It’s Okay to Criticize Trump

By Charles C. W. Cooke

Thursday, December 18, 2025

 

Here’s a friendly tip for the confused and apprehensive among us: Whatever the loudest and most intrusive voices within the firmament might like to insist, you don’t actually have to defend Donald Trump when he’s being a complete idiot.

 

Suppose, to pluck a trio of wild examples from the ether, that Donald Trump were to respond to the news that a Hollywood director had been killed by blaming his murder on “Trump Derangement Syndrome,” or to add rude and self-serving plaques beneath the portraits of former presidents that are on display at the White House, or to cast the public’s fears about the economy as a Democratic plot. In cases such as those, it is perfectly possible to criticize the man without losing one’s sense of self. Let me demonstrate, for those who remain unsure:

 

Donald Trump is being a complete idiot today.

 

There. That was easy, wasn’t it?

 

If you are still worried about the consequences, I can assure you that uttering these words does not make you less conservative, or change any of your opinions on taxes or guns or abortion or immigration, or reduce your willingness to fight for the things you believe. Nor, for that matter, does it alter your voting history. If you voted for Trump once, twice, thrice, or never, that record will remain identical before, during, and after the process of sharing your honest views about the man’s conduct. It is true that, if you judge Trump fairly, people on both sides of the aisle will shout at you maniacally on Twitter. But there is no compelling reason to care about that in the slightest. Those people are fools, and, insofar as they are doing anything more than playing a cynical purity game for other fools, their approval is worthless. You are you, not some ventriloquist’s puppet.

 

Perhaps you are concerned that, if you criticize Trump, you will somehow damage the “movement” to which he belongs. If so, let me ask this: In any other aspect of your life, do mindless and belligerent defenses of your position tend to persuade or to repel other people? When arguing with your spouse, does it help or hurt to insist that you are correct in every particular? When making your case at work, does it aid you or limit you to claim that your proposal is perfect down to the last detail? Forget, for a moment, the demands of morality and good citizenship and consider politics in the same utilitarian light: When attempting to recruit others to your cause, is humility typically a virtue or a flaw? This, after all, is a 50–50 country, and a lot of its people sit squarely in the “normie” middle. How many of those people are likely to thrill to the news that the president is taking shots at a murder victim, or editorializing about his predecessors on the walls of the executive mansion, or casting all feedback from the citizenry as a fraud? If, as it should be, the answer is “very few,” what good does it do to pretend that you disagree?

 

It is not true that, in politics, moderation is always a virtue. But this matter is not about moderation; it is about human nature. No person is impeccable, and that rule applies to Donald Trump as much as to anyone else who has ever lived. In a country such as the United States, which was founded atop a deep distrust of the regnant political class, sycophancy toward a politician strikes observers as being unutterably weird. This president has an approval rating of just above 40 percent, which means that a considerable majority of his fellow countrymen dislike him more than they like him, and, if one looks at the subcategories, that even those who appreciate him on balance are not sold on every last trait. There is nothing to be gained by standing stupidly at the gate, refusing to admit fault in any regard. The duty of the free man is to offer his earnest appraisals of others, be they chief, magistrate, priest, or anyone else. If, for whatever reason, one cannot manage that obligation, one ought at least to avoid becoming a minion.