Donald Trump’s grip on the Republican Party has survived countless political setbacks, a global pandemic, and the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol. It will survive his ugly Monday morning social media post about the death of Rob Reiner too.
However, the immediate backlash to that post, in which Trump suggested that the Hollywood director had somehow brought death upon himself due to his disdain for the president, illustrates just how much that grip has slackened.
So far, in the intervening hours, congressional Republicans and other figures on the right have taken to the internet, without being prompted, to criticize Trump. The critics aren’t just swing-district Republicans, like Rep. Mike Lawler, of New York, or Trump adversaries, like libertarian Rep. Thomas Massie, of Kentucky. Instead, even an otherwise loyal Republican, Rep. Stephanie Bice, of Oklahoma, has chastised the president for the post. “A father and mother were murdered at the hands of their troubled son. We should be lifting the family up in prayer, not making this about politics,” wrote Bice on Twitter.
“Something is changing here.”
I don’t even need to read this article to know it’s pandering bullshit designed to make you think your side is winning and the bad guys are losing, keeping the kayfabe flame alive and burning so we don’t realize we’re all getting played by a group of rich, dumb fucks who have learned how easy it is to keep all our wheels spinning forever, or at least tuned-out enough that we stop paying attention to any news stories. Either result is a win to them.
Yeah, they did this shit in his first term already. “Please continue to do nothing and everything will be alright! This time for realsies!”
Headlines like this are designed to disarm liberal dissent. Trump’s base of support remains unchanged.
100%. I hate this pandering bullshit.
Every single headline, on BOTH sides of every issue:
“People you hate are losing bigly and are getting OWNED by opposition, YOUR side is winning and things are finally about to change!”
This is exactly why Trump won. Not because people looked at these stories and believed them, but because people stopped believing this shit entirely. People have broadly gone numb to this rhetoric and tuned out of news and information because they get it from aggregators and the stuff that rises to the top is invariably “hot stories” people click on, which is always this pandering bullshit.
I have tentatively have Reuters and Associated Press as primary headline news sources, they’re a lot better about neutral reporting, and naturally those stories never make it to the aggregators because they’re far less exciting or emotionally validating.
People voted for the mess we have right now because they didn’t know what was going on, what was true and real, and said that Trump seemed “genuine” and while true to the extent that he’s open about his hate, that should say volumes about how desperate people are for anything remotely “real.”
Agreed - journalism is pretty much dead in the US. Billionaires now own all the major media outlets, which are multinational for-profit corpos mind you, and it’s raw propaganda all the way down.
A few good podcasters, dropsite news, and to a lesser extent the intercept and the guardian, are pretty much all that’s left. It’s a sad, stark reminder of the rampant anti-intellectualism of the modern era.
Precisely. Just because there is further contraction to the hard-core does not mean the hard core isn’t there.
The hard core have always been there, they are just that much closer to being in YOLO mode - especially among his top supporters who have, e.g. committed war crimes or similar in his service.
Take heart. It’s going to get a whole lot worse before it gets better and we are certainly not just voting our way back to whatever we thought reality was a couple years ago.
They’re only mad until their new software (propaganda) update is installed. It’s a recurring pattern. This kind of people are never in good faith. Ever.
Wild to me so many people have that view and just want to stop trying…
Do you even understand that’s the propaganda the oligarchs push the hardest?
That the lines of division they created can never be erased, and we always have to fight along the lines they drew.
And that’s not even getting how if we win in spite of your views being popular, were just siletting ourselves up to fall for it again because your hung up on them being unchangeable, and that almost always means we don’t put enough resources into the next generation to prevent them from falling for the same shit
These people have been supportive of all the exclusively vile shit Trump has been spouting for at least a decade now & just another 1 random vile post is enough for them to have some sort of epiphany and coming clean moment? Like do you genuinely believe this? There’s no middle ground to be reached here.
This post in particular probably won’t cause a wide swing in support, but it will cause a few people to reconsider past beliefs. This might get those people thinking if it was really OK to make fun of the attack on Pelosis husband, and then that might get them to reconsider how they look at Jan 6.
Rising grocery bills will flip more people than this, of course
I’m not saying that the people who change their minds now are good people (I don’t think anyone thinks this) but we need everyone we can get (WITHOUT compromising our core values) when it comes to opposing trump. Every time he fucks up, we need to put the pressure on. Cult deprogramming is difficult, and can’t be done for everyone, but it is possible.
There is only one person you are helping when you preach defeatism and give up early.
For people with this type of world view, it’s not about changing their minds; they need a simple excuse to support what they already are doing or planning to do.
We need to keep supplying them with excuses to abandon Trump. Some of them will latch on to each excuse provided.
just another 1 random vile post is enough for them to have some sort of epiphany and coming clean moment?
Yes…
How the fuck do you not understand that?
Would an idiom help?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Straw_that_broke_the_camel's_back
Like, this a basic logical fallacy, it’s not just relevant here, it’s relative constantly. This is something that should have been taught to you as a child, but we can’t do anything about that now, just moving forward.
Like, if I offered you a dollar to do something unethical, and kept increasing the amount by a dollar till you agreed, the amount you agree to would be the total amount, not just one dollar because that was the most recent increase, the total is what matters.
Does this honestly not make sense to you?
This is the straw? Not an attempted coup, Epstein list, convictions, calls to violence, etc.? Are you the kind of person who believes that Albert Speer was reformed as well? How the fuck do you not understand by now that there’s no negotiating with terrorists?
This is the straw
Holy shit…
You still think it’s just a single straw…
What is so hard about this?
If the last million things weren’t enough for a group fo 100 people. Some of those 100 might just need “one more straw”. Some might need 5 or 6, everyone is different.
But there’s no way I can keep explaining this without coming off incredibly condescendingly. I’m gonna have to throw in the towel here, and in any future exchanges. I truly hope someone else helps you understand this, but I’ll never see if it happens.
Holy shit, you still think this is about “straws”? It’s about the fact that these people are brainwashed/ill-intended and this happens every.single.time something like this comes out about Trump. They can’t defend it momentarily -> new propaganda talking points come out -> back to where we started. But good luck living in that fantasy world of yours. Won’t even talk about your little blocking insinuation cause it’s too juvenile.
Do you even understand that’s the propaganda the oligarchs push the hardest?
They don’t push a narrative that trying is pointless, they are doing the opposite, they are showing pandering bullshit to both sides, every day. It is in corporate interest that we are all fighting each other and hating each other for whatever group we belong to, and then funding those groups and reinforcing those lines of division.
Part of that plan is to constantly push and design algorithms to push pandering news stories for both sides to consume and believe themselves winning against the eeeevil enemy. News stories like this are part of that machine. Nobody on the right saw this story, their version is the complete opposite of your reality, but the people who design these atomized universes know neither side is ever going to cross lines and look at what the other side is seeing.
This situation is not going to change until a better story is introduced, but right now the people controlling the distribution of the stories are the wealthy oligarchs and corporations and donor-class. Our last and only chance for change is slowly, deliberately ripping the foundations out of the political structure they build. Local communities and town and state elections are largely uncontested and produce all the people, representatives and judges who have allowed corporations to have basically unlimited power to do what they want.
This sounds like the Susan Collins Maneuver.
Furrow some brows; still support the conservative agenda anyway.
Nothing is changing. The most honest thing Trump has said is"that he could shoot someone on the street and not lose a vote."
If they’re so against this they should start an impeachment procedure and actually have the balls to go through with it for once.
He’s already been successfully impeached twice. Only president in American history to ever manage to rack up two of them, in fact.
Unfortunately, once successfully impeached, it is up to Congress and the Supreme Court to then do something about it.
It’s up to the senate to vote for removal. I don’t think the Supreme Court has a role in the impeachment process.
The chief Justice presides over the Senate trial, so the supreme court isn’t uninvolved, but it’s basically up to the Senate.
Impeachment and removal, at the very least.
This headline is bullshit, he still has over 85% of GOP support, Fuck them all.
And fuck these media outlets and “news” orgs who publish this pandering bullshit knowing that only the people who want to see it will have it appear on their feeds.
These are the people destroying our country. Far more than the dumb dipshits who latched onto Trump’s kayfabe storyline, it’s the grifters and liars on both sides of every news story.
Over in r/conservative, they all think his message was classless and wish he wouldn’t do shit like that, but they say his childishness is a known factor. They don’t like it but they don’t stop supporting him.
“It’s just trump being trump”.
But of course if anyone else is “classless” about some Nazi getting shot in the throat, they lose their damn minds.
It’s all part of the kayfabe narrative, your main storyline character has to stay consistent and stay controversial so that they’re the center of the story.
If they are pissed, how about impeachment? No? Well, they are not pissed off enough.
Nothing is changing. They might dislike him but they’re falling in line
Trump’s supporters don’t change.
The most we can hope for is they die out and nobody else is fooled.
Is this that virtue signaling we’ve heard so much about?
It’s going to be a common trend the closer we get to election day, the more Republicans will want trump to shut up for 5 minutes.
If Republicans don’t want people suggesting that Charlie Kirk died of Gun Violence Affinity Syndrome, then they all shouldn’t be supportive of Trump’s words here.
Copium
