Axios Rebrands Fascism in Stunning Trump Report: ‘Masculine Maximalism’

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Axios took sane-washing to new heights with a piece of access journalism that rebrands textbook fascism in President Donald Trump’s terms, breathlessly labeling the bulldozing of laws and norms “Masculine maximalism.”

Let me preface this by saying I do think access journalism gets a bad rap. When practiced responsibly, it can be very revealing and valuable to the public. Maggie Haberman often succeeds at this by allowing sources to frame events in their own words, but also providing crucial context and analysis. She will call BS when it is warranted, and even denies the grant of anonymity when it’s not appropriate.

But when it is practiced poorly, access journalism simply becomes a way for journalists to allow themselves to be used as megaphones for whatever source is trying to shape the news. They will package self-serving anonymous quotes together with  friendly, on-the-record quotes. The result is writing that manipulates an unsuspecting audience’s perception of events.

A new column by Axios co-founders Jim VandeHei and Mike Allen falls squarely into the latter category.

The website has long positioned itself as the successor to Politico in the inside-the-Beltway reporting space, and since Trump came back into power, they have been leaning heavily into packaging the new administration as an unstoppable steamroller flattening the Democrats.

The latest from the co-founders is entitled “Behind the Curtain: Masculine maximalism” — a misnomer if ever their was one. Rather than going “behind the curtain,” VandeHei and Allen take the center ring to bark for the Trump circus.

In a particularly lopsided presentation, VandeHei and Allen offer up a bullet-pointed essay on “masculine maximalism” that, by its own description, sounds an awful lot like the dictionary definition of fascism. Some excerpts:

President Trump and Elon Musk, arguably the two most unorthodox and influential American leaders of the 21st century, are practicing and fine-tuning a fused theory of governing power:

Masculine maximalism.
Why it matters: Trump and Musk believe powerfully in maximalist action and language — which is being carried out by strong (mostly) white men — as blunt, uncompromising instruments to prove new limits both to power and what’s possible.

…

The big picture: So much has happened so fast, in so little time, that it’s hard to measure what matters most in the first 24 days of the Trump presidency (not even a month yet!). But stepping way back and appraising the totality of actions, the biggest shift is the instant imposition of this new power theory across all of government and the Republican Party.

…

Both men like to provoke outrage — and outrageous responses. That makes Trump and Musk the center of the national conversation — and baits hyperventilating critics into outrageous responses.

It goes on like that for almost 1,400 words, with quotes from Steve Bannon, Charlie Kirk, Trump, Vice President JD Vance, “administration officials” — and nary a dissenter in sight. No effort is made to contextualize or analyze the merits of Trump’s actions — they are simply framed as demonstrations of “power.”

Their breezy presentation of Trump‘s bulldozing of Congress, the First Amendment, the courts, and the very concept of checks and balances does not include a single syllable of criticism of the fact that these violations are occurring, or that anyone is objecting to them. It’s just straight amplification and flat-out hyping of the regime’s preferred narrative, as it was spoon-fed to them.

It’s actually an insult to even poorly practiced access journalism to refer to this as that. Bad access journalism merely parrots its subjects. This reads like a celebration, passed off as objective analysis.

This is an opinion piece. The views expressed in this article are those of just the author.