If there were an Oscar for the category "hard to watch," I'd have to nominate the video of Rep. Nancy Mace, R-S.C., barking expletives at a constituent after he asked her if she would have a town hall soon. It's produced in a beauty supply store instead of a movie studio, but in a brief minute and 42 seconds, the video finds its place in the canon of horror films shot from the villain's perspective. The camera focuses entirely on the story's hero, a man in a polo and shorts holding a bottle of what appears to be face cleanser, as he holds his own against his congressional representative getting increasingly shrill as she yells invective at him. Even though he said nothing about gay marriage, she demands his gratitude for voting "for gay marriage twice." When he gets annoyed at her reductive assumption, she calls him "crazy" and "absolutely f—king crazy," and repeatedly says "f—k you" to him.
GOP Rep. Nancy Mace told a constituent “f--k you” after he asked if she will do a town hall this year
— PatriotTakes 🇺🇸 (@patriottakes.bsky.social) April 19, 2025 at 9:03 PM
In the eyes of normal people, Mace, as her interlocutor said when he fled from this encounter, is a "disgrace." Most adults who act like Mace in public immediately wish to disappear off the face of the earth in shame. But not our Nancy! No, she's the one who posted this video online, proud of her emotional incontinence. She even offered a homophobic "gay panic" defense, by describing the man as "wearing daisy dukes, at a makeup store." (Sorry, Miss Nancy, they aren't daisy dukes until we see cheeks.) To people outside the MAGA bubble, it's a baffling choice. She's not even a fun villain. There's none of the sleek appeal of Loki from the "Avengers" franchise or camp glee of Ursula from "The Little Mermaid." Mace is serving pure toddler here. She likely wished to throw herself to the floor and start pounding it, but doing so would have meant dropping her iPhone.
Mace isn't wrong, however, to think that what most adults find embarrassing, the MAGA base will eat right up. The public meltdown, in which you declare yourself the world's greatest victim, is the preferred GOP method of political communication these days. Despite this effort, Mace didn't even come close to nabbing last week's gold star for the most histronic MAGA performance. She was outdone by Stephen Miller, whose usual register on TV is "verge of a nervous breakdown," but got so shrill on Fox News Tuesday that Lauren Tousignant at Jezebel worried she'd soon have to "look at Stephen Miller’s face as he pops a dozen blood vessels as his brain explodes."
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Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth turned in two performances that would cause Al Pacino to tell him to settle down. While carping about "the fake news media" during the White House Easter egg roll, Hegseth's whining got so pitched his voice started to crack, while his children stood behind him, embarrassed at the spectacle.
At the WH Easter egg hunt, Hegseth this morning pathetically blames the media for what his own appointees disclosed about his latest scandals.
— Ron Filipkowski (@ronfilipkowski.bsky.social) April 21, 2025 at 10:00 AM
Despite his own family's discomfort with his antics, Hegseth kept up the scenery-chewing, bellowing about the all-powerful, forever-mysterious "they" have "come after me from day one." ("They," in this case, means close friends and advisors who got pushed out after beginning to question Hegseth's fitness for the job.)
Q: “Do you think there's...deep state forces that want to make sure you don't stay?” Hegseth: “They have come after me from day one just like they've come after President Trump. I've gotten a fraction of what [Trump] got in that first term. What he's endured is super human.”
— The Bulwark (@thebulwark.com) April 22, 2025 at 8:47 AM
All this yelling and bellyaching serves a pragmatic purpose: to distract from how what they're saying makes no sense. Miller's claim that the six Republican judges on the Supreme Court — three appointed by Trump — are "communist" wouldn't withstand even a moment's thought at a normal volume. Because he's delivering his commentary at "front row at Led Zepplin" levels, the brain can't even process how preposterous the lie is. Mace's routine showed this working in a literal way. Her target runs away, because trying to talk to someone behaving like her is like trying to converse with a wildfire.
It's part of the overall too-muchness that is the signature of the MAGA aesthetic, which goes right back to Trump's gold-plated tastelessness. We see it in the infamous "Mar-a-Lago" face, which uses plastic surgery and spackled-on make-up to turn women into terrifyingly exaggerated caricatures of femininity. Or the love of roided-out male bodies, which try to recreate the impossibly huge muscles of comic books on human bodies. It's a maximalist aesthetic, minus all the playfulness of Las Vegas casinos or "RuPaul's Drag Race." There's a grim vibe to the undertaking, as if they're trying to pound your head into the ground with the excess.
All this yelling and bellyaching serves a pragmatic purpose: to distract from how what they're saying makes no sense.
There really is no "as if" about it. The goal of the bombastic MAGA aesthetic is to flood the brain with emotions, so that no rational thought can penetrate. This strategy dates back to Roger Ailes founding Fox News in the 90s. The network dispensed with the staid conservative aesthetic for the 2x4-to-the-face vibe. The loud graphics, busy screens, and sexed-up appearances of the hosts have become ubiquitous on cable television. At the time, it stood out, setting the foundation for how the entire Republican world would look under Trump's leadership. It's tempting to call it "camp," but camp requires pleasure. Even for its fans, the Fox overkill keeps audiences in a state of constant agitation, unable to think clearly — much less question the nonsense they're consuming.
"Schlock and sentiment and melodrama," Sam Adler-Bell wrote of the MAGA aesthetic, through the prism of Trump's campaign playlist, in October. The right seeks "evocative empty calories" so they can feel without having to think. It's the flipside to the loathing for actual art that has been a steady source of right-wing culture war antics. From Rudy Giuliani trying to shut down the Brooklyn Museum of Art in 2001 to the ongoing book-banning efforts of the Moms for Liberty crowd, the MAGA reaction to anything that tries to marry feeling to thought is to throw a fit and try to banish it from view. It goes without saying that their leader is a reality TV star. He's a failed businessman, but because TV producers could make him look the part, his fans bought the lie that he's a success. It's all about how you feel, so why ruin it by looking past the surface, even a millimeter?
The performative temper tantrum is a crucial part of the forever-fake MAGA aesthetic. It's the funhouse mirror version of the genuinely felt outrage of liberals that conservatives find so annoying. It often verges into parody, especially when Stephen Miller does it, like he's mocking people who experience genuine anger, instead of the flat sociopathic sadism that seems his only true emotional register. Fake outrage is far louder, more ridiculous, and higher-pitched than the real kind, but one can see why it has a soothing quality for the MAGA audience it's geared towards. When someone's rage is justified, such as when their family member has been disappeared to an El Salvadoran gulag for Kristi Noem's photo shoot, it's unsettling. It makes the listener feel called to care about something other than themselves. It's easier to wallow in faux outrages of the right, which, being about nothing, ask nothing more of you than to spit at all those mean liberals who asked you to care about something real.
I'm not saying that bombast is automatically brainless. The world would be a sadder place without Queen's music, John Waters' films, and Andy Warhol's paintings. I'm a huge fan of punk rock, which made a real art out of shouting into the microphone. There's danger, as well, in equating subtlety with thoughtfulness. Plenty of bad ideas get taken way too seriously because they're rolled out in soothing tones on public radio. "Too much" can be just enough, when it's in service of provoking thought, instead of shutting it down. But the way the right does excess is never about waking you up, but pounding you into submission. The MAGA temper tantrum is the iconic example of shouting so loudly that you can't hear yourself think.
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