world-historical bombshell by any other standard. And, of course, there is a very simple reason for that: The standard is Trump. And there’s almost nothing to say here. This is transparently a ridiculous fantasy: The United States is not sending American soldiers to fight and be blown up in Gaza City for the cause of a revived American empire. It’s neither logistically nor politically possible. This is not going to happen, and at a certain point, I threw my hands up and felt like the idea wasn’t even worth dignifying with a serious response. I’m not sure I can even dignify it with a funny response, because if you take Trump at his word, then what he suggested was nothing less than a moral obscenity.

I don’t, though, and not because I trust in his decency but because he is rather transparently an opportunist as a negotiator, staking out extreme positions that sit on the edge of his plausible range of power to rile up his opponents. Trump intends to annex Gaza to the United States every bit as much as he intends to annex Canada as the 51st state. (The ideal comedic outcome, incidentally, would be to give these future states of Canada and Gaza an equal number of senators.) It’s a bullying act meant to put the counterparty on its back foot. It is often successful in the world of business. But it is of extremely dubious value in the world of foreign policy, where memories are long, sums are often zero, and everyone is forced to do repeat business with one another whether they like it or not.

Springtime for Hitler Comparisons

I heard that Punxsutawney Phil saw his shadow this year on Groundhog Day, which means we’re in for another dismal six weeks of winter. While I’ll always wonder why we allow a marmot to influence our short-term weather planning, I don’t worry too much about it. Springtime is mostly a state of mind, anyway, and even if it’s only still February, Trump’s return to power has ensured that it is already springtime for Hitler comparisons. Can you feel the warmth emanating from our commentariat’s perpetual glow of outrage?

How many Hitler analogies or references surrounding Trump 2.0 can you spot in the wild? They’re everywhere, obviously; the media spent a week and a half trying to argue that Elon Musk delivered a Nazi salute during his speech at the inauguration, only to drop the matter when he immediately offered them so many more-substantive reasons to fear and loathe him. Trump’s saber-rattling certainly plays easily enough to the preset narrative frame, as well. (A suggestion, if you doubt me: Go to Bluesky and just search “Trump + Hitler” and get ready to go spelunking deep within the mountains of madness.)

I’m always more interested when people who should know better put their names to this sort of overheated hyperbole. And when you come across a special example of it, it’s worth pausing to show proper respect. I really don’t think any of us will be topping the American Prospect in the Hitler sweepstakes this year, and I’m practically misty-eyed with awe at the grandness of it all. (Remember, it’s only February.) The 35-year-old far-left Prospect just published a piece by founder and co-editor Robert Kuttner with what, I will concede, may be the greatest title in the history of American anti-fascist commentary: “What Trump Could Learn from Hitler on NIH Funding.” I almost don’t want to spoil the contents of the piece for you, because that title — from one of the Left’s older periodicals — is a gloriously perfect intellectual epitaph all its own. But, yes, just to confirm, Crazy Bob Kuttner’s thesis is that, say what you will about ol’ Adolf Hitler, he sure spent a lot of German tax dollars on funding the sciences — only most of which was devoted to, well, Nazi stuff:

Hitler did seek to turn science to his own ends, to promote research on eugenics, new technologies for blitzkrieg war, sick medical experiments, and more efficient ways for the mass killing of Jews. Yet civilian German science, long a mark of German pride, also thrived. During the Nazi era, German scientists and engineers invented the first electron microscope, industrial-scale production of artificial fiber, pharmaceuticals such as advanced sulfa drugs, artificial rubber, and much more.
Trump, in short, is even more nihilist than Hitler.

You read that right, folks. At least Hitler believes in basic research! I would not have tried to invent a position this imbecilic for an imagined opponent because it would scan too much like a joke: Trump is somehow worse than a Nazi — he’s a nihilist! Walter Sobchak would surely agree, at least: “Say what you want about the tenets of National Socialism, dude, at least it’s an ethos.”

Until next week.