Scenes from the Imperial Court

A face not even a mother could love: the Trump administration’s Cuffy Meigs.

In the past few weeks a variety of businessmen and media types have dutifully trooped to Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate to court his influence. It has become the seat of imperial intrigue, with hopefuls swarming to the resort and to local hotels to claim their place at court.

This has led to some of the usual bizarre excesses of an imperial court, including comments about Mar-a-Lago face.

Many in Donald Trump's inner circle appear to have gone under the plastic surgeon’s knife, creating what is now being dubbed the “Mar-a-Lago” face. Defined by copious use of Botox, a Miami-bronze tan, puffy lips, and silky smooth skin, plastic surgeons told DailyMail.com it was giving Trumpland an almost “plastic” and “Real Housewives” look. Some have suggested that the shift in the appearance of Trump's closest aides could be down to a desire to please the President-elect, who has been accused of having a preference for attractive subordinates.

It is appropriate that courtiers are remaking their faces, to reflect the way they have remade their souls.

Perhaps the award for ultimate sycophancy has to go to a young staffer with a peculiar job description.

A 33-year-old former far-right cable host, Ms. Harp is nearly always at Mr. Trump’s side. She has written him a series of devotional letters, including one that said, “You are all that matters to me.” Once, when Mr. Trump was playing golf in Scotland, she ran behind his cart to keep him up to date with positive stories and social media posts.

Little known beyond Mr. Trump’s immediate orbit, Ms. Harp is now poised to play a potentially influential role in his White House, sitting right outside the Oval Office and acting as the conduit for a largely unsupervised flow of information to and from the president and helping him with his social media feed.

She has no official title, but during the campaign, colleagues referred to her as the “human printer” because she followed Mr. Trump around with a portable printer and a battery pack to charge it, so she could hand him information in hard copy, as he prefers.

But Ms. Harp also established herself at the center of a fast-moving carousel of text messages, articles and tidbits directed at Mr. Trump. This has generated concern among other aides who feel she has been far too willing to serve as a funnel for conspiratorial information at a moment when Mr. Trump appears more contemptuous than ever of attempts to manage or control him. One of her go-to news sources, people who have observed her say, is the website Gateway Pundit, which frequently disseminates conspiracy theories embraced by the far right.

I think it’s amusing that people say Trump doesn’t like to be managed or controlled, when he is so easily manipulated by whoever can gain access to his highly selective flow of information.

But there is a more serious side to this. Like most imperial courts, this one elevates the vicious, corrupt, and incompetent.

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Let’s Annoy Each Other

But first a request.

I’ve written recently about the most annoying way this all ends: Donald Trump comes into office promising to all sorts of awful things, but then he gets bogged down in legislative opposition, lawsuits, obstruction by state governments, embarrassing scandals, and so on, and his authoritarian agenda dies a death by a thousand cuts. It’s the most annoying outcome because if it succeeds, everyone will tell us how foolish we were to be alarmed about Trump—which they will be able to say precisely because we took the threat seriously.

It may be annoying, but this is one of the better outcomes we can expect. So let’s all do our best to annoy each other. I’ll be doing my part, and you can help by giving a donation to support The Tracinski Letter.

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“Prophet Elvis”

Some of the people around Trump are real ideological fanatics. Remember the Project 2025 agenda we warned you about? One of the people behind it, Russ Vought, is headed into a key position in the new administration and has described himself as a Christian Nationalist.

In a podcast with Rep. Tim Burchett (R-TN) last year, Vought said that he and his organization, the Center for Renewing America, had a priority: establishing that “we’re not a secular country. That we are a Christian Nation as founded and that should be shared by everyone even if they have religious liberty for another faith.”

Then there is RFK, Jr., who has been on a long crusade against medical science. See a profile of his malign international influence, which contains this doozy:

Along the way, Mr. Kennedy has partnered with, financed or promoted fringe figures—people who claim that 5G cellphone towers cause cancer, that homosexuality and contraceptive education are part of a global conspiracy to reduce African fertility, and that the World Health Organization is trying to steal countries’ sovereignty.

One of his group’s advisers, in Uganda, suggested using “supernatural insight” and a man she calls Prophet Elvis to guide policymaking. “We do well to embrace ethereal means to get ahead as a nation,” she wrote on a Ugandan news site this year.

This is the replacement of science with a literal witch-doctor approach.