THENEWYORKER,NOVEMBER29, 2021 23
Virginia, however, hints at another sort
of Republican future. Glenn Youngkin,
a demi-billionaire, who made his pile in
private equity, defeated the Democrat,
Terry McAuliffe, an echt Clintonian, by
carrying out a shrewd strategy of maga
lite. Youngkin, a sober cynic, recognized
that, in a state such as Virginia—which
went for George W. Bush twice, then
Barack Obama twice, then Hillary Clin-
ton, in 2016, and Biden, in 2020—he
would do well to gesture in Trump’s di-
rection without mimicking his most
lurid tactics. Youngkin never quite en-
dorsed Trump’s election-conspiracy the-
ory but said that he would vote for him
if he got the Republican nomination in
2024, and that he was all for “election
integrity.” He made a point of vowing
to ban critical race theory in schools,
even though it’s not part of the state’s
curriculum. This kind of slick signalling
allowed him to hold on to the Trumpian
purists in rural areas, while luring backCOMMENT
REPUTATI O NLAUNDERING
F
or a long time now, the American
electorate has been resigned to a “per-
manent campaign,” an unceasing carni-
val of exploratory committees, chicken
dinners, and cable excitements. The 2024
campaign for the Presidency is unique
in that it kicked off at around 2 a.m. on
November 4, 2020, with a brazen act of
seditious rhetoric broadcast live from the
East Room of the White House. With
the outcome still in question, Donald
Trump declared “fraud.” And, when all
the votes were counted with Biden as
the winner, Trump set about fomenting
the insurrection that ended with a mob
of his delusional loyalists storming the
U.S. Capitol.
Trump remains unapologetic, even
serene, about those events. He told the
journalist Jonathan Karl that he recalls
January 6th as “a very beautiful time with
extremely loving and friendly people.”
Five people died as a result of that “very
beautiful” moment, and nearly seven
hundred of the “loving” marauders have
been charged with various crimes. No
matter. Just as pro-slavery Southerners
refused to accept Lincoln as their Pres-
ident after the election of 1860, millions
of Americans have been convinced by
Trump and the social-media swamp that
Biden’s Presidency is illegitimate.
Even as Trump is threatened with
prosecution, he could run again. And he
could win. Or he might step aside for
one of his maximalist imitators: Ron
DeSantis, of Florida; Josh Hawley, of
Missouri; Ted Cruz or Greg Abbott, of
ILLUSTRATIONS BY JOÃO FAZENDATexas. The recent gubernatorial race in
THE TALK OF THE TOWN
just enough swing voters in the suburbs.
Youngkin beat McAuliffe by two per
cent in a state that, just a year before,
Biden won by ten.
Last week, Chris Christie, the for-
mer governor of New Jersey, published
“Republican Rescue,” a book that seeks,
in effect, to take the Youngkin strategy
national. Many erstwhile members of
the Trump circle have written books or
blabbed to receptive journalists in the
hope of cleansing their reputations.
Christie is going to the literary laun-
dromat because he may want to run for
President in 2024. It’s hard to see how
he has enough detergent.
Christie has been Trump’s friend,
dinner companion, and adviser for two
decades. He endorsed Trump early, wrote
memos for him, prepped him for de-
bates with Clinton, and encouraged him
to appoint right-wing judges and to fol-
low the path of America First. He ran
Trump’s transition team—until Jared
Kushner and Steve Bannon pushed him
out. In fact, he writes, “very few people
were as publicly invested in the success
of Donald Trump as I was.”
Christie wants Republicans to ac-
cept him as the one member of Trump’s
circle who always gave him unvarnished
advice, who was always out for the good
of the country and the Administration,
never for himself: “I told him hard truths
when no one else would.” But the por-
trait he paints of his friend is laughably
selective. He ignores or doesn’t much
care about the racism, the cruelty, the
assault on voting rights, the authoritar-
ian impulses. He describes Trump’s fits
and furies as quirky charm—“norm-
busting behavior.” As governor, Christie