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.
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.