The Cruelty Engine

The Rally as Church

On October 2, 2018, at a campaign rally in Southaven, Mississippi, Donald Trump invited his supporters to laugh at a sexual assault survivor.1

"How did you get home?" Trump mocked, imitating Christine Blasey Ford's testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee. "I don't remember. How'd you get there? I don't remember. Where is the place? I don't remember. How many years ago was it? I don't know. I don't know. I don't know."

The crowd roared. They laughed. They cheered.

This wasn't a gaffe or a moment of poor judgment that the audience merely tolerated. This was the main event—the exact reason many of them had come. The mockery of a woman who'd testified about her sexual assault wasn't incidental to the Trump experience. It was the Trump experience.

Watch the clip again. Study the faces in the crowd. These aren't people enduring something uncomfortable. They're experiencing something like joy. Communion. Belonging. When Trump performs cruelty on stage, his supporters don't merely accept it—they crave it. The laughter is the point. The cruelty is the liturgy.

The day after that rally, Adam Serwer published an essay in The Atlantic titled "The Cruelty Is the Point."2 It would become the definitive analysis of what was happening in plain sight: Trump had discovered that his supporters didn't merely tolerate attacks on the vulnerable—they experienced those attacks as representation. Finally, someone was saying what they felt but couldn't say. Finally, someone was hurting the people they resented.

"The Cruelty Is the Point" became a catchphrase because it described something we could all see but couldn't quite name: a political movement organized not around policy or ideology, but around the pleasures of watching shared enemies suffer.

The Feedback Loop: Fox and the Revenge Machine

To understand Trump's cruelty, you have to understand Fox News. Not as a cable channel, but as a three-decade experiment in grievance manufacturing.

Since its founding in 1996, Fox has systematically taught its audience that they are under siege. The War on Christmas. The persecution of Christians. Coastal elites who look down on "real Americans." Illegal immigrants taking your jobs. Transgender people in your bathrooms. Critical race theory in your children's schools. Every night, every segment, every breathless breaking news alert reinforced the same message: Your America is being stolen, and the people stealing it despise you.

Trump didn't create this audience. Fox did. Trump simply arrived as the answer to problems Fox had spent twenty years inventing.

The relationship between Trump and Fox isn't merely symbiotic—it's a perpetual motion machine of rage. Consider the pattern:

Trump says something cruel. Fox amplifies it. The audience cheers. Trump escalates. Fox follows.

We know this isn't speculation because Fox told us so—under oath. The Dominion Voting Systems lawsuit, settled in April 2023 for $787.5 million,3 produced internal communications that revealed the network's true relationship with its audience. When Trump lost the 2020 election and began spreading lies about voter fraud, Fox executives and hosts knew the claims were "insane" and "ludicrous." They said so in private texts.

Yet they broadcast the lies anyway. Why? Because the audience demanded it.

The Dominion revelations illuminated something darker than mere cynicism. Fox hadn't just capitulated to its audience's demands. It had created an audience incapable of accepting inconvenient truths. Twenty-five years of rage programming had produced viewers who experienced fact-checking as betrayal.

This is the media ecosystem that made Trump possible and now sustains him. The feedback loop has no off switch. Trump provides the cruelty. Fox provides the justification. The audience provides the demand. And the cycle continues, each revolution escalating the last.

The Founding Wound: April 30, 2011

Every revenge story needs an origin. Trump's began in a ballroom at the Washington Hilton.4

At the 2011 White House Correspondents' Dinner, President Barack Obama roasted Trump for nearly three minutes. At the time, Trump was the most prominent voice of the "birther" conspiracy theory, demanding that Obama prove his citizenship. Obama had released his long-form birth certificate just days before the dinner—and now he had Trump in the room.

"No one is happier, no one is prouder to put this birth certificate matter to rest than The Donald," Obama said, to laughter. "And that's because he can finally get back to focusing on the issues that matter. Like, did we fake the moon landing? What really happened in Roswell? And where are Biggie and Tupac?"

The room laughed. The political and media establishment of Washington D.C. laughed. Everyone laughed—except Trump, who sat stone-faced, lips pursed, staring straight ahead as the mockery washed over him.

The theory that Trump's entire political career is revenge for that night has become something of a cliché—but clichés become clichés because they contain truth. The man who sat fuming while a Black president mocked him in a room full of elites would spend the next decade systematically destroying that president's legacy and tearing down the institutions those elites represented.

"I Am Your Retribution"

The evolution is right there in the slogans.

2016: "I am your voice."
2023: "I am your warrior. I am your justice. I am your retribution."5

Study that shift. In 2016, Trump positioned himself as a vessel—someone who would speak truths that Washington wouldn't. By 2023, he'd dropped the pretense. The campaign wasn't about speaking truths. It was about vengeance. And his supporters weren't passive observers of that vengeance. They were participants.

"Your retribution" is precise language. Trump wasn't promising to pursue his revenge. He was promising to pursue theirs. Every slight his supporters had ever felt—from the culture wars, from coastal elites, from the Obama years—would now be avenged. The grievances Fox News had spent decades stocking were finally being cashed in.

The venues reinforced the message. Trump launched his 2024 campaign with a rally in Waco, Texas—on the 30th anniversary of the Branch Davidian siege.6 The location wasn't subtle. Trump was signaling to militia movements and anti-government extremists that he understood their grievances and would be their champion. He opened the rally by playing a recording of January 6 defendants singing the national anthem from prison.

What followed was a term dominated not by policy but by score-settling. The pattern became predictable: anyone who crossed Trump faced disproportionate destruction.

Liz Cheney voted for impeachment. Trump called her a "bitter, horrible human being" and endorsed her primary challenger.7 She lost by 37 points.

Mitt Romney voted to convict. Trump mocked him as a "stone cold loser." When Romney showed up at the Utah Republican convention, the crowd booed him.

Mitch McConnell criticized Trump after January 6. Trump attacked him as a "dumb son of a bitch" at a Mar-a-Lago donor event, encouraging the crowd's laughter.

The revenge isn't reactive—it's opportunistic. When any chance to hurt an enemy presents itself, Trump seizes it reflexively, instinctively, as naturally as breathing. The cruelty engine runs automatically.

The Gift That Keeps on Giving: "Liberal Tears"

On the morning of November 9, 2016, as Americans processed Donald Trump's shock victory, a peculiar phrase began trending on social media.

"Liberal tears."

The term had existed before, but Trump's victory transformed it from an insult into a commodity. Within days, you could buy Liberal Tears coffee mugs, Liberal Tears shot glasses, Liberal Tears beer koozies. By the 2020 campaign, Donald Trump Jr. was leading rallies with the chant: "Let's make liberals cry again!"

This wasn't just a slogan. It was a confession. The primary goal wasn't tax cuts or judges or border security—it was the emotional response of political opponents. The suffering of liberals wasn't a side effect of Trump's policies. It was the policy.

And here's what makes this genuinely distinctive: previous political movements at least pretended their goals were about governance. Reagan wanted smaller government. Obama wanted universal healthcare. Agree or disagree, these were claims about what would make America better. The "liberal tears" movement dispensed with that pretense entirely. The reaction of opponents was the goal. If liberals cried, you won. Policy outcomes were secondary.

This is why Trump's attacks often seem strategically irrational. Why mock a dead war hero's family during a campaign? Why continue attacking John McCain years after his death? Why spend rally time mocking a disabled reporter8 when you're supposed to be talking about jobs?

Because the transgression is the point. Each attack that violates normal decency serves as a loyalty test. If you stay with Trump after he mocks the disabled, you've proven you're really committed. The indefensible nature of the attacks isn't a bug—it's a feature. Defending the indefensible binds supporters more tightly to the movement.

The Bodies: Consequences of Stochastic Terrorism

In October 2018, a man named Cesar Sayoc mailed pipe bombs to sixteen people and organizations.9 The roster read like a list of Trump's greatest hits: Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden, George Soros, CNN, Maxine Waters, John Brennan, James Clapper, Eric Holder, Robert De Niro.

Sayoc's van, when police found it, told the story. It was covered in Trump stickers and images of Democrats with crosshairs over their faces. At his sentencing, Sayoc explained that Trump's rhetoric had inspired him. He believed he was doing what the President wanted.

But the real lesson of the MAGAbomber wasn't that Trump had a violent supporter. Every political movement has violent supporters. The lesson was the pipeline: Trump's rhetoric, amplified by Fox News, processed by social media algorithms, consumed by unstable individuals, converted into action.

This is stochastic terrorism—the use of mass communication to incite random acts of violence that are statistically predictable but individually unpredictable. Trump doesn't tell anyone to mail bombs. He just repeats, night after night, that his enemies are "enemies of the people" who are "destroying our country." Somewhere in his audience of millions, someone will eventually take action.

The pattern repeated in September 2024. Trump and JD Vance amplified a false claim that Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio were eating pets.10 "They're eating the dogs, they're eating the cats," Trump said during a debate with Kamala Harris.

Within days, Springfield received 33 bomb threats.11 Schools were evacuated. Government buildings closed. City officials pleaded for Trump to stop. He refused.

The Normalization Curve

The escalation has a numbing logic. Each transgression prepares us for the next.

2015: "I like people who weren't captured"—Trump mocks John McCain for being a POW.12 Commentators predict this will end his campaign. It doesn't.

2016: "Grab them by the pussy"—a tape surfaces of Trump describing sexual assault. Commentators predict this will end his campaign. It doesn't.

2017: "Both sides"—Trump responds to a white supremacist rally that killed a woman by blaming "many sides." Republicans express concern. Nothing happens.

2018: "Enemy of the people"—Trump uses authoritarian language to describe the press. Historians warn of dangerous precedents. Nothing happens.

2023: "Vermin"—Trump calls his political opponents "vermin" who must be "rooted out,"13 using explicitly Nazi-era terminology. Headlines note the fascist language. Nothing happens.

2023: "Poisoning the blood"—Trump says immigrants are "poisoning the blood of our country,"14 echoing Mein Kampf. Critics point out the Nazi parallel. Nothing happens.

2023: "Dictator on day one"—Sean Hannity offers Trump a softball to deny authoritarian intentions. Trump instead embraces the label.15 The crowd cheers.

Each step down the ladder makes the next step possible. By the time Trump is using explicit fascist terminology, the normalization is so complete that it barely registers. The cruelty engine has stretched our tolerance to the breaking point.

Why They Stay

The question that haunts every analysis of Trump's movement: Why do supporters embrace this?

Some of them have been deceived—they genuinely don't know about the cruelty, or believe the mainstream media is fabricating it. But this explanation only goes so far. Trump's most devoted supporters watch the rallies. They see the mockery of disabled reporters and assault survivors. They hear the demands to "lock her up" and the threats against enemies. They're not misinformed. They're cheering.

The harder truth is that the cruelty is the draw.

For supporters who feel culturally displaced—who feel like the country they knew is being taken from them, who feel looked down upon by coastal elites and college professors and Hollywood celebrities—watching those elites suffer is deeply satisfying. It feels like justice. Trump isn't cruel to them. He's cruel for them. He's cruel to the people they resent.

"Finally, someone says what we're thinking."

Trump gives permission. Every taboo he breaks makes the next taboo easier to break. Every attack he launches without consequence demonstrates that the old rules don't apply anymore. For people who chafed under those rules—who resented being told what they couldn't say about this group or that group—Trump's cruelty is liberation.

The Engine Has No Off Switch

The cruelty engine runs on grievance fuel that right-wing media endlessly produces. Trump is both the product and the producer—shaped by Fox's decades of rage programming, now shaping it further. His supporters don't merely tolerate the cruelty. They experience it as representation.

This is the trap. The feedback loop has no escape valve. Fox needs its audience, and its audience demands escalation. Trump needs Fox, and Fox needs Trump. The audience needs someone to blame for their sense of dispossession, and Trump needs their anger to fuel his movement.

There is no moderating influence. Any Republican who tries to pump the brakes gets destroyed—ask Liz Cheney, Mitt Romney, Jeff Flake, Bob Corker, the entire generation of Republican leaders who questioned Trump only to be exiled or defeated. The only safe position in the Republican Party is full devotion, and full devotion means participating in the cruelty.

The cruelty engine will outlast Trump. The audience it serves will still be there when he's gone. The infrastructure of grievance—the cable networks, the social media platforms, the algorithm-driven rage factories—will still be operating. Someone will inherit that audience and that infrastructure, and they'll face the same incentives Trump faced: escalate or die.

We built this machine over decades. We normalized it step by step. And now it runs on its own, demanding fresh fuel, grinding forward.

The only question now is how much it will consume before it finally stops.