Few are as fascinating as the sophisticated globalist who supports Donald Trump for president of the United States. And of such persons, few are as likely to offer as enlightening and honest an explanation as Daniel Pipes.
Pipes, whom I have known for some years, is a prominent American historian and a member of the neoconservative movement that briefly flourished two decades ago. Known for his conservative views on Islam and the Arab-Israeli conflict, he founded the Middle East Forum, a think tank promoting American interests in the region. In 2003, President George W. Bush appointed him to the board of the U.S. Institute of Peace, a controversial decision due to Pipes' outspoken critiques of Islam and Middle Eastern studies in academia.
In 2016, Pipes was a prominent NeverTrumper. He wrote that Trump resembled World War II era Italian dictator Benito Mussolini and that he wants the military, Congress, the press and citizens to submit to his will, memorably summarizing the situation as follows: "Trump's boorish, selfish, puerile and repulsive character combined with his prideful ignorance, off-the-cuff policymaking and his neo-fascistic tendencies make him the most divisive and scary of any serious presidential candidate in American history." He quit the GOP in disgust and declared that "nothing is as important as resisting and defeating Donald Trump and the neo-fascist virus he wishes to bring to the White House."
So far, so observant. But in 2020, Pipes flipped. In a somewhat sheepish but admirably transparent column in Newsweek, he wrote that despite Trump's huffing and puffing he'd actually governed as a standard conservative and therefore he would offer the incumbent "a reluctant but unhesitating vote." This, despite Trump's shakedown of now-far-more-famous Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky that led to his impeachment, and the other many bizarre aspects that characterized his term.
With the pivotal 2024 election soon approaching, and Trump – incredibly – again on the ballot, I asked Pipes for an update. As Pipes goes, so may many in his milieu; it matters. So: NeverTrump, or Never Again?
Dan Perry: A few months after you wrote that article in Newsweek we got Trump's historic refusal to concede his loss to Joe Biden, his attempt to shake down election officials to find him votes, his fomenting of conspiracy theories about a stolen election, his attempt to get Vice President Pence to refuse to ratify the results of said election, and the deadly January 6th invasion and riot. So holy mackerel, Daniel Pipes! Where does this leave you today? Ready to vote for him again?
Daniel Pipes: I'm afraid so, yeah. I mean, I stand by all that I said and did and wrote. And I hate the choice. But given the choice, rather than as in 2016 opting out and voting Libertarian, or not vote at all, I am voting for Trump. I'm doing so fully aware ... of his many, many faults. But I see them less of a problem than his opponent. I'm a double hater, as a new term has it. One has to figure out which candidate one hates less. Character is very important and presumably [Kamala] Harris's character is better. His policies are distinctly better – although again one has to weigh the mix of policies. I'm with the Democrats on Ukraine. I'm with the Republicans on ideas, on the whole culture issue. I'm a voter who doesn't vote on economics. [On] ideas I find what the left is doing even worse than Trump. So yeah, voting for him.
Perry: I understand absolutely the less-bad-option paradigm. But when is the character bad enough it overwhelms everything and you just can't afford to have such a person? And I'm sure you've seen the genuine fears that he's going to do everything conceivable to twist America into an authoritarian democracy.
Pipes: The central issue is the ideas. I am a social conservative. A liberal is someone who believes 'I'm so smart I can think things through on my own.' The conservative says 'I'm not so smart. I'm going to be careful. I'm going to work with tradition, changing tradition where is needed but with caution.' So let me take genders: liberals go off and [speak of] 70 genders. Conservatives, they say 'Hold on, there's been all through human life two genders and if we're going to make adjustments, it has to be done very carefully and cautiously and slowly and don't rush this.' So, I believe in two genders.
Perry: I see people sometimes taking Progressive issues and attaching it to liberals. I don't think liberals are about 70 genders. I think liberals are somehow caught in the middle between the progressives and MAGA and they're looking to reach out to moderate conservatives to form a centrist type of area code. No?
 Emmanuel Macron (L) and Jean-Luc Mélenchon at the French presidential palace. |
Perry: I tell you for me, as a, let's say, moderate liberal, the distinction is incredibly important. I wouldn't in fact automatically side with the far Left.
Pipes: Well you wouldn't, but in general that is so.
Perry: So, considering that Trump's character hasn't completely changed and that the policies you support you probably largely knew about eight years ago, there must be something deeply horrible about the Left. What is it?
Pipes: There are lots of issues that don't particularly affect me: abortion, gun rights, tax rates. These sort of things I watch and I'm interested in but what I feel passionately about are two issues. Foreign policy ... the Middle East which clearly I'm very invested in, Ukraine and Taiwan, and I think we should be absolutely stalwart. And then the issues of identity and sexuality and the like, which the universities are coming up with ever-more bizarre interpretations of, which I find repulsive.
Perry: Well, so the latter issue is basically progressivism, the social Kulturkampf. And I know that's what a lot of modern conservatives hate, and as I say many liberals dislike part of it also. But on Ukraine you don't want to abandon them – and Trump will!
Pipes: Oh, we don't know. I mean it's completely unpredictable. But yes, this is an area where I'm with the Democrats. All Democrats are in favor of strongly helping Ukraine and good for them. I'm with them on that and I'm appalled by the Republicans like J.D. Vance who oppose the aid. But there's this whole range of topics, activities, policies, and in the end one has to either pull out and not have a voice, or vote for what is less bad.
Perry: But it's not just Ukraine, is it? The MAGA movement is quasi-semi isolationist.
Pipes: Yes, yes.
Perry: And you as one of the major thinkers of the neocon movement are the opposite. You want America projecting its power and doing good in the world. That's a major contradiction. On top of the character issue, which is almost mind-bending.
Pipes: Absolutely. Again, these are terrible faults. No argument.
Perry: It really sounds to me like it's about the progressives.
Pipes: I did not mention Israel. There it's a different story where the Republicans are basically great and the Democrats are okay-to-terrible. That's an issue of that balances out Ukraine or Taiwan. So you come up with your balance and judgment and I've come up with mine. You'll probably not be happy with yours and I will not be happy with mine.
 This was the last president from a new U.S. political party. |
Pipes: Yeah, but American politics just doesn't allow for that. I mean you see in Europe and other places around the world how parliamentary democracy incorporates new parties, but when was the last new [major] party incorporated in the United States?
Perry: We'll see. The U.S. has a version of the first-past-the-post system and that militates generally for a binary choice because otherwise you split what is largely your side, but for that to work there needs to be a 'your side.' If politics genuinely has splintered into three sides roughly, then the logic behind the two parties weakens.
Pipes: Sure, and basically the electorate now is a third Democrat, a third Republican, and a third independent.
Perry: What would it take? What would it take for whoever opposes Trump to win you back? I'm suspecting it's the progressive issue, even though you seem to bristle at this. Other than Israel, I don't see much else. Are there any words that Kamala Harris could say?
Pipes: Given how she ran in 2019? And how she voted in the Senate, far to the Left? No, I don't believe so. I believe she's a far-leftist in the context of American politics and in the context of the U.S. Senate.
Perry: What could do it if it were someone else?
Pipes: I don't know much about Josh Shapiro, but I've been modestly pleasantly surprised by him.
Perry: So maybe a future Democratic party might tack to the center and abandon the progressives in order to win over the non-MAGA conservatives and then they could become the centrist party.
Pipes: Well, that's what Bill Clinton did 30 some years ago, but it looks in retrospect like an episode. To me the key time was the 1999 Battle of Seattle. I thought, 'Oh, that's the '60s come roaring back, and here we are.' If the Democratic party went back to the center, that'd be great. But I don't foresee it.
 A quiet moment at the 1999 Battle of Seattle. |
Perry: If the progressive issue were somehow removed from the equation and the Republicans remained some version of MAGA, I'm guessing you'd probably switch back.
Pipes: Yes, if the Republicans went the way of J.D. Vance, the economic populism, isolationism, and kind of anti-elite, and the Democrats came back from the left and rejected the whole woke agenda, I would consider it. But, man, does that seem like a remote possibility!
Perry: It does seem remote. But what doesn't seem remote is having a person whose every instinct risks a global emergency being in the White House. You clearly don't disagree – you're just choosing what you believe is the less-bad options. How bad is it, though, this character issue, on a scale of 1 to 10? 8? 4?
Pipes: I'm less concerned than I was years ago when I would have said 8 or 9. Now I've seen the four years and they weren't bad. None of the horrible things that I feared took place. I think his character's worse now than it was then but we do have institutions and he does have to rely on other people. So I would say the character [concern] is like 6 or 7 now.
Perry: Well, I guess on that happy note, we hope for the best and plan for the worst, for the country and essentially the world.
Pipes: You know, in retrospect this confirms my belief in 2016 that it's best that Trump lost terribly because then the old Republican Party could reemerge. But he succeeded and now we're stuck with it. And the Republicans, the Senators the House members in particular, have been cowardly. They hate him.
 Faust making a bargain. |
Pipes: Yeah. Yeah.
Perry: You're obviously aware of the gamble and how problematic it is and you're making a Faustian Bargain. A calculated risk.
Pipes: For someone like me, a traditional Republican, a traditional conservative, there are no happy choices, just less bad ones.
