President-elect Donald Trump announced this week that he’s appointed former Fox News star Tammy Bruce as spokeswoman for the U.S. Department of State in his second administration.
“It is my great honor,” Trump wrote on Truth Social, “to announce that Tammy Bruce will be joining our incredible Nominee for United States Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, as Spokesperson for the U.S. Department of State.”
On Truth Social, Trump wrote that Bruce “understood the power and importance of MAGA early on,” and noted that she graduated from college (USC, majoring in political science) and was a “liberal activist in the 1990s” before becoming a conservative political pundit.
Note: Bruce was president of the Los Angeles chapter of National Organization for Women (NOW) from 1990 to 1996.
Outstanding choice @HeyTammyBruce is a true professional & patriot pic.twitter.com/RuVKL6NwwO
— Jim Hanson (@JimHansonDC) January 4, 2025
In a 2010 op-ed titled ‘Out, Proud and Conservative,’ Bruce wrote: “when it comes to my comfort level as a conservative who happens to be gay, here’s what I know: while many conservatives are people of faith and their religion promotes a very different point of view than mine on homosexuality (and a few other things!), I have found conservatives to be more tolerant, more curious and more understanding of those who are different to them than I ever did when ensconced in US liberal leadership.”
This week, on X, Bruce has been cementing her MAGA bona fides and sharing posts by fellow MAGA supporters like former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich as he praised Trump for getting House Speaker Mike Johnson re-elected and mega-billionaire DOGE co-chair Elon Musk as he questioned the goings-on at Fort Bragg.
Correct. https://t.co/wPsWOOHOcC
— Tammy Bruce (@HeyTammyBruce) January 3, 2025
[NOTE: When an X user noted that the men responsible for two recent U.S. terror attacks — the fatal Bourbon Street vehicular assault in New Orleans and the Cybertruck explosion outside of the Trump Hotel in Las Vegas — had both served at Fort Bragg, asking “What’s going on Fort Bragg??”, Musk replied “Good question.” Bruce reposted Musk’s comment.]
Good question https://t.co/AuXIf3CZVg
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) January 2, 2025
Note: Bruce is also promoting her new book Fear Itself, in which she writes that “fear is used by the bureaucratic state as a tool to frighten us into compliance and retreat.” Trump wrote a blurb for the book: “Tammy understood Left-wing lunacy as a destructive force long before most others. This is an important book, a MUST READ!”
In her book, Bruce accuses the left of perpetrating a series of destabilizing falsehoods against Americans. The bullet-point list below, quoted from her book description, is an object lesson in the challenges the nation faces in bridging the current chasm between right and left — as her accusations are almost exactly the same as those made about MAGA’s stratagems by its antagonists on the left.
Citing “COVID, climate change, systemic racism, terrorist parents, identity politics, vandalizing language, cancel culture,” Bruce claims “the left’s scam to kill our minds follows a predictable pattern” including:
- Cut us off from our friends and family
- Gaslight us
- Tell us we misremember the past
- Break down our confidence
- Shame us
- Fill us with a fear of everything
If those accusations sound familiar, it’s because both sides use the same rhetoric — and the success of the soundbites depends almost entirely on how the target audience is conditioned to receive them.
While the rightwing Bruce speaks for is triggered by the “shame” she says is a tactic of the left, many marginalized people on the left feel that shame is a conservative tactic, used by conservatives to dehumanize them. Same weapon, different targets.
In another example of the disconnect, the left remains dumbfounded by what it characterizes as the ultimate gaslighting trick — the MAGA narrative that turns January 6, 2021 into a “day of love” that tells anyone who disagrees, using Bruce’s words, that they “misremember the past.”
