The Far-Right Algorithm: Anti-Churchill, Anti-West | The David Frum Show

On March 23rd, Trump announced a five-day pause in military strikes against Iran, citing «very good and productive conversations.» The Iranians immediately contradicted him, denying any negotiations. What followed was revealing: Trump floated joint management of the Strait of Hormuz with the Ayatollah—a stunning retreat from demands for regime change and unconditional surrender.

The previous day, Trump had vetoed a bipartisan deal to fund the Department of Homeland Security and end airport chaos, insisting on keeping TSA in crisis to leverage immigration fights. He wrote that making a deal with Democrats was less important than «anything else we are doing,» calling them «crazy country destroying radical left Democrats»—a stark contrast to his measured tone toward «the country of Iran.»

Trump's fundamental problem is that he cannot lead the nation in a war requiring national unity. He is only comfortable as a factional leader waging war on the American majority. When forced to choose between winning against Iran and fighting Democrats, he chose the latter every time.

If Britain had made peace with Hitler in summer 1940, Germany would have attacked the Soviet Union with its full force—100% of the Luftwaffe instead of 70%, with no need to defend occupied France or German cities from British bombing. The Eastern Front was already close-run; Stalin had an escape train ready in October 1941. With Britain neutral, the Nazis likely would have pushed the Soviets beyond the Urals.

Hitler would have controlled Europe from the Atlantic to the Urals, completed the extermination of all European Jews (not just the 50% who died), and had access to the scientists and resources to develop nuclear weapons. Meanwhile, America—having never entered the war, especially if Pearl Harbor still drew it into a Pacific conflict only—would have lacked the industrial mobilization, the émigré scientists, and the strategic imperative to develop the bomb first.

The result: a nuclear-armed Nazi empire dominating Eurasia, with America isolated in the Western Hemisphere, living under permanent militarization and existential threat. Roosevelt saw this clearly in 1940 and warned that America would «never have been a free country again.» The peace and prosperity of the postwar era—the world that allows fools to podcast neo-Nazi nonsense in safety—was purchased by Churchill's refusal to surrender.

Frum revisits Gore Vidal's 1973 novel «Burr,» which tells the story of America's founding generation through the cynical eyes of Aaron Burr. Vidal portrays Washington as stupid and incompetent, Jefferson as hypocritical and cowardly, and Hamilton as brilliant but two-faced. Burr himself—corrupt, mercenary, amusing—is presented as possessing a higher wisdom through his lack of moral scruple.

Vidal, whom Frum knew and describes as «thoroughly unpleasant,» is best remembered for saying «every time a friend succeeds, I die a little.» That nastiness animates the novel and makes it entertaining. But Frum argues that a truly great artist—Shakespeare with Richard III, Milton with Lucifer—would have allowed us to see through and past Burr's cynicism to understand that imperfect people can still be great, that an ungainly waddle doesn't diminish the founder of a nation.

«Burr» succeeds as art but remains limited because its creator was limited—unable to see beyond spite to the heroism and self-abnegation that actually built the American republic. The novel raises the question of whether bad character can produce great art, but ultimately suggests that morality and artistry may be more intertwined than Vidal ever imagined.