America’s former and possible future first lady Melania Trump brought out a memoir last week called Melania. Her publisher, Skyhorse Publishing, told CNN that a short interview with her would cost $250,000. This was something of a novelty. Public figures do not generally demand fees to market their own product. Skyhorse later said its commercial and non-disclosure contract had been a “miscommunication”.
Trump may herself have supplied a better explanation as first lady in 2018 when she wore a jacket with a message scrawled on the back: “I really don’t care, do you?”
Not giving a damn — or shamelessness — has become an American political malaise in the past few years. Outrageous words and deeds that would have incited uproar in the fairly recent past are now so frequent that apathy more often outweighs shock. In 1987, Joe Biden had to withdraw from the Democratic primaries because he had lifted stories from a speech by the British Labour leader Neil Kinnock.
By contrast, Donald Trump has three criminal trials in the offing, two impeachments behind him, a criminal conviction earlier this year and an even chance next month of regaining the White House.
According to Frank Rich, executive producer of Veep, an HBO sitcom about a flagrantly unprincipled vice-president, reality is now running ahead of fiction. In the 2012 pilot episode of the show, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, who plays vice-president Selina Meyer, blames a mishap on a staffer, saying he was “hoist by his own retard”. Her epithet blows up into a scandal. A communications aide suggests a way out: “What if Tom Hanks dies?”
The original sin — use of the word “retard” — would no longer seem unusual. Trump has reportedly used it about several underlings. He recently called his opponent in this year’s presidential race Kamala Harris “mentally disabled”.
Rich said that as they shot new Veep seasons during the Trump presidency, the show’s satire seemed mild against what was happening. “Selina Meyer is outrageous but she can ultimately be shamed,” said Rich, who was previously the New York Times’ theatre critic and political columnist. “It was surreal to observe that Trump himself could not be shamed.”
Veep could also be predictive. In an episode that aired before the pandemic, one of Meyer’s staffers, an anti-vaxxer called Jonah Ryan, catches chickenpox and infects a close relative, who dies from it. “In that case we were ahead of reality,” said Rich.
The evaporation of shame is not confined to Trump. It is now the default stance to brazen out charges, however shocking. Jonathan Rauch, author and senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, noted guilt is between an individual and their conscience. Shame is about losing face. “Outrage is a group emotion,” he said. “By forcing his followers to defend outrageous acts, Trump has eroded the boundaries of shame.”
Recent Democratic scandals include Robert Menendez, the former New Jersey senator, and chair of the Senate foreign relations committee, who was indicted in 2015 on federal corruption charges. It took until June this year, having refused to resign from the Senate, for Menendez to be convicted on other charges.
“I never violated my public oath,” Menendez said after the verdict. The jury learned that, among other emoluments, Menendez received gold bars and a Mercedes-Benz from Qatar.
New York’s mayor Eric Adams’s alleged bribes were comparatively modest. He was indicted last month on federal corruption charges. These chiefly consisted of illegal campaign donations and business upgrades on Turkish Airlines. Several of his senior colleagues have resigned. He maintains his innocence.
Nothing quite compares, however, to the shocking allegations against Mark Robinson, the Republican gubernatorial candidate for North Carolina. Last month CNN reported Robinson had called himself a “black Nazi” on a porn site and also allegedly confessed to enjoying “tranny on girl” porn and declared his support for slavery.
Robinson is now reportedly suing CNN for $50mn over the claims, which he denies. His previous description of the Holocaust as “hogwash” was not enough to stop his nomination. But his alleged secret porn habits and persona have prompted almost his entire staff to resign. Yet he refuses to quit the race.
What is telling is that Republicans called on Robinson to step down not because what he allegedly did or said was bad, “but because his staying might harm other candidates on the ballot, notably Trump”, Rauch said. The former president, who endorsed Robinson and held a fundraiser for him at Mar-a-Lago, has stayed silent.
Trump has likewise stood by Matt Gaetz, the Florida Republican congressman under investigation by the House ethics committee for allegations of having sex with a minor, illicit drug use, accepting “improper gifts” and obstructing investigations. Federal charges against him on similar counts were dropped last year. “I work with north-west Floridians who won’t be swayed by this nonsense,” said Gaetz of the probe.
Last December, George Santos, a first-term Republican from New York, became only the third congressman to be expelled from the House since the US civil war. In addition to facing several federal indictments for corruption, Santos had invented most of his résumé, including claiming he worked for Goldman Sachs, was a college volleyball star, was worth $11mn and was Jewish. “I am 35,” he said after the expulsion. “This doesn’t mean it is goodbye forever.”
Trump also stayed silent on Santos. But he dismissed Mazi Pilip, Santos’s successor as nominee for the seat as a “very foolish woman” after she declined to seek his endorsement. Democrats regained the district in a special election.
Among those lamenting US politics’ rising shamelessness, it is a cliché to cite the army lawyer, Joseph Welch, who in 1954 helped finish the career of Joe McCarthy, the US senator behind the McCarthyite red scare, by saying, “At long last, have you left no sense of decency?”
But figures such as Marjorie Taylor Greene, and Lauren Boebert, the Georgia and Colorado congresswomen, have built their careers on notoriety. In her latest infamous assertion, Greene last week implied Hurricanes Helene and Milton had been manufactured by the deep state.
Boebert was caught on camera last year vaping and groping a man at a musical in Denver. She was escorted from the theatre. Though Boebert opposes sex education and argues “the church is supposed to direct the government”, she complained the media had violated her “very private moment”. She, like Greene, is on course to be re-elected next month.
“Richard Nixon [the US president who resigned over the Watergate scandal in 1974] felt hideous guilt and shame about what he had done to his family,” said Sally Quinn, the veteran Washington Post style writer, who started reporting in the early 1970s. “I don’t think Greene or Boebert or Trump or Melania have an ounce of shame in them.”
Yet it would be inaccurate to conclude US society has no values, said Francis Fukuyama, the Stanford scholar and celebrated author of books on trust and political order. “Every generation thinks it is in terminal decline,” he said. “Because we are inherently social creatures we will figure out new norms.”
Scholars tend to agree on two things about plummeting standards in US public life. First, the internet has played a role — social media algorithms prioritise shock value. “I tend to blame everything on the internet nowadays,” Fukuyama said. Second, shamelessness is worse among Republicans.
Rich said: “The Adams case and others like it are old-fashioned stories of local corruption.”
What could serve as a “have you no decency moment” for Trumpian Republicans? The obvious answer is his defeat at the ballot box. But even that would be unlikely to cause a sea change.
Quinn said: “If Trump loses next month, Republicans might abandon him and claim to have disapproved all along. Trump would be in no position to shame them for disloyalty.”