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Tuesday
Normally I wouldn’t pay attention to speculation on whether tiny cracks are opening up between Donald Trump and J.D. Vance, any more than I pay attention to distinctions between Kim Jong Il and Kim Jong Un. What point is there in such Kremlinology given that both men are bent on dismantling our democracy?
When Shakespeare is brought into the conversation, however, I take note, if only to highlight the issues at stake. Thus I read with interest William Kristol contending that Vance is attempting to play Brutus to Trump’s Caesar in the Epstein affair. At a time when Trump has been praying for his friendship with the child rapist to disappear, Vance (so Kristol argues) has stabbed him in the back by deliberately drawing attention to it. “Et tu, Brute?” Kristol imagines Trump saying to his supposedly trusted lieutenant.
Kristol then shifts, however, to seeing Vance not as Brutus but as his co-conspirator Cassius. He imagines Trump viewing his vice-president as Caesar views the senator:
Yon Cassius has a lean and hungry look.
He thinks too much. Such men are dangerous . . .
Such men as he be never at heart’s ease
Whiles they behold a greater than themselves,
And therefore are they very dangerous.
Kristol believes that Vance has deliberately blown fresh life into the Epstein scandal. First, he leaked news of a special meeting he was setting up on how to handle the affair and then he said on Fox News that “a lot of Americans want answers. I certainly want answers.” Kristol points out that the leak and the interview reminded everyone that Trump is hiding something:
Perhaps Vance was simply being clumsy. But if one had a suspicious mind, one might think Vance knows what he’s doing. Perhaps he doesn’t mind seeing Trump embroiled in the Epstein scandal. Vance presumably had no connection to Epstein, so he’s at no risk if the files are released. And to the degree Trump gets damaged by the Epstein matter, it would make it harder for Trump to run again in 2028—something Trump obviously wants to do, something Vance is intelligent enough to see that Trump wants to do, and something Vance presumably doesn’t want Trump to do.
Running again in 2028 really would be Trump crossing the Rubicon given that it is blatantly unconstitutional. Recall that it is Caesar threatening the Roman republic that galvanizes Brutus into action. “What means this shouting? I do fear, the people choose Caesar for their king,” he says when he hears that Marc Antony is angling for exactly that.
Cassius further goads Brutus by pointing out that Rome is in danger of being ruled by “one man” rather than a “breed of noble bloods” (i.e., the Senate). The words resonate with us today given that our own Republican-run Congress has surrendered its power to Trump:
Upon what meat doth this our Caesar feed,
That he is grown so great? Age, thou art shamed!
Rome, thou hast lost the breed of noble bloods!
When went there by an age, since the great flood,
But it was famed with more than with one man?
When could they say till now, that talk’d of Rome,
That her wide walls encompass’d but one man?
Now is it Rome indeed and room enough,
When there is in it but one only man.
Yes, America was once famous for being ruled by more than one man. It used to have wider walls.
If Vance is indeed attempting to stab Trump in the back, however, it is not because he is a Brutus desiring to save the American republic. Think instead Cassius, who for all his talk of Senate rule would set himself up as a dictator if he had the chance. Caesar reads him right when he says that “such men as he be never at heart’s ease/ Whiles they behold a greater than themselves.” Vance is willing to sell out every principle he once professed for power.
Our historical moment calls for our own Senate, along with the House, to stand up for the ideals of the Republic. I’m obviously not asking them to assassinate their head, as Brutus and Cassius do, but they could hold fast to cherished American ideals. If they did so, we could indeed call them (echoing Marc Antony on a dead Brutus) the noblest Republicans of them all. We have done so already with Adam Kinzinger and Liz Cheney.
Instead, panicked at how they hear the MAGA faithful cheering their idol, GOP members of Congress have abandoned all they professed to believe, starting with fealty to the Constitution. Trump strides amongst them like a colossus and they, as “petty men,”
Walk under his huge legs and peep about
To find [themselves] dishonorable graves.
