I answer your June '25 Q&A questions

Answers to this month's Substack subscriber questions

The following are my answers from the June 2025 Q&A. If you would like to be a part of future Q&As and have the opportunity to get your questions answered, become a paid Substack subscriber today!

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🗣️ What do you think a JD Vance presidency would look like if Trump has a health crisis or is impeached and removed and can no longer serve as POTUS halfway through this term? Submitted by Patrick

✅ If that scenario happens, we’re essentially looking at a younger, slicker, and more self-aware version of Trumpism. JD Vance is a political chameleon. He’s gone from anti-Trump conservative intellectual to MAGA loyalist, all in pursuit of relevance and power. But unlike Trump, he actually reads. He knows how to couch authoritarian instincts in more polished rhetoric.

A Vance presidency would likely continue most Trump policies—anti-immigrant crackdowns, corporate deregulation, judicial appointments aimed at curtailing federal power—but with fewer impulsive outbursts and more legal finesse. He wouldn't throw tantrums on Truth Social, but the outcomes might be just as dangerous, maybe more so, because they’d come with a patina of seriousness and strategy. He’d likely also surround himself with a more ideologically coherent inner circle—people like Stephen Miller, but in suits that fit.

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🗣️ If Trump keeps ignoring the courts, what will happen? Who would arrest him? How would he be taken out of power? Submitted by Sue Bates

✅ This is the scary part: there’s no magical reset button. If Trump defies the courts and the institutions meant to enforce the law—like the DOJ or U.S. Marshals—refuse to act, we are left in a constitutional crisis with no clear off-ramp. The military isn’t supposed to intervene domestically unless the Insurrection Act is invoked. The FBI doesn’t have unilateral authority to arrest a sitting president.

What we’re seeing is that our system assumes good faith from its participants. It wasn’t built to handle a president who openly rejects the rule of law. So if Trump ignores court rulings and no one stops him, the real answer is: he gets away with it. Unless Congress or mass public pressure forces action, nothing automatically happens. That’s the danger.

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🗣️ You seem to receive many hostile and hateful comments, and I am impressed by your honest, sincere responses. How do you cope with the hostility? Submitted by MaryAnn Fricko

✅ First, I appreciate that. The truth is, a lot of this comes down to choosing not to take the bait. People can say incredibly nasty things, and it’s easy to respond emotionally, especially when you're exhausted or frustrated. But in most cases, these comments say more about the person writing them than about me. They’re often not even really about me—they’re about fear, tribalism, or projection.

So when I respond, I try to either refocus the conversation or strip the hostility down to its underlying assumptions. Other times, I just ignore it. I’ve learned that not every bad-faith comment deserves energy, and honestly, staying grounded in the work matters more than scoring points in a toxic thread.

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🗣️ What do you see happening to the 40% of Americans who believe Democrats are baby-eating communists? Can they be deprogrammed after a Democratic win? Submitted by Sarah Murray Novak

✅ I wouldn’t expect mass deprogramming after any one election. These beliefs didn’t come from a single source, and they won’t vanish overnight. They’ve been built over years through online radicalization, partisan media, conspiratorial communities, and a deep sense of alienation.

Some will peel away slowly, especially if the lies start to conflict with lived reality—like when Trump’s policies hurt them personally or the world doesn’t end after Democrats win. But many are locked in. What’s more realistic is to focus on minimizing the spread of the disinformation ecosystem that created this, while building healthier civic and media infrastructure to reach the next generation. We’re not undoing all of this. But we can limit the damage going forward.

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🗣️ If you remove the party labels, do you think both sides truly believe in what’s best for the country? Or are most people just following how they were raised? Submitted by Warren

✅ It’s a mix. There are absolutely people on both sides who genuinely believe they’re advocating for what’s best—whether that’s economic liberty, social justice, national strength, or democratic stability. But there’s also a significant number of people who are just on autopilot: voting like their parents did, parroting cable news talking points, or staying loyal to “their team” no matter what.

Partisanship has become a kind of identity, and that makes it harder to evaluate issues on their own merit. One of the biggest challenges we face is helping people break out of that reflexive alignment and actually engage with policies, not personalities. But I’ll say this: being raised conservative or liberal isn’t the issue. The issue is when people stop asking questions altogether.

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🗣️ What can we realistically do to make people feel less isolated and less likely to be seduced by MAGA? Submitted by Terry

✅ This might sound counterintuitive, but it starts offline. MAGA thrives in spaces where people feel unseen, unneeded, or atomized. And the MAGA movement offers them belonging, identity, even purpose—no matter how toxic. The antidote to that isn’t more MSNBC. It’s relationships, communities, and meaning that aren’t based on rage or fear.

That means building institutions—local media, social organizations, even churches or unions—that offer people a sense of connection. It also means showing up where they are. The left often writes off certain areas or demographics as lost causes. But if we don’t show up, someone else will. And right now, that “someone else” is a very well-funded pipeline of grifters, culture warriors, and digital propagandists.

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🗣️ Why aren’t more journalists comparing current GOP tactics to historical authoritarian playbooks? Shouldn’t people hear those parallels clearly? Submitted by Suzanne

✅ They absolutely should. But a lot of mainstream media avoids historical parallels because they think it sounds “alarmist,” or they worry about losing access to powerful figures. There’s also a cultural reluctance in the U.S. to admit that fascism—or anything like it—could ever happen here. It’s easier to treat everything like a spectacle than to name it for what it is.

But history matters. When a political movement starts attacking vulnerable groups, delegitimizing elections, and threatening to jail opponents, there’s precedent for that—and it’s not “business as usual.” One of the most powerful tools we have is memory. And the more we use it, the harder it becomes for authoritarians to rewrite the present.

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🗣️ Trump voters often get hurt by his policies but keep supporting him. Why don’t reporters ever ask them what specific policies they still like? Submitted by Jon

✅ It’s frustrating, and frankly, it’s a failure of journalism. Too often the story ends at “they still support Trump” because that sounds dramatic. But you’re right—the obvious next question is: Why? What exactly are they still supporting?

The answer is usually less about policy and more about identity, resentment, or a vague sense that Trump “fights for people like me.” Pressing for specifics—what policy? what result?—would reveal the incoherence behind much of the support. And that’s probably why many reporters don’t go there. It risks showing that the emperor has no clothes. But journalism should do that.

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🗣️ Do you think Trump will keep disrespecting Canada, or will he back off? Submitted by David Smith

✅ If there’s one thing Trump’s consistent about, it’s unpredictability. He disrespects allies when he thinks there’s domestic political value in doing so—Canada included. During his first term, we saw tariffs, insults, and undermining NATO—all of which damaged long-standing relationships, including with Canada.

Unless Canada is seen as “useful” to his agenda—economically, militarily, or symbolically—he’ll keep using it as a rhetorical punching bag. There’s no real strategy here. It’s about dominance, grievance, and spectacle. And that means allies like Canada will continue to get whiplash depending on who Trump’s blaming on any given day.

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