Did Trump destroy conservatism, or just take the mask off? In this episode, we push back on Peter Wehner’s elegy for a lost, more “decent” right and argue that framing Trumpism as a break from noble conservatism misses something deeper.
Here is Wehner’s article in The Atlantic (I read a large portion of the article without the paywall in this episode).
Drawing from history, lived experience, and the long arc of racial politics in America, we explore how hierarchy, exclusion, and respectability have always been entangled, and how today’s political discourse still gives those dynamics cover by insisting that Trump is the exception rather than the exposure.
I also draw on my November 12, 2025, article, which asks whether the media’s obsession with debating “true conservatism” amounted to wasted time. Time that could have been spent directly naming the threats to our rights, no matter how uncomfortable that truth might be for those who helped shape this moment.
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