Happy New Year! 2025 is going to be awful.
I think it's my persistent optimism that keeps people coming back.
Happy New Year! I was able to take a much-needed break over the holidays. Although, even at 11,000 feet, I was unable to escape Russia. In this particular case, I was totally fine with that, given the fresh champagne powder and the fact that my husband and I were completely alone in Vail’s legendary back bowls.
In case you missed it, I posted Class 20: More Russian Fuckery In Italy just before the holiday break.
I have lots of new subscribers. Welcome! I hope you will check out my Foreign Influence Operations course. It is rather relevant these days.
A friendly reminder that Rant! is a reader-supported publication. Thank you for making this newsletter possible!
ALEX’S WEEKLY RANT
As we brace for Monday’s inauguration, I thought I’d provide some comfort to my readers and let you know: Everything is going to be ok.
Nah, I’m just fucking with you. It’s going to be terrible. If I were to use a meme to predict how the Trump presidency is going to go, it would be this:
Get ready for the oligarchy. (I actually wrote this before President Biden mentioned it in his farewell address. Snaps to me!)
Over the holidays, the tech broligarchy lined up to kiss Trump’s ass, each handing over oodles of cash to the Orange Duce, purportedly for his inauguration fund, but really, who knows where all this money is going? Washington Post political cartoonist
captured the corruption in a now-famous cartoon and resigned from the paper whose motto is “Democracy Dies in Darkness” after its owner, billionaire Jeff Bezos (who gave $1 million to Trump and was depicted doing exactly that in the cartoon), spiked it from publication.In exciting news, this capitulation of the tech broligarchy to Trump spurred author
to write about Faustian Capitalism, a phrase that, as my long-term followers know, I’ve been trying to make trend for years. Faustian Capitalism is when we are willing to trade democracy for profit. I spoke to the New Yorker about it. I’ve tweeted several examples, including here, here, and here. And I wrote an essay about it here. My dreams of making this term trend are going to come true!
The tech broligarchs and their Faustian Capitalism fit in well with the MAGA movement, despite a few spats over which immigrants are the “good” kind. Mark Zuckerberg is looking for more masculinity, a theme often touted by MAGA. Peter Thiel wrote about an upside down world in which he claims the government tried to control the internet and censor conservative thought, advocating for the wide distribution of conspiracy theories under the guise of “free speech” and celebrating Trump’s return to office as the end of this “ancien regime” of establishment politicians. Zuck is doing his part, firing fact checkers at Meta, as is Elon Musk, who regularly promotes disinformation on X and who is considering buying TikTok, just to have another platform from which to skew the information space. Fittingly, while Biden, during his farewell address, was criticizing the end of fact-checking on social media platforms and lamenting the spread of disinformation, his press secretary and communications director were spreading lies about him on X.
With friends like these, who needs assholes?
The Big Lie and why now might be a good time to reread 1984.
“Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past.” —George Orwell, 1984
As I’ve previously written, Trump, like his Russian buddies, is very good at shaping the information space in his favor. When everything is outrageous, nothing is outrageous. There is just so much bullshit, it’s hard to keep up. As a result, people tune out. They stop participating in public discourse. It is in such an environment that authoritarian leaders consolidate their power. Everything and nothing can be true. The Dear Leader becomes the antidote, declaring that only he is right.
This warping of the information space has been building for years, but Trump’s Big Lie—that he won the 2020 election—helped cement it. With enough lies, the insurrection of January 6th was able to become “a day of love.” Most Republicans, including many who ran for their lives that day, now say we had a peaceful transition of power. It is in this same space that Zuckerberg, Thiel, and Musk are cynically claiming to be fighting for free speech while in practice shutting out voices of truth.
It is in this bizarre-o world—where war is peace, freedom is slavery, and ignorance is strength—that the Senate began confirmation hearings this week for Trump’s nominees. While I admittedly did not watch much of those hearings (because really, I can’t be angry all the time; even I need a break), the few exchanges I did catch really annoyed me. Most of the questions implied we as a nation are still playing by the same rule book. But we’re not. The information space is so warped, people in these hearings literally had different interpretations of certain words.
As far as I could tell, not a single Trump nominee this week would say on the record that Trump lost the election in 2020. They said Biden is president, but they could not admit to the loss.
So when senators asked nominees if they would ever follow an illegal order from Trump, the context seemed so whacky. It was very easy for each of them to say no, of course I wouldn’t follow an illegal order (although some of them could not even muster that). But given that we now live in the upside down, when such an order comes (and it will), no one in that chain will consider it illegal. If Trump asks for something in his official capacity, that means it’s legal. The Supreme Court said so, and Trump’s nominees agree.
Take this exchange with our future attorney general, Pam Bondi, in which she says, “There will never be an enemies list at the Department of Justice.” Her declaration was in response to questioning from Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, who referred to incoming FBI director Kash Patel’s public statements that he intends to go after anyone who has slighted Trump. (Quick shout out to
of Public Notice, who watched the hearing so I wouldn’t have to.)While Bondi and others might not call it “an enemies list,” they have given every indication they plan to seek retribution (again, just look at Patel’s public statements). They will just frame it as a legitimate investigation and as “restoring integrity” to the FBI and Department of Justice.
The confirmation hearing for John Ratcliffe for Director CIA was also a bit surreal. As journalist Shane Harris noted, the committee felt Ratcliffe was pretty tame compared to other Trump nominees like Patel and Tulsi Gabbard. As a result, they kind of went easy on him and took him at his word when he said he wouldn’t politicize intelligence.
Except, he already did politicize intelligence during the last Trump administration, as I wrote about here.
In this context, the hearing questions seemed woefully inadequate, assuming a truth paradigm that simply no longer exists.
Red flags galore.
The loyalty tests have already begun. Trump transition officials have begun asking civil servant staffers at the National Security Council who they voted for in 2024, their history of political donations, and if any of their social media posts might be deemed critical of Trump.
Also this week, Speaker Mike Johnson ousted Republican Mike Turner as chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, reportedly after receiving an “edict from Mar-a-Lago,” as if Trump is a modern-day Caesar.
Such moves are yet another sign that government is now meant to serve Trump, rather than the other way around. The National Security Council will be stacked with yes-men. Johnson has named Rep. Rick Crawford as the new head of House Intelligence. He is, according to Axios, “closer to MAGA world.”
Let’s remember here that when Devin Nunes was chairman of the intelligence committee, he used out-of-context intelligence to create the narrative that the Obama administration had been spying on the Trump campaign (which was not true). And that John Ratcliffe, our future Director CIA, used Russian intelligence to create the narrative that Hillary Clinton had made up the story about Russian interference to help Trump in 2016, and thus she was the one working with Russian intelligence to interfere in the election, all of which was a lie. What will Trump expect from Crawford?
This doesn’t lead to good intelligence or good policy. It leads to a weak autocracy that will eventually crack under its own contradictions (see: USSR, as well as Ronald Reagan rolling over in his grave).
I’ve heard several versions of: “But the bureaucracy won’t let Trump do that.”
That’s precisely why Trump is looking to dismantle the bureaucracy. Why go through the bureaucracy when your minions will simply carry out your orders with no checks and balances?
We also know Trump is really good at manipulating the legal system to his advantage. He was really good at that when he wasn’t president, so imagine how good he’ll be at it when he is president and controls the attorney general and director of the FBI.
Unlike the first time around, there will be no guardrails. People who stuck around for Trump 1 to try to temper his worst tendencies from the inside are not going to be there this time. Current FBI Director Chris Wray resigned instead of waiting to get fired. Special counsel Jack Smith, who declared Trump would have been convicted had he not been reelected, has done the same, as have members of Smith’s team. These people have mortgages, kids in college, and other opportunities they can pursue. They saw what happened to the likes of Peter Stzrok and others, who got sent through the wringer, their reputations trampled, facing death threats and legal debts, only to see Trump escape all accountability. It’s understandable they would conclude: it simply isn’t worth it.
Thanks for the pep talk, Alex! Now what?
You’re welcome!
First, take a shot of vodka. That always helps. Next, I think we need to remember that individual actions do matter. I often forget this myself and let my cynicism get the best of me. But if we get up each day and keep going, trying to live up to our own values, finding like-minded networks to share ideas and keep the spirit of democracy alive, we still might come out of this. It will be a difficult process—that part can no longer be avoided—but how we come out on the other side is still to be determined…by us.
THE WEEK’S LINKS
A roundup of things you should be reading
AMERICANS SEEK NEW LIFE IN RUSSIA
FALCONS, FASCISTS, AND PENISES, OH MY!
Alex Finley is a former officer of the CIA’s Directorate of Operations, where she served in West Africa and Europe. She writes and teaches about terrorism, disinformation / covert influence, and oligarch yachts. Her writing has appeared in Slate, Reductress, Funny or Die, POLITICO, The Center for Public Integrity, and other publications. She has spoken to the BBC, MSNBC, CNN, C-SPAN’s Washington Journal, France24, and numerous other media outlets. She was also invited once to speak at Harvard, which she now tells everyone within the first ten seconds of meeting them. She is the author of the Victor Caro series, satirical novels about the CIA. Before joining the CIA, Alex was a journalist, covering Capitol Hill, the Pentagon, and the Department of Energy. She reported on issues related to national security, intelligence, and homeland security. Did she mention she was invited to speak at Harvard?
