Daniel DiMassa, “Marco Rubio in Dante’s Inferno” (2026)

“It hasn’t escaped the commentariat that, among other things, the appeal of Trumpism is rhetorical. ‘I love the way he talks,’ a supporter told Vanity Fair in 2020. ‘I understand him more than any other president.’ Iterations of the same remark have become a refrain over the last decade. There is a rhetorical honesty to Trump that overshadows his myriad falsehoods. What you hear is what you get.

With Trump approaching lame-duck status—not to mention old age—it is safe to say that there will be changes in American political rhetoric. Among those who seem to have taken note is Secretary of State Marco Rubio.

In February, at the Munich Security Conference, Rubio delivered a speech to European heads of state that earned him a standing ovation. Politico described it as a ‘love letter.’ It might actually have felt like one to the Europeans who were chided by J. D. Vance at the same gathering a year earlier. To Republican strategists back in the States, Rubio looked to have emerged successfully from the penumbra of MAGA.

One could make much of Rubio’s interpretation of the West, but there was something exceptional and ironic about the reference to Dante in his oration. This is because, as many readers of Dante know, the most famous episode of the entire Divine Comedy centers on the status of rhetoric.

In the eighth circle of Hell, Dante and Virgil meet Ulysses, who tells of his final adventures in life: Uninterested in domestic life with Penelope, he rounded up the old crew, set sail for the west, reached Gibraltar, and exhorted his men….

Why does Dante place Ulysses so low in Hell? Some commentators argue it is because of his overweening adventurism, but the text supports an alternate view: By using his eloquence to lead men to their deaths, Ulysses had provided fraudulent counsel. […]”.   —-Daniel DiMassa, May 18, 2026, Public Seminar