Mean Boys: The Bullies and the Bros Take Over

Jeff Robbins on Jan 28, 2025

It's an excellent time for bullies and bros in Donald Trump's Washington, where the president wasted no time confirming that if he has his way -- namely, whatever he wants -- it's going to be all thuggery all the time.

There's a fresh flood of new examples each day. They're intended to overwhelm us, and it's working. Here's one: Trump gleefully stripped longtime public servants of the security protection they've needed precisely because they're under serious threats from Trump loyalists who, taking their cue from Trump himself, threaten revenge because those individuals committed the offense of disagreeing with Trump. Anthony Fauci, who devoted his life to keeping Americans disease-free, is one. There's also former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and National Security Adviser John Bolton, both once Trump appointees.

You don't disagree with Donald Trump without subjecting yourself and your family to the risk of physical harm. That's his message. His supporters not only love it but thrill to it -- only not quite as much as Trump.

Trump's big on message-sending, and the messages are loud and clear. Among the hundreds of cop-beaters whom he pardoned or set free upon taking office was Stewart Rhodes, founder of the extremist group the Oath Keepers, who was convicted by a jury of seditious conspiracy in connection with Jan. 6. "My only regret," Rhodes said about his role in the attempt to overthrow the government, "is they should have brought rifles. We should have brought rifles. We could have fixed it right then and there. I'd hang f---ing Pelosi from the lamppost." Our president made Rhodes a guest of honor at an event this past weekend.

It's now bad form to observe that this stuff reeks of fascism. But it assuredly does.

The new administration is staffed by the smug and the mean-spirited. You can't get a job without swearing fealty to the patently mendacious: that Donald Trump won the 2020 election, which was rigged and stolen from him, that the poor guy's been victimized by FAKE NEWS and a TOTAL WITCH HUNT, that up is down, round is flat and all the rest.

Matt Gaetz was of course the perfect Trump Bro. A House Ethics Committee investigation concluded that the former congressman regularly paid women for sex, that he'd had sex with a 17-year-old and that he possessed and used illegal drugs, but hey! Why not make him attorney general of the United States?

After Gaetz dropped out, Fox commentator Pete Hegseth took his place as Bro-in-Chief. This was largely because the slick, fast-talking Hegseth is as superficial as he is good looking, a serial adulterer who, according to evidence presented to the Senate, had a long history of private and public intoxication that has not abated and a penchant for "erratic and aggressive" behavior toward women. After Hegseth claimed that he settled a sexual assault claim against him for "nuisance value," it emerged that he paid the woman $50,000 to stay silent. Quite the nuisance.

But he loves Donald Trump, who therefore loves him right back. Enough to make Hegseth, who has not exactly been a manager or a military expert, our new Defense Secretary, in charge of our armed forces, a budget of some $850 billion and keeping America safe. If Trump wanted to pick someone with less gravitas for this crucial role, he'd have his work cut out for him.

Elon Musk is a Bro with $450 billion to throw around, control of a mega-social media platform that he plasters with MAGA messaging and a grip on Trump World. Musk's more than a casual fan of the alt-right, so it wasn't a shocker to see him repay a cheering crowd with what looked a lot -- that is, exactly -- like a Nazi salute. Horsefeathers, said the Trumpers. It was just Musk being "awkward."

Yeah. Maybe. But days after giving his very, very Nazi-looking salute, Mr. Don't-Mind-Me-I'm-Just-Awkward decided to tell a rally of Germany's far right Alternative for Germany Party, "There is too much focus on past guilt (regarding the Holocaust), and we need to move beyond that." Translation: You guys should stop feeling sheepish about Adolf Hitler.

It's going to be some four years. Already, we Americans have plenty to be sheepish about.

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Jeff Robbins' latest book, "Notes From the Brink: A Collection of Columns about Policy at Home and Abroad," is available now on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Apple Books and Google Play. Robbins, a former assistant United States attorney and United States delegate to the United Nations Human Rights Council in Geneva, was chief counsel for the minority of the United States Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations. An attorney specializing in the First Amendment, he is a longtime columnist for the Boston Herald, writing on politics, national security, human rights and the Mideast.