Trump has turned the White House into a government of ‘snowflakes’
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It’s almost a year into Trump 2.0 and MAGA has gone full “snowflake.”
You know the word, the one that for the past decade the right has wielded against liberals as the ultimate epithet — you know, because libs are supposedly feelings-obsessed, physically weak, morally delicate and whiny as all get out.
Well, if you’re MAGA in 2025, you should probably embrace the term like Trump hugging an American flag with a Cheshire Cat grin.
Because if you think, among other things, that Portland is “War ravaged” like Trump claims it is and the U.S. of A. has to send in the military, you truly are a snowflake.
It sure wasn’t the left that called for the firing of people who criticized one of their heroes in the wake of their tragic death. Or that revoked visas over it. Or cheered when a late-night talk show host was temporarily suspended after the FCC chairman threatened to punish his network, as Brendan Carr did to ABC when he told a podcaster Disney could mete out punishment to Jimmy Kimmel “the easy way or hard way.”
Which president complains any time someone doesn’t think they’re the greatest leader in human history? Threatens retribution against foes real and imagined every waking second? Whines like he’s a bottle of Chardonnay?
Trump even complained this week about a Time magazine cover photo that he proclaimed “may be the Worst of All Time.”
“They ‘disappeared’ my hair, and then had something floating on top of my head that looked like a floating crown, but an extremely small one. Really weird!” the king of MAGA-dom wrote on Truth Social.
Here’s guessing he’d have complained a little less if the “something” floating on the top of his head looked like a really, super-big crown.
Watch out, Time magazine, Trump might send the Texas National Guard to your newsroom!
This is an administration that is forcing airports to run videos blaming the government shutdown on their opponents? What branch of the government just asked journalists to only publish preapproved information?
And always with the reacting to Democrat-led cities like Portland, Chicago and L.A. as if they’re Stalingrad during the siege.
Kristi Noem, Homeland Security secretary in August: “L.A. wouldn’t be standing today if President Trump hadn’t taken action then. That city would have burned down if left to the devices of the mayor and the governor of that state.”
Trump about Washington, D.C., over the summer as he issued an executive order to take over its police department in the wake of what he characterized as out-of-control crime: “It is a point of national disgrace that Washington, D.C., has a violent crime rate that is higher than some of the most dangerous places in the world.”
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth to military brass he called in from across the world last month to declare the following: “No more beardos. The era of rampant and ridiculous shaving profiles is done.”
Welcome to our Snowflake Government. The way these people’s tough talk turns into waterworks at the slightest provocation, you’d think they were the ski slopes of Mt. Baldy come summertime.
Trump and his lackeys possess scary power and don’t hesitate to use it in the name of punishing enemies. But what betrays their inherent snowflake-ness is how much they cry about what they still don’t dominate and their continued use of brute force to try and subdue the slightest, well, slight.
The veritable pity party gnashes its teeth more and more as the months pass. Trump was so angry at the sight of people causing chaos over a relatively small area of downtown L.A. after mass raids swept Southern California in June — chaos that barely registered to what happens after a Dodgers World Series win — that he sent in the Marines.
His spokesperson, Karoline Leavitt, keeps describing any nasty look or bad word thrown at migra agents as proof of them suffering a supposedly unprecedented level of assault despite never offering any concrete proof.
The Southland’s acting U.S. attorney, Bill Essayli, accused an LAPD spokesperson last week of leaking information to The Times after one of my colleagues asked him about ... wait for it ... an upcoming press conference.
No part of the government melts faster, however, than the agency with the apropos acronym of ICE.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement and their fellow travelers across Homeland Security are Trump’s own Praetorian Guard, tasked with carrying out his deportation deluge. They’ve relished their months in the national spotlight cast by the federal government simultaneously as an unstoppable force and an immovable object. La migra continues to crash into neighborhoods and communities like a masked avalanche of tear gas and handcuffs, justice be damned.
But have you seen how they’re flailing in Chicago?
They’re firing pepper balls at the heads of Presbyterian priests outside detention facilities and tackling middle-aged reporters.
Border Patrol sector chief Gregory Bovino, who thinks he’s Napoleon with a crew cut and an Appalachian drawl, has accused protester Cole Sheridan of causing an unspecified groin injury even though the government couldn’t provide any video evidence during a preliminary court hearing earlier this month.
Agents have set off tear gas canisters without giving a heads-up to Chicago police. They’re detaining people without giving them a chance to prove their citizenship until hours later.
All this because — wah, wah! — Windy City residents haven’t welcomed la migra as liberators.
U.S. District Judge Sara Ellis said she was a ‘little startled’ after seeing TV images of clashes between agents and the public during President Trump’s administration’s immigration crackdown.
Bovino and his ICE buddies keep whimpering to Trump that they need the National Guard to back them up because they supposedly can’t do their job despite being the ones armed and masked up and backed by billions of dollars in new funds.
That’s why the government is now pushing tech giants to crack down on how activists are organizing. In the past two weeks, Apple has taken down apps that tracked actions by ICE agents and a Chicago Facebook group that was a clearinghouse for migra sightings at the request of the Department of Justice.
On X, Atty. Gen. Pam Bondi bragged that she “will continue engaging tech companies to eliminate platforms where radicals can incite imminent violence against federal law enforcement” despite offering no evidence whatsoever — because who needs facts in the face of Trump’s blizzard of lies?
Since the start of all this madness, I’ve seen the left offer a rejoinder to the snowflake charge: the slogan “ICE Melts,” usually accompanied by a drawing of the action at hand. It’s meant to inspire activists by reminding them that la migra is not nearly as mighty as the right makes them out to be.
That’s clever. But the danger of all these conservative snowflakes turning into a sopping mess the way they do over their perceived victimhood is that the resulting flood threatens to drown out a little thing we’d come to love over many, many, many years.
Democracy.
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Ideas expressed in the piece
The Trump administration has embraced the very “snowflake” behavior it long criticized in liberals, displaying extreme sensitivity to criticism while wielding governmental power punitively. The administration’s reactions range from Trump suing CBS News and claiming “mental anguish” over interview edits to threatening media outlets through FCC pressure, as when Chairman Brendan Carr suggested ABC could punish Jimmy Kimmel “the easy way or hard way.”
Trump himself exemplifies this hypersensitivity through constant complaints about perceived slights, including a recent outcry over a Time magazine cover photo that “disappeared” his hair and featured what he called “an extremely small” floating crown. This pattern of behavior contradicts the tough, unbothered image MAGA projects.
The administration systematically exaggerates threats to justify authoritarian responses, characterizing Democrat-led cities as war zones despite evidence to the contrary. Examples include declaring Portland “war ravaged” to justify military intervention, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem claiming Los Angeles “would have burned down” without Trump’s action, and Trump describing Washington, D.C.’s crime rate as “higher than some of the most dangerous places in the world” to take over its police department.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents demonstrate particular fragility in Chicago, deploying disproportionate force against protesters while simultaneously claiming victimhood. Border Patrol sector chief Gregory Bovino accused a protester of causing an unspecified groin injury without video evidence, while agents have fired pepper balls at Presbyterian priests, tackled reporters, and requested National Guard backup despite being heavily armed and well-funded.
The administration uses government authority to suppress dissent and silence critics, pressuring tech companies to remove apps tracking ICE activities and shut down organizing platforms. Attorney General Pam Bondi boasted about engaging tech companies to “eliminate platforms where radicals can incite imminent violence against federal law enforcement” without providing evidence, while the government has revoked visas over criticism and forced airports to run videos blaming opponents for government shutdowns.
Different views on the topic
Trump’s anti-woke agenda represents a legitimate response to genuine progressive overreach that had created serious problems in American society. The 2024 election served as “a conclusive rejoinder to years of official pieties around social justice and identity politics,” with Trump’s executive orders cancelling federal DEI programs addressing real concerns about ideological enforcement[1].
Progressive ideology had produced documented harms that justified backlash, including “the stifling of heterodox opinion, the grim emphasis on grievance and victimhood, the rush to medicalise ideological beliefs about the body and the self, and the academic tendency to divide society into permanent classes of oppressors and oppressed.” These developments precipitated widespread criticism not just from conservatives but from liberal moderates as well[1].
The backlash against woke culture was already underway before Trump’s return to office, suggesting the pendulum swing was inevitable regardless of who held power. The “Great Awokening” was receding during the Biden presidency, with growing criticism from mainstream liberal voices like John McWhorter, Greg Lukianoff, and others who documented problems with progressive orthodoxy[1].
Some liberals opposed to Trump’s other policies have argued that his victory in the culture wars justifies his shortcomings elsewhere, viewing the dismantling of DEI guidelines and pronoun requirements as worthwhile despite concerns about his economic or diplomatic competence[1].
Critics of woke culture argue that media outlets and commentators sometimes exploited relatively minor instances of progressive overreach for profit, turning them “into profit-driven ‘angertainment’ and hyped out of all proportion to their real-world impact,” suggesting the threat was sometimes overstated by both advocates and opponents[1].
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