David Austin Walsh
@davidaustinwalsh.bsky.social
Historian. Academic Advisor @ University of Virginia. Columnist @ Boston Review. Book: TAKING AMERICA BACK: THE CONSERVATIVE MOVEMENT AND THE FAR RIGHT // Yale Press // April 2024
Pinned
The Conservatives Who Think Trump Isn’t Going Far Enough - Boston Review
MAGA’s base is more fractured than it looks.
www.bostonreview.net
My latest for @bostonreview.bsky.social, where I look at the growing discontent and infighting within the MAGA coalition (h/t to Curt Mills of AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE and Matt McManus at Spelman College for sharing their insights with me!) www.bostonreview.net/articles/the...
Reposted by David Austin Walsh
This is what the midwest is like.
Walked into a bar in St. Paul my dad recommended and there’s six Catholic priests sitting at the window table drinking beer.
November 25, 2025 at 8:12 PM
This is what the midwest is like.
Walked into a bar in St. Paul my dad recommended and there’s six Catholic priests sitting at the window table drinking beer.
November 25, 2025 at 7:19 PM
Walked into a bar in St. Paul my dad recommended and there’s six Catholic priests sitting at the window table drinking beer.
Meanwhile on Twitter.
November 24, 2025 at 3:14 PM
Meanwhile on Twitter.
The thing about this meme is that it's obvious the pope is crooning "My Way"
Desperate
deranged
talking in my sleep again
Eyes twitch
retain
a sentimental
something
Looked lorn
and we burned and burned
I was a cinder
body soul
in my dreams…
deranged
talking in my sleep again
Eyes twitch
retain
a sentimental
something
Looked lorn
and we burned and burned
I was a cinder
body soul
in my dreams…
November 23, 2025 at 2:13 PM
The thing about this meme is that it's obvious the pope is crooning "My Way"
The Mamdani-Trump summit is fun but c’mon, it’s not the vindication of the left/right-populist or red/brown alliance stuff.
November 22, 2025 at 4:56 PM
The Mamdani-Trump summit is fun but c’mon, it’s not the vindication of the left/right-populist or red/brown alliance stuff.
Reading Paul Fussell’s CLASS book from the early 1980s and it’s amusing, witty, and insightful but my God does this man need to just embrace Marxist analysis.
November 21, 2025 at 10:07 PM
Reading Paul Fussell’s CLASS book from the early 1980s and it’s amusing, witty, and insightful but my God does this man need to just embrace Marxist analysis.
Currently revising an article which kept getting dinged by reviewers for using the em dash and I'm sorry if I didn't let fucking Richard Spencer ruin my clothing aesthetic I'm not going to let AI ruin my favorite punctuation mark
November 20, 2025 at 11:06 PM
Currently revising an article which kept getting dinged by reviewers for using the em dash and I'm sorry if I didn't let fucking Richard Spencer ruin my clothing aesthetic I'm not going to let AI ruin my favorite punctuation mark
I'm sorry, Trump just openly called for the death of his political enemies? That seems bad.
November 20, 2025 at 9:12 PM
I'm sorry, Trump just openly called for the death of his political enemies? That seems bad.
Woke is back.
#BREAKING: Former Harvard President Lawrence H. Summers will immediately leave his role as an instructor at Harvard while the University investigates his ties to child sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein.
Dhruv T. Patel and Cam N. Srivastava report.
Dhruv T. Patel and Cam N. Srivastava report.
Summers Will Not Finish Semester of Teaching as Harvard Investigates Epstein Ties | News | The Harvard Crimson
Former Harvard President Lawrence H. Summers will immediately leave his role as an instructor at Harvard while the University investigates his ties to child sex trafficker Jeffrey E. Epstein.
www.thecrimson.com
November 20, 2025 at 3:36 AM
Woke is back.
Whenever I read about Jill Lepore, I always think about @melnickjeffrey1.bsky.social's story about how she kept referring to her tenure-track position at Boston University as her "starter job" to her colleagues.
Harvard's prosecutorial culture was "miserable," says Jill Lepore. Even so, she stayed, but has since come to regret her silence. https://chroni.cl/4ihof9O
Why Jill Lepore Nearly Quit Harvard
The prosecutorial culture was “miserable.” She stayed, but has come to regret her silence at the time.
www.chronicle.com
November 19, 2025 at 11:57 PM
Whenever I read about Jill Lepore, I always think about @melnickjeffrey1.bsky.social's story about how she kept referring to her tenure-track position at Boston University as her "starter job" to her colleagues.
In a moment where elite depravity is on display for all to see -- between Nuzzi, Epstein, Summers, and Trump -- remember when the biggest story in the country was that this nice couple liked to go out for a fancy anniversary meal?
November 18, 2025 at 11:58 PM
In a moment where elite depravity is on display for all to see -- between Nuzzi, Epstein, Summers, and Trump -- remember when the biggest story in the country was that this nice couple liked to go out for a fancy anniversary meal?
Surely Nuzzi has agency here?
For my newsletter, I wrote about Olivia Nuzzi and the older men who have taken advantage of her her whole life. www.burnsnotice.com/olivia-nuzzi...
Olivia Nuzzi is an Embarrassment to Journalism
She seamlessly landed a plum role at Vanity Fair and got a sweetheart book deal after breaking a fundamental journalistic ethics rule.
When my co-host Christine Grimaldi and I recorded our October 20...
www.burnsnotice.com
November 18, 2025 at 9:07 PM
Surely Nuzzi has agency here?
Cuomo is a useful analogue here: a lot of the NY Democratic establishment--particularly labor--lined up to endorse him at the beginning of the mayor race because he's vindictive as hell and they were afraid of retaliation if he won. But once it became clear he was flopping, he hemorrhaged support!
It's a key tell that Trump propagandists are now claiming not just that he wants the Epstein files released, but also that they're getting released ONLY BECAUSE HE ORDERED IT TO HAPPEN. For Trump, the *perception* of his mastery over the GOP is what matters most.
newrepublic.com/article/2033...
newrepublic.com/article/2033...
November 18, 2025 at 8:52 PM
Cuomo is a useful analogue here: a lot of the NY Democratic establishment--particularly labor--lined up to endorse him at the beginning of the mayor race because he's vindictive as hell and they were afraid of retaliation if he won. But once it became clear he was flopping, he hemorrhaged support!
👇👇👇
I cannot overemphasize that Marjorie Taylor Greene, Carlson, and Fuentes see a 2028 path to victory that involves building an isolationist populist coalition that traffics heavily in antisemitism and exploits existing negative sentiment against Israel.
We have to be SHARP on the left right now.
We have to be SHARP on the left right now.
November 18, 2025 at 8:36 PM
👇👇👇
I imagine it's not kosher to respond to a book reviewer request with a quid pro quo, i.e. "Yes I will review this book if you assign someone to review mine."
November 18, 2025 at 8:10 PM
I imagine it's not kosher to respond to a book reviewer request with a quid pro quo, i.e. "Yes I will review this book if you assign someone to review mine."
Olivia Nuzzi/Larry Summers crossover when?
November 18, 2025 at 5:52 AM
Olivia Nuzzi/Larry Summers crossover when?
Reposted by David Austin Walsh
The vast body of research that Ken Burns relied upon to make his new documentary on the American Revolution would be practically impossible to be produced today, what with the defunding of humanistic scholarship, the collapse of stable academic jobs, the attack on public history & academic freedom.🗃️
November 17, 2025 at 9:43 PM
The vast body of research that Ken Burns relied upon to make his new documentary on the American Revolution would be practically impossible to be produced today, what with the defunding of humanistic scholarship, the collapse of stable academic jobs, the attack on public history & academic freedom.🗃️
Reposted by David Austin Walsh
If an attractive young woman a third my age didn't want to date me, then why did she ask me for feedback on an economics paper?
by Larry Summers
by Larry Summers
November 17, 2025 at 6:54 PM
If an attractive young woman a third my age didn't want to date me, then why did she ask me for feedback on an economics paper?
by Larry Summers
by Larry Summers
This is why I don't Substack.
Editors have a really hard job, and the good ones can make something unreadable readable, and the great ones can make something unreadable into something good. But they're basically invisible, until someone tries to write without one.
November 17, 2025 at 3:46 PM
This is why I don't Substack.
Interesting to see how the antisemitism of the groypers is in tension with their glorific of sexual assault in the Epstein saga.
November 17, 2025 at 1:54 PM
Interesting to see how the antisemitism of the groypers is in tension with their glorific of sexual assault in the Epstein saga.
*spits out coffee*
November 16, 2025 at 1:14 PM
*spits out coffee*
The whole UVA president saga is a case in point. A bunch of right-wingers successfully conspired with the DOJ to oust the president but were too inept/disorganized to force through the kinds of measures to consolidate their control and now they’re kind of screwed.
I am well aware that they are and will continue to do massive damage to this country
but does it feel like they’re on a glide path to successful authoritarian consolidation anymore? I submit that it does not
but does it feel like they’re on a glide path to successful authoritarian consolidation anymore? I submit that it does not
November 15, 2025 at 1:43 PM
The whole UVA president saga is a case in point. A bunch of right-wingers successfully conspired with the DOJ to oust the president but were too inept/disorganized to force through the kinds of measures to consolidate their control and now they’re kind of screwed.
Reposted by David Austin Walsh
For those of us older millenials, we lived through Bush going from an unstoppable political machine in 2002 that was routinely in the upper sixties and seventies of approval and like fifty positive net, to persona non grata, someone who basically disappeared from public life altogether
the scramble for GOP hopefuls to distance themselves from Trump as the ship goes down is going to be crazy and the most important thing to do is sink all the lifeboats
none of them are allowed to escape his legacy
none of them are allowed to escape his legacy
Trump un-endorses Marjorie Taylor Greene
November 15, 2025 at 1:09 PM
For those of us older millenials, we lived through Bush going from an unstoppable political machine in 2002 that was routinely in the upper sixties and seventies of approval and like fifty positive net, to persona non grata, someone who basically disappeared from public life altogether
I'm giving it a month, tops, before we find out that Nuzzi had a thing with this guy.
Uh. I don't think that Nuzzi piece is "ironic" guys
November 15, 2025 at 2:31 AM
I'm giving it a month, tops, before we find out that Nuzzi had a thing with this guy.
Strikes me that the biggest question facing the American right at the moment is not "Who will be Trump's successor?" but rather "Who will be MAGA's antipope?"
November 15, 2025 at 2:26 AM
Strikes me that the biggest question facing the American right at the moment is not "Who will be Trump's successor?" but rather "Who will be MAGA's antipope?"