RAGE: Wehner starts to explain red rage!

WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 2, 2026  

But first, the rage of Vance: We applaud the news judgment on display in this morning's New York Times.  

The report in question appears online, but also in print editions. Yesterday afternoon, we briefly cited this inexcusable, dangerous incident:    

Vance Calls El-Sayed ‘Evil’ in No-Holds-Barred Michigan Speech    

Vice President JD Vance called Dr. Abdul El-Sayed, Michigan’s Democratic Senate nominee and an outspoken critic of Israel, “very, very evil” at a campaign rally near Detroit on Monday and accused him of heightening racial and religious divisions.

“I realize that there’s something about Abdul El-Sayed that is very, very evil and on the rise in the United States of America today,” Mr. Vance said at the event at a warehouse in Sterling Heights hosted by MAGA Inc., President Trump’s super PAC.

Mr. Vance was in Michigan campaigning for former Representative Mike Rogers, Dr. El-Sayed’s Republican opponent in one of the nation’s most hotly contested Senate races this fall. The vice president’s remarks appeared aimed at stoking tensions between Dr. El-Sayed and Michigan’s Jewish community, which the Democrat has been attempting to allay since winning his party’s bitter primary against a pro-Israel opponent in early August.

As you can see, that New York Times headline is actually wrong. Vance didn't call El-Sayed "evil." He went with very, very evil! 

(For the Times report, click here.)

“Very, very evil!” With that, you see the (modulated) rage of Vance, utilized in service to some very, very bad judgment. 

Dear friends, listen up:   

Especially at a time like this, "evil" is a dangerous word when stapled onto a person. Even on Fox News Channel shows, it's very rare to hear that word directly attached to a person.    

Why would Vance behave this way? For one possible answer, consider the abusive upbringing Vance describes in his best-selling book from 2016, Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis. 

The "family in crisis" in that book is the family within which Vance was raised. The family he was forced to navigate as a child was deeply, profoundly disordered.

He described his life as a child, and then as a teen, within a family so deeply disordered that the moral exemplar of the family—Vance's maternal grandmother—is best remembered for deliberately setting her husband on fire, with lighter fluid deliberately added, while he tried to sleep off an episode of (once again) having drunk too much. 

This is the world in which Vance was forced to grow up! Years back, we said we found it hard to believe that a child subjected to the astounding disorder described in that book could avoid being badly affected. 

"And so it did happen like it could have been foreseen...?" The cheerful young man who discussed that book in 2016 turned into the grasping office-seeker in 2024 who spread a story he knew to be false about Haitians eating the dogs and cats of unsuspecting Springfield, Ohio. 

It was an astonishing break with the simplest forms of decency. And yesterday, there he stood, in Michigan, displaying extremely bad judgment.  

Could yesterday's description of El-Sayed be called the rage of Vance? He tends to speak in modulated tones. You can teach it flat or round.  

That said, it's much as Michelle Goldberg recently described:

Expressions of "a florid, aggressive contempt" are now "a constant in our politics." We agree with Goldberg on this additional point: 

The bulk of this florid, destructive rage currently comes from the right. 

Currently comes from the right! It's the rage of Trump and the rage of Cheung and the rage of those employed beneath them. Or as Peter Wehner describes it in the Atlantic, it's the critter his headline calls "The Wrath of MAGA."

Strikingly, when Jon Ossoff floated an insinuation, that rage (that "wrath") exploded:

The Wrath of MAGA

[...]

The White House tore into Ossoff...

White House Communications Director Steven Cheung said Ossoff is “a miserable person who hates this country.” He also referred to Ossoff as “Jon Jerkoff” and as “the biggest cuck loser in politics.” 

The White House spokesperson Davis Ingle referred to him as a “cringeworthy feminine theater kid” and a “lightweight loser.” 

When the CNN reporter Kristen Holmes asked about Ossoff’s comments, the White House Official Rapid Response X account responded by saying, “Someday, your children will come across your disgusting and inhumane question. They will be sickened and embarrassed to have a parent be so callous and vindictive.” 

The reference to Holmes' two young children was especially astonishing. That astounding assault from an anonymous White House team moved well beyond previous boundaries. 

As we noted yesterday, Wehner omitted the fury which Trump himself directed at Kristen Holmes. But "the Rage Machine was in full operation," Wehner correctly said. 

(For the record: Peter Wehner, age 61, was a speechwriter for the three previous Republican presidents. He isn't a liberal squish.)

As is frequently the norm within the Red Rage, sexual insult and attempts at gender insult spewed from the troops in the White House. Ossoff was denounced as "a cuck." His name was changed to "Jerkoff." Inevitably, he was mocked as a feminine kid.

(On Fox, the rage of Gutfeld routinely traffics in sexual / gender insult. It sometimes seems to be the only language he and his panelists know.) 

Eventually, Wehner tried to explain where this "Wrath of MAGA" comes from. We'd say he took a halting first step. Here's how his effort began:

WEHNER: So why did MAGA world respond as it did? One explanation is psychological. In 2016, Trump found a constituency already primed for grievance, and taught it to want more. His supporters have kept themselves in a state of frenzy ever since. They need to be perpetually outraged, aggrieved, and insulted. MAGA world has become addicted to the feeling. It delivers a jolt of adrenaline, it provides a feeling of social belonging, and it gives people a sharpened sense of purpose. They see themselves as warriors in a drama of their own construction. They view their opponents—Democrats, progressives, critics of Trump—as personifications of evil. Inflicting pain on their enemies feels good, really good, and it feels just.

Trump is aware of all of this. It’s why, during the 2024 campaign, he spoke directly to his supporters, saying, “I am your warrior. I am your justice. And for those who have been wronged and betrayed: I am your retribution.” 

What explains the current profusion of red rage / fury / wrath? In that passage, Wehner starts to try to explain. 

He takes a halting first step. Presumably, the president's rage might spring from one source, the rage of (some of) his supporters from another. 

Not all of the president's supporters are locked in a state of red rage. Obviously, not all his supporters view Democrats as "personifications of evil."

But Wehner, the former Republican speechwriter, says that Trump "found a constituency already primed for grievance" back when he first went to the White House.  

What might explain that incipient rage? What might explain the president's rage?

What explains "the wrath of MAGA?" In the course of the next two days, we'll flirt with some explanations.  

Tomorrow: Sources of (deeply destructive) rage