Politics
A comic, Trump and Alpha Male walk into an election
Alpha Male has won.
What happens now?
Comedian Brent Terhune has for years satirized the angry, working-class white man who rails against libtards and expresses unyielding devotion to Donald Trump. His monologues resound with right-wing rants and epitomize toxic masculinity in a character he calls Alpha Male. But the aggrieved American man now rides on a sense of vindication in celebrating Trump’s return to the White House. And Terhune wonders what that means for his character and the nation.
“I think he’ll go from being a sore loser to a sore winner,” said Terhune, who lives outside Indianapolis in a blue-collar neighborhood. “Alpha Male will always exist. He was there before Trump. He doesn’t go away. He’s your dad, your cousin. We all feel misunderstood and betrayed at times. But he’s got to find a way to justify everything Trump and MAGA do. It’s a weird hurdle, and a way for me to get out my frustrations.”
Terhune — a former Boy Scout and a Catholic-school-raised liberal — abhors Trump and is nothing like his alter ego. Alpha Male, who wears a russet beard, wraparound sunglasses and a backward ball cap, is enamored with the likes of Tucker Carlson and has no tolerance for gender studies, critical race theory or what he sees as the liberal radicalization of a country that has succumbed to snowflakes and bibliophiles.
The character is at once emblematic and a caricature of the Joe Rogan demographic, bros and aging bros, mostly white but with a growing number of Latinos, who revere Elon Musk and march to Trump’s crass, weaving rhetoric.
“His people will be encouraged,” Terhune said of the president-elect, suggesting that the most extreme of Trump’s followers will become more of a threat to democracy, civil rights and gender equality than during his first term.
“He’s an embodiment of who they are,” he said. “They believe he hates the same things they do. They’re willing to excuse anything and everything for their guy. There’ll be no repercussions.”
Trump and his allies ran a high-testosterone, anti-immigrant, protect-the-economy campaign that appealed to ranchers, mechanics, pastors, billionaires, college students and the radical Proud Boys. Musk — who has 204 million followers on X — urged men to turn out and vote, posting a militant reference on the day of the election: “The cavalry has arrived. Men are voting in record numbers. They now realize everything is at stake.”
Musk reposted an artist’s depiction in which he, muscle-bound and stripped to the waist, resembles the Hulk carrying an American flag. Rogan sits atop Musk’s shoulders lifting Trump toward the sky in a trinity that evokes both a savior complex and hyper-masculinity.
Such imagery suits Alpha Male. Terhune’s character does not apologize. He does not equivocate. He represents, said Terhune, who was profiled in The Times last year, men who feel empowered by Trump’s showman brashness and the belief that he shares their rage and bewilderment at a left-wing, woke society that conspires to leave them behind.
Alpha Male was born out of what Terhune saw as the hypocrisy of conservatives who espouse American ideals, such as freedom of speech and religion, but attack anyone opposed their prescribed views. The character’s first appearance came when Terhune posted “Redneck Burns Nikes” in reaction to then-San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick taking a knee in 2016 during the national anthem to protest racism. That was followed by Alpha Male diatribes on book banning, the Black “Little Mermaid,” Trump’s mug shot, ruminations on Hunter Biden’s laptop and swipes at President Biden, whom he calls “Papa Long Hugs.”
Brent Terhune channels his character Alpha Male in a video rant from his car in Greenwood, Ind.
(AJ Mast / For The Times )
Alpha Male, whose videos have had millions of views on social media, has become a way for Terhune to understand and navigate the nation’s divisions. The character is a funny, if unsettling, mirror who at times — like Archie Bunker before him — earns a degree of empathy. Terhune’s irony and satire can be so sly that some people don’t get the joke, thinking that Alpha Male is not an act but the comic’s true self.
“Is this satire or is this guy really as deranged as he sounds?” one man posted on Facebook.
Like many liberals, Terhune, who spoke by phone from his home on the day after the election, was finding it difficult to reconcile the many ruptures and recriminations that have jolted the country since Trump’s first campaign eight years ago.
Trump’s recent victory is “a shocking but not so shocking revelation of where we are as a country,” said Terhune, the son of a lunch lady and a father who trucked fuel to construction sites. “A lot of people were fed up with the last four years, but this says that people don’t think past themselves. It is their need to put party over country for perceived patriotism. I’m a straight white guy. I’ll probably be fine. But what about people who aren’t straight and white?”
Through it all, though, the focus of Terhune’s Alpha Male bits will stay on Trump and what he has shaped. In a recent video about Trump working at McDonald’s, Alpha Male says, “Mr. Trump doesn’t need to work there. He was just sticking it to lying Kamala Harris. … There’s no proof she even worked there. Hell, are we even sure she was the attorney general of Commie-fornia? No. Are we even sure she was vice president? No. Nobody knows. There’s no proof.”
In another skit, Alpha Male is the driver in the garbage truck Trump rode in after Biden’s verbal gaffe suggesting that Trump’s supporters were garbage: “You done pissed me off, Joe, and if being a patriot is what they’re calling garbage these days, then, yeah, I am garbage cause I’m going to show up to the polls wearing a garbage bag to show you what us white trash can do.”
Alpha Male, sometimes tearing up when he recounts his many grievances, mythologizes Trump, a leader who survived an assassin’s bullet, an army of prosecutors, 34 felony counts and endless scandal.
After what authorities said would have been a second assassination attempt against Trump at his golf course in Florida, Terhune reimagines the incident in a video in which Trump grabs a golf club to deflect bullets: “The first one he sent flying went back to the shooter, knocked his Bud Light clean out of his hand and he took off scared. And he was running away and there was an envelope of cash that fell out of his pocket. You could see on it, it said, ‘Pay off from the Dumb-ocrats.’ It was then that the Secret Service finally got off their lazy asses and did something.”
That is the kind of fervor — James Brown’s “It’s a Man’s Man’s Man’s World” played at the Republican National Convention in July — that has surrounded Trump since he swaggered onto the nation’s political stage.
“He can do no wrong,” said Terhune, mimicking his alter ego. “If you don’t like it, deal with it.”
For Tehrune, the only way to deal with it is to keep channeling Alpha Male’s deep well of suspicion and anger.
President-elect Trump picked Miami-Dade County Commissioner Kevin Marino Cabrera to serve as ambassador to Panama.
Calling the Miami-Dade County Commissioner a “fierce fighter,” Trump said that he would advance the “MAGA agenda” to the Central American country.
“Kevin is a fierce fighter for America First principles. As a Miami-Dade County Commissioner, and Vice Chairman of the International Trade Consortium, he has been instrumental in driving Economic growth, and fostering International partnerships,” Trump wrote in the Wednesday announcement. “In 2020, Kevin did an incredible job as my Florida State Director and, this year, advanced our MAGA Agenda as a Member of the RNC Platform Committee.”
“Few understand Latin American politics as well as Kevin – He will do a FANTASTIC job representing our Nation’s interests in Panama!” he said.
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Miami-Dade County Commissioner Kevin Marino Cabrera celebrates at Beat Culture Brewery in Miami after defeating Coral Gables Commissioner Jorge Fors on Nov. 8, 2022. (Al Diaz/Miami Herald/Tribune News Service via Getty Images)
The announcement came after Trump said that Panama was “a Country that is ripping us off on the Panama Canal, far beyond their wildest dreams.”
In a post on Truth Social on Wednesday, Trump also accused Chinese soldiers of illegally operating the canal and “always making certain that the United States puts in Billions of Dollars in ‘repair’ money but will have absolutely nothing to say about ‘anything.’”
President-elect Trump on Wednesday nominated Miami-Dade County Commissioner Kevin Marino Cabrera to serve as ambassador to Panama. (Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images)
In a statement on X, Cabrera thanked Trump for the nomination.
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“I’m humbled and honored by your nomination to serve as the U.S. Ambassador to Panama,” he wrote. “Let’s get to work!”
President-elect Trump was honored on Tuesday with a street renamed after him in Miami-Dade County, Florida. (X/@KMCabreraFL)
Cabrera won his county election two years ago following an endorsement by Trump.
He also served as the Florida state director for Trump’s 2020 campaign and was a member of the RNC Platform Committee.
Politics
Opinion: Is Donald Trump a NIMBY or a YIMBY? The president-elect's housing views are a puzzle
Is Donald Trump a NIMBY or a YIMBY? Given that the housing crisis is a front-and-center issue throughout the country, whether or not the president-elect reflexively favors housing development is an important question.
But Trump is all over the place on the housing issue, as he is on so many others. It’s hard to know where he really stands.
The idea of undoing zoning restrictions to produce more housing has enjoyed support in both parties at the federal level for decades. In a 1991 report titled “Not in My Backyard: Removing Barriers to Affordable Housing,” a bipartisan commission appointed by then-Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Jack Kemp noted that “across the country, local governments employ zoning and subdivision ordinances, building codes, and permitting procedures to prevent development of affordable housing.” But the feds don’t control local zoning, so their influence is limited.
As a former real estate developer — and an advocate of deregulation in general — Trump ought to be a YIMBY, the yes-in-my-backyard, pro-housing opposite of a NIMBY. In fact, in an interview last summer with Bloomberg, he railed against zoning, calling it a “killer” and promising to bring housing costs down.
Except, apparently, when doing so threatens suburban neighborhoods with single-family zoning, the most sweeping restraint on development in California and beyond. Trump has consistently said that the idea of high-density housing in the suburbs threatens the American way of life. “The suburb destruction will end with us,” he vowed during his first term.
NIMBYism crosses traditional political lines, suppressing housing in some of California’s most ostensibly liberal enclaves, but it also overlaps plenty with Trump’s coalition. MAGA activists who like their suburban homes and neighborhoods are increasingly at war with the YIMBY movement, as the staunch resistance to more housing in places such as Huntington Beach has shown.
Lately Trump and company have taken to blaming the housing crisis on illegal immigration, suggesting the real estate market will be just fine once they deport 10 million or so immigrants. But unauthorized immigrants tend to occupy the low end of the housing stock, often in crowded conditions. So even if mass deportation occurs, it’s not likely to help millions of native-born Americans locked out of the market suddenly realize the dream of suburban homeownership.
One of the few specific ideas Trump has proposed for increasing the housing supply is opening up federal land for residential development. Last year, he floated the idea of using federal land to build “freedom cities,” a kind of unregulated enterprise zone for housing, business and flying cars.
North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum, Trump’s choice for Interior secretary, could be crucial to any administration housing strategy. Burgum would control the Bureau of Land Management and the National Park Service, which have vast land holdings in California, nearly half of which is federally owned, and throughout the West. (The U.S. Forest Service, part of the Department of Agriculture, also claims much of the state and region.) While much of the news coverage of Burgum’s appointment has concerned the prospect of more fossil fuel extraction from federal land, Burgum could also be key to plans to build housing on U.S. property.
But developing federal land is legally difficult, as is transferring such land to local governments that may want to build on it. The Bureau of Land Management, for instance, does constant battle with Clark County, Nev., over whether more land should be made available for development in the Las Vegas area. Moreover, much of the federal government’s land is mountainous, remote or both.
Burgum has been a strong advocate not only of zoning reform and housing development in general but also of building more high-density housing in cities and suburbs, which seems to be at odds with the MAGA agenda in some respects. A wealthy tech entrepreneur, Burgum has poured millions of dollars of his own money into revitalizing the downtown area in his hometown, Fargo.
Of course, the federal government also owns lots of land in urban and suburban locations. But that land would be beyond Burgum’s control, and federal agencies with other missions have proven extremely resistant to yielding their property for housing, as the recent battle over the Veterans Affairs campus in West L.A. revealed.
During the Great Depression, President Franklin D. Roosevelt also promoted the idea of building a lot of housing on federal land, in both suburban and rural locations. Although the effort generated some innovative ideas, only a few subdivisions were ultimately built.
Trump’s freedom cities are likely to meet the same fate. It’s just hard for the federal government to bring about local zoning reform and housing development. It’s even harder when the president can’t decide where he stands on the issue.
William Fulton is the editor and publisher of “California Planning & Development Report.” He is a former mayor of Ventura and a former San Diego planning director.
Politics
Marjorie Taylor Greene wants death penalty for migrant who allegedly set woman on fire on subway: 'Finish him'
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., is calling for the swift trial, conviction, and execution of the man charged in connection with the gruesome murder of a woman burned alive on a New York City subway.
The outspoken Republican took to social media on Tuesday to address the incident, in which Guatemalan national Sebastian Zapeta, 33, is accused of setting a woman on fire while on a train in Brooklyn.
“Death penalty, don’t waste money on a lengthy trial. Convict him and finish him. What he did is so incredibly evil,” Greene declared in a post on X. “I can’t watch the video anymore. And how it seems like no one tried to save her is beyond me. Maybe they did but it doesn’t seem like it.”
Zapeta faces charges of first- and second-degree murder, and first-degree arson, with a maximum sentence of life imprisonment with no parole.
SANCTUARY CITY NEW YORK PRESSURED TO MAKE DRASTIC CHANGE AFTER ILLEGAL MIGRANT ALLEGEDLY BURNS WOMAN ALIVE
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., gestures while speaking as United States Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle testifies before the House Oversight and Accountability Committee during a hearing at the Rayburn House Office Building on July 22, 2024 in Washington, D.C. (Kent Nishimura/Getty Images)
Greene is not the only member of Congress to weigh in on the case.
Rep. Anna Paulina Luna, R-Fla., also called for capital punishment.
“Death penalty,” she tweeted.
SUSPECT ACCUSED OF BURNING WOMAN TO DEATH ON NYC SUBWAY IS PREVIOUSLY DEPORTED ILLEGAL IMMIGRANT
Rep. Andy Biggs, R-Ariz., declared in a post on X, “A woman was intentionally lit on fire on the subway today. Democrats’ soft-on-crime policies do not work.”
Sebastian Zapeta, accused of setting a woman on fire inside a New York City subway train, appears in court, Tuesday, Dec. 24, 2024, in New York. (AP Photo/Curtis Means via Pool)
CRITICS WARN OF ‘DANIEL PENNY EFFECT’ AFTER WOMAN BURNED ALIVE ON NYC SUBWAY CAR AS BYSTANDERS WATCHED
New York City Police Department Commissioner Jessica Tisch noted during remarks on Sunday that Zapeta allegedly “used what we believe to be a lighter to ignite the victim’s clothing, which became fully engulfed in a matter of seconds.” Assistant District Attorney Ari Rottenberg alleged in court on Tuesday that the suspect fanned the fire with a shirt.
Zapeta’s next court appearance is scheduled for December 27, according to online records.
Sebastian Zapeta, accused of setting a woman on fire inside a New York City subway train, appears in court, Tuesday, Dec. 24, 2024, in New York. (AP Photo/Curtis Means via Pool)
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A U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) spokesperson said in a statement that Zapeta had been removed from the U.S. in 2018 and then re-entered the country illegally at some point “on an unknown date and location.”
Fox News’ Bill Melugin and the Associated Press contributed to this report
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