{"id":104266,"date":"2026-08-15T04:00:00","date_gmt":"2026-08-15T08:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=104266"},"modified":"2026-08-14T13:31:15","modified_gmt":"2026-08-14T17:31:15","slug":"mark-steyn-denies-being-a-never-trump-er","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/mark-steyn-denies-being-a-never-trump-er\/","title":{"rendered":"Mark Steyn denies being a &#8220;Never Trump&#8221;-er"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>From his sickbed, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.steynonline.com\/16357\/too-big-to-win\" target=\"_blank\">Mark Steyn<\/a> responds to a criticism from one of his long-time readers that he&#8217;s &#8220;gradually devolved into NeverTrumpism:<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_95093\" style=\"width: 490px\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\"><a href=\"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/Chess-Trumps-5D-Chess.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-95093\" style=\"float:right; padding: 0px 0px 10px 25px\" src=\"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/Chess-Trumps-5D-Chess-480x251.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"480\" height=\"251\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-95093\" srcset=\"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/Chess-Trumps-5D-Chess-480x251.jpg 480w, https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/Chess-Trumps-5D-Chess-853x445.jpg 853w, https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/Chess-Trumps-5D-Chess-150x78.jpg 150w, https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/Chess-Trumps-5D-Chess-768x401.jpg 768w, https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/Chess-Trumps-5D-Chess.jpg 1364w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 480px) 100vw, 480px\" \/><\/a><p id=\"caption-attachment-95093\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">I have no idea where I saw this meme, but it makes me laugh<\/p><\/div>\n<blockquote><p>I begin to understand why, since I emerged from my coma, the docs have recommended eschewing the Internet. Following Wednesday&#8217;s <a href=\"https:\/\/www.steynonline.com\/16355\/firing-blanks\" target=\"_blank\">Clubland Q&#038;A<\/a>, Joe Huber comments:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<p><em>Unfortunately, SteynOnline (once my favorite place to visit) has gradually devolved into NeverTrumpism, and that&#8217;s sad. But it is what it is.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/ul>\n<p>We may have to introduce weekly ceremonial expulsions from The Mark Steyn Club. I&#8217;m not &#8220;NeverTrump&#8221; on immigration, DOGE, MAHA, endless war, etc, and I would still favour him over any likely Democrat candidate or &#8220;mainstream&#8221; Republican. The first time I met him was over thirty years ago, when his then wife was auditioning for a Broadway musical produced by a friend of mine. The only substantive exchange we had that day was his demand for assurance that the show was a <em>bona fide<\/em> hit &#8230; because the defining characteristic of Trump has always been his utter contempt for what he calls &#8220;losers&#8221; and his disinclination to allow his brand to be contaminated by association with them.<\/p>\n<p>So it is a mystery to me that he allowed himself to get mixed up with an institution that, by any objective measure, is the biggest &#8220;loser&#8221; on the planet.<\/p>\n<p>By contrast, my position on this has been exactly the same throughout the time Mr Huber regarded SteynOnline as &#8220;my favorite place to visit&#8221;. This piece, for example, was published in <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nationalreview.com\/magazine\/2011\/06\/06\/too-big-win\/\" target=\"_blank\">the print edition of <em>National Review<\/em><\/a> over fifteen sod-bollocking years ago, and its first sentence remains the question that, multiple unwon wars later, the Rah-Rah Right still declines to answer. I recall multiple back-and-forths with the editors over passages they felt were too strong meat, and I would probably write it more bluntly today. But its comparative sobriety should cause Mr Huber to reflect that his charge of &#8220;NeverTrumpism&#8221; is bollocks, and that my concerns about US inability to use half of the entire planet&#8217;s military budget to accomplish any minimal strategic purpose is principled, long-held, and borne out by any random headline. From today:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<p><em>Russia Captures Record Share of India&#8217;s Oil Market<\/em><\/p>\n<\/ul>\n<p>And so it goes. (Incidentally, just as a minor point: I note the increasing adoption of the term &#8220;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.ndtv.com\/video\/us-sends-fresh-aircraft-carrier-to-west-asia-amid-iran-war-strain-wsj-1142696\" target=\"_blank\">West Asia<\/a>&#8221; for the zone of conflict. &#8220;Middle East&#8221; is a designation that reflects the view from Washington; &#8220;West Asia&#8221; is how it looks from Delhi and Beijing.)<\/p>\n<p>You will see in the latter half of my ancient piece the reference to the US military as &#8220;the expeditionary force of the Parliament of Man&#8221;. It is safe to say that President Trump &mdash; with his declaration that he&#8217;ll <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.com\/news\/articles\/c2k8339xn9jo\" target=\"_blank\">pick the next Supreme Leader<\/a> &mdash; does not see it like that, but that&#8217;s the point: the rhetoric may change, but the self-bollocksing of American warmongering does not.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>From his sickbed, Mark Steyn responds to a criticism from one of his long-time readers that he&#8217;s &#8220;gradually devolved into NeverTrumpism: I begin to understand why, since I emerged from my coma, the docs have recommended eschewing the Internet. Following Wednesday&#8217;s Clubland Q&#038;A, Joe Huber comments: Unfortunately, SteynOnline (once my favorite place to visit) has [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[28,53,13],"tags":[86,1037,287,139],"class_list":["post-104266","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-media","category-politics","category-usa","tag-criticism","tag-donaldtrump","tag-iran","tag-psychology"],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-r7I","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/104266","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=104266"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/104266\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":104267,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/104266\/revisions\/104267"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=104266"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=104266"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=104266"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}