The Real Housewives of the White House

How the Shameless and the Classless Are Redefining America

It was a scene lifted straight from the dregs of reality television—not Bravo, not MTV, but something lower, something meaner. Except this wasn’t a gaudy set in a Los Angeles studio. It was the White House. And these weren’t aspiring socialites grasping for relevance. They were men entrusted with the future of a great nation. Our nation.

The cameras rolled, the insults flew, and self-aggrandizement pooled on the polished floors like spilled champagne at a debauched afterparty. A moment meant for statecraft, for the careful choreography of diplomacy, unraveled into a Real Housewives reunion special—loud, crass, petty, steeped in grievance, posturing, and performative outrage.

J.D. Vance, once the earnest chronicler of American struggle, now a man who traded conviction for a seat at the court, stood at his master’s side, nodding like an eager understudy, waiting—hoping—for his moment in the spotlight. Catty and quick-tongued, he played the role of court translator, giving polished form to the crude impulses of the man beside him, articulating what his master wouldn’t—or, more accurately, couldn’t, his lack of verbal dexterity rendering him incapable of anything beyond the blunt instruments of insult and repetition.

And then there was the master himself, though “master” seemed too grand a word for the hunched, sluggish figure before us. Donald Trump, slouched and scowling, less a ruler than a relic, a mad king brooding on his throne, stripped of the dignity and vitality that make men formidable. He is no longer content to merely win bigly—he now seeks to reign, not as a leader but as a sovereign of spite, his kingdom built not on vision or principle but on the twin pillars of resentment and revenge.

And then, Volodymyr Zelensky. Whatever one thinks of the war, of his role in its origins or its prolongation, he remains a man who has spent two years in the trenches, carrying the burden of his nation’s survival. Yet here he was, caught in the middle of a political clown car, treated not as a wartime leader but as an inconvenient dinner guest—one the hosts barely tolerated, one they might have uninvited if it wouldn’t have made them look bad.

Both Trump and Vance demand respect—yet neither is remotely respectable. They comport themselves with venality and indecency, using fear as their only currency. They do not inspire loyalty through virtue or command respect through dignity; they rule by intimidation, striking fear in their perceived enemies, because they know that without it, they are nothing.

This is the great irony of weak men who demand to be seen as strong: they mistake fear for reverence, submission for admiration. And so they sneer, they bully, they bluster, hoping no one will notice the hollow core at the center of it all.

The Death of Dignity

What happens to a nation when its leaders—elected and unelected—abandon not just dignity, but even the pretense of it? When they stop aspiring to statesmanship and instead revel in their own unseriousness? What happens when the institutions meant to safeguard the republic are not merely neglected but gleefully dismantled by the very people entrusted with their care?

We do not have to wonder. We are living it.

Elon Musk, once the restless visionary, has set his sights on a new frontier: the reckless dismantling of the Federal Government. Not as a revolutionary act, not as some grand experiment in governance, but as the nihilistic tantrum of a man too rich to be told no.

And then there is Donald Trump, who speaks of power as if it is his birthright, as if the office is an extension of his personal brand. He does not seek to lead so much as to own. He does not speak of responsibility because he does not recognize it.

Meanwhile, the senators and congressmen who once framed conservatism in the language of Burke and Buckley now sound like washed-up AM radio hosts, desperate for an audience, scrambling to keep their shrinking relevance alive with crude performances of outrage.

There is no sense of responsibility, no awareness that they are stewards of something greater than themselves. The American experiment—that grand, delicate balance between power and restraint, ambition and principle—has been hijacked by men who comport themselves like the worst kind of nouveau riche. They have no reverence for the institutions they inhabit, no humility in the face of history. They are not leaders, not statesmen. They are performers, characters in a tawdry reality show of their own making, preening for the cameras, desperate for one more viral moment, one more round of applause from an audience that grows angrier by the day.

Trump, in a rare moment of unfiltered honesty, said it outright yesterday: “This is going to be great television!”

It was many things. Great was not one of them.

The Hubris of the Classless

America has long been a place where one could rise on merit, where class was something you could earn rather than be born into. But what we are witnessing now is not the triumph of meritocracy—it is the rise of the utterly classless, people who confuse brashness with courage, cruelty with strength, and spectacle with leadership.

The Founders, for all their faults, understood that republics do not survive without a measure of grace, without the restraint that comes from knowing that the office, not the man, is what matters. But that ethos is gone. The country is no longer run by public servants, but by people who act as if they are permanently auditioning for a Fox News or MSNBC slot, their every word calibrated not for governance but for engagement.

They sneer at tradition, mock decorum, and call civility weak. They do not aspire to be Lincoln or Roosevelt or Carter or Reagan or Clinton or Obama; they aspire to be the loudest person in the room. And in doing so, they are diminishing the country they claim to love.

A Republic, If You Can Keep It

Benjamin Franklin, upon leaving the Constitutional Convention, famously told a concerned citizen that the delegates had given America “republic, if you can keep it.” That if was always doing a great deal of work. It still is.

A republic is not a machine that runs on autopilot. It is not self-sustaining. It requires maintenance, vigilance, care. Above all, it requires a political class that understands that some things—dignity, grace, restraint, honor—matter more than power. These are not decorative virtues; they are the scaffolding that holds the whole thing up. Without them, the structure collapses.

I do not know if we can keep it. Not like this. Not when the White House has been reduced to a set piece for the world’s worst reality show, not when the most powerful people in America act as if their only duty is to the performance, to the spectacle, to the next moment of engagement.

For years, I have wondered whether this would be the breaking point. Whether Americans would finally grow weary of the circus, whether they would demand something better. And yet, each new low is met not with rejection, not with shame, but with indulgence. The audience leans in closer. They cheer for the next episode.

Trump said yesterday that he was glad the American people got to see that spectacle in real time. And we did. We saw the two most powerful men in the room berate, bully, and belittle a man speaking English as a second language, a man who could not, by sheer nature of the exchange, go toe-to-toe with the barrage of words hurled at him. And yet he had no choice but to sit there and take it, because his country’s survival depends on them.

And here’s the thing: I happen to agree with Trump and Vance that it’s time to end this war. That we need to stop the reckless escalation, stop goading Russia into further madness, stop writing blank checks with American money and Ukrainian blood. But this—this crude, humiliating, classless display—was the worst possible way to go about it. They did not engage in tough, dignified statecraft. They did not wield power with grace. They leaned, instead, into the debasement.

It was not diplomacy. It was not leadership.

It was a crude reality show.

And perhaps the only way to end a reality show is for the audience to stop watching.

God help us if we don’t.