This past week’s election in America was a stunning victory if you’re a Democrat and a total disaster if you’re Republican – thus far. We still don’t know which party will control the US House of Representatives, but Democrats will keep control of the US Senate.
A few states had election drama with vote-counting again, especially AZ, NV, and CA is very slow too, I’ve seen some right-wing commentary about “stolen election” in AZ from the Trump camp again, but here’s the thing Republicans controlled the legislature and the governorship in AZ before this election. NV, though, was controlled by Democrats, and of course, CA is a Democrat stronghold. This post is going to be about politics and specifically about Trump and the MAGA movement, with a look back to the beginning of Trump’s political career and what I expect.
Former President Trump was floating the “stolen election” spin again, which isn’t surprising since he’s conned his followers into believing in “stolen elections” as a matter of faith – without ever producing any real proof. Then right-wing media starts spinning up Trump’s spin garbage and in the blink of an eye, Trump supporters are all-in on the next Trump spin lie. Due to the endless Trump Show, where Democrats and liberals have lost their minds trying to destroy Trump and Trump supporters have embraced Trump as the only path to “Making America Great Again,” America’s been locked in this same political drama since 2015. Many of his ardent supporters trust in him completely and while there’s been some backlash on the right against Trump for attacking FL governor, Ron DeSantis, after DeSantis scored a stunning victory in FL last week, I expect not much will change in Washington and not much will change with Trump right now.
I fully expect FOX News pundits will be back to being all-in for Trump quickly, despite a few days of criticism of Trump for attacking Ron DeSantis. FOX News has tried to break up with Trump before, but since most of their audience are Trump followers, they always reverse course quickly. And during these rocky periods Trump starts attacking FOX News for its negative coverage and hunting other right-wing news media to sell his Trump Show, without any criticisms. Trump supporters always point out that Trump is unfairly attacked by the left, especially liberal media and it’s certainly true, a whole lot of liberal media sounds like Trump Derangement Syndrome and now even attacking Trump supporters as “MAGA Republicans,” but they’re not the only ones stuck in derangement. Many Trump supporters completely buy into all of this labeling everyone on the right who dares criticize Trump as a RINO or supporting the GOP establishment and Swamp in DC.
During this latest little FOX News/Trump rocky patch, Trump was busy posting statements about it and on November 10th, here’s what he posted:
“If CNN were smart, they’d open up a Conservative network, only have me on, and it would be the most successful network in History. Fox only made it because of me, Twitter only made it because of me, and even Facebook is now in the tubes, having lost almost $90 billion in value since I was taken off, which was considered one of the biggest mistakes in business over the last two years, because with Trump go tens of millions of people who believe in MAGA, who want to Make America Great Again, and Put America First!”
Trump hates CNN and they’re evil, but there’s Trump floating a CNN conservative network that would only have him on. He’s that confident MAGA Republicans are so loyal to him and that he can keep lying to them and conning them forever. Sure harkens back to Trump’s comment way back when, about his followers being so loyal he could shoot someone on 5th Avenue and they’d remain loyal. I suspect many of them have bought into Trump’s con game that much and would happily even follow Trump to enriching “Fake News CNN.”
Trump’s MAGA-selected candidates have been a total electoral disaster – he picked these people only because they were willing to spout his “stolen election” bs.
Tucker Carlson had on Blake Masters Friday night and Masters, a MAGA candidate, with no political experience, lost his senate race to Democrat incumbent, Mark Kelly in the AZ senate race. Masters was spouting the latest Trump spin, blaming Mitch McConnell for his loss, The failure of these MAGA candidates, that Trump promoted, is supposedly all Mitch McConnell’s fault for not pouring money into his campaign and it’s a Trumpworld talking point to rail against McConnell for putting money into Lisa Murkowski’s race against the Trump-backed candidate. That’s the thing – to win national races it’s much more successful to get incumbents re-elected than it is to get people with no political record elected. McConnell, despite Trump attacking him constantly and Dems pouring millions into Amy McGrath, won his reelection by 20 points. He knows a bit more about elections than Trump, that’s for sure, who won 2016 by a fluke, with Hillary being so bogged down by scandals and being a particularly awful candidate, added to which Trump had benefitted mightily from that billions of dollars of free media during the GOP primary. The mythical “GOP Insurgent” Dems and liberal media created in the GOP primary came back to haunt them in the general. And McConnell knows more about how the US Senate operates than Blake Masters. The truth is McConnell-aligned PACs poured way more money into Trump-backed candidates in the general election than Trump did:
“McConnell-aligned super PACs — including SLF, American Crossroads and Faith & Power PAC — have invested a whopping $238 million so far in seven key Senate races. How much has Donald Trump spent? He has raised an eye-watering $161 million this election cycle. But his super PAC, Make America Great Again, Inc., has spent a grand total of . . . $14.8 million on Senate races. To put that in perspective, MAGA Inc.’s total spending across the country is less than McConnell-aligned PACs have spent in any individual race in which they are engaged.”
With Murkowski -it made sense to back an incumbent rather than engage in the reckless and stupid Trump purges of the GOP, trying to rid the GOP of anyone who doesn’t march in lock-step with Trump and kiss his butt. Blake Masters is another one of those Trump-backed candidates with no political experience and in fact, he has no experience of even being a Republican – just like Trump, yet, he’s demanding that McConnell must go. Love him or hate him, McConnell, has been very effective as Senate leader, and has gotten a whole lot of conservative judges confirmed AND has put decades into the GOP – even back when Trump was a NY liberal spending his time with his golfing buddy, Bill Clinton. Since 2015, I’ve believed that Trump entering that race was a Dem dirty trick, so there’s my conspiracy theory.
Why should a guy who lost his Senate race be the person demanding Mitch McConnell be replaced? I’m not even a McConnell fan, but I’m sick to death of the Trump’s lies and endless Trump war against the GOP. Trump has torn the GOP apart and besides his fluke win in 2016, he’s led the GOP to nothing but losses and constant battles against RINOs and the GOPe. Living in GA, I’m sick to death of Trump’s efforts to tear the GOP apart here and I am glad Brian Kemp won a huge victory over Stacy Abrams – DESPITE Trump trying to destroy Kemp. Where’s the anger among MAGA over Trump trying to tear down popular Republicans running for re-election, only because they wouldn’t kiss Trump’s butt? Nope, they’re being led to blame Mitch McConnell for the losses.
Trump’s already fundraising using the Hershel Walker run-off in GA:
Trump automatically gets 90% of those donations he’s raising for Hershel Walker, unless the donor clicks to change that – another Trump grift.
I fully expect Trump and his right-wing media echo-chamber to keep attacking Mitch McConnell, keep lying, and claim the defeat of Trump’s MAGA candidates, even with the terrible economy, was McConnell’s fault and at the same time con his supporters into believing the election wasn’t really that bad and many of them will keep sending Trump money.
I’m a “follow the money person,” because things become clearer when you take a close look at money trails.
A close family member pointed out to me that the Dems poured millions into promoting these extreme MAGA candidates in the primaries, trying to absolve Trump of blame and I reminded her that these candidates wouldn’t have even gotten any traction without Trump endorsing them in the first place. Trump put them in play. The ironic thing is this is exactly what the Democrats did in 2015 too – Bill Clinton ‘Encouraged’ Trump to Run. I still believe that the “GOP Insurgent” was a Democrat-concocted dirty trick that went awry. Trump wasn’t expected to win – just disrupt the 2016 GOP primary.
In 2019, Howard Stern, another Trump crony, who hung out at Trump’s home in FL: Howard Stern: Trump’s candidacy for president was a ‘publicity stunt’ I bring this up, because Dems pouring money on the worst possible candidates in this election is exactly what happened in 2015 too.
Here’s a Nov. 2016 piece: Donald Trump Rode $5 Billion in Free Media to the White House. A large chunk of that money was from liberal media – like CNN and MSNBC, where Trump friends, Joe and Mika had Trump calling in interviews on their show, while demanding other Republican primary candidates had to show up in the studio. CNN and MSNBC were also airing Trump rallies, in their entirety – live. They were conning right-wing America into buying into Trump – “the fighter,” “the great businessman,” “the GOP Insurgent,” while sitting on mountains of dirt about Trump – which they unleashed by late 2015, when Trump became a real threat to Hillary. It was all a Dem dirty trick in the beginning, I believe.
So many Trump-supporters believe in Trump as much as Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker’s supporters believed in them. Those Bakker supporters sent them millions of dollars too. Until enough Trump supporters realize this has all been a huge grift, Trump will remain a powerful force in the GOP and American politics.
I expect Trump to announce his 2024 run this coming week, FOX News will be back to selling Trump as the only GOP hope in 2024, and I expect most of his followers will buy into blaming McConnell and RINOs and GOPe, rather then realize Trump and Democrats pushing these loser MAGA candidates in the GOP primaries is how the GOP got saddled with so many bad candidates and why they lost.
If you’re wondering why Biden and Schumer were hyping J-6 and the threat of MAGA Republicans for months, while downplaying the economic problems, well, wonder no more – it was part of this promote the worst MAGA candidates in the GOP primaries, then pivot and only talk about what a threat they are in the general election (same strategy they used in 2016). I think they probably felt confident that very few of these MAGA candidates could make it across the finish line and with Trump it was guaranteed the GOP would remain in turmoil constantly. He wants the GOP purged of every Republican who isn’t 100% loyal to him.
Trump still has great appeal among his base and so many of them will believe everything he says, plus, unlike these losing MAGA candidates this past week – Trump actually beat the Democrats at their own corrupt spin game once and because of that he remains a potent threat to Democrats and their liberal media mouthpieces – as long as he has some big media selling him.
More to come for sure. Btw, Jim and TammyFaye had little old ladies living on fixed incomes sending them money for years, until they were exposed as frauds and I expect that until people realize that Trump has conned them and is really the guy who loved hanging out with people like Howard Stern and golfing with Bill Clinton, not hanging around working class MAGA people, the era of Trump will continue.
I am totally done with Donald J. Trump.
Update: Well, I decided to add a bit more, because here’s the truth – Trump brought the Dem/liberal media brand of spin information war to the GOP and turned the GOP into an entrenched civil war zone of Trump vs The RINOs/GOPe and has made the party largely dysfunctional. However, while the Dems and liberal media are gloating and celebrating, the other part is they are totally committed to this destructive spin information war and this election will energize them to further escalate the balkanization of America and expand their culture war. Americans will become further radicalized in the process – on both sides. As a conservative, I had hoped for wins on the right in this election, but it’s way more than the outcome of this election that concerns me – it’s the lying and constant manipulation of Americans by this 24/7 media spin war.
While Dems and liberal media politicized how they define “disinformation” and used it as a bludgeon against Trump and Republicans – disinformation is a real problem. First I’m going to mention the problem with clueless media analysts given high profiles.
A lot of right-wing media attention focused on the US Senate race in PA, where Democrats fielded John Fetterman, a man seriously impaired from a stroke. Even questioning his fitness for office led to liberal media and Dem attacks about being “ableist” and discriminating against disabled people, when competency for public office is a completely valid concern. The left-wing media is filled with as many nincompoops as analysts as the right-wing media, truthfully. Katy Tur, a MSNBC host was so ecstatic about Fetterman winning that Senate race, that she suggested he could run for President… And, in the current Democratic Party, where Joe Biden is being managed by his wife, that’s entirely possible. It was the complete lack of awareness of how serious it is to have people holding high office, who are mentally unfit for the office, that surprised me and I can see millions of Democrats getting all in on supporting Fetterman, after watching how they pretend Joe Biden doesn’t have any cognitive problems. While many people on the right were stunned about Democrats being willing to push Fetterman, despite knowing he’s unfit for office, is nothing new though – it’s goes back in the Democratic Party all the way to Woodrow Wilson, who had a stroke as president and his wife took over the presidency basically, while the American people were left in the dark and the media covered it up.
Next, there was the problem with liberals embracing Twitter banning right-wing people willy-nilly and basically using that power as a partisan political tool – big tech giants colluding with a partisan faction to silence the other side, all in the name of “fighting disinformation.” A lot of people on the right expected Elon Musk to become the savior of free speech in America. Well, Musk bought Twitter and he initiated some verification process for people to get blue-checkmarks that was not really verifying accounts. Twitter has been flooded with accounts impersonating other people, companies, government officials and many were fake Elon Musk accounts. While it might seem humorous, this, in my view, could quickly turn into a national security problem. Yesterday, I saw a news report about a fake Twitter account for Eli Lilly, a pharmaceutical company, whose stock plunged after a fake Twitter account tweeted: Fake Eli Lilly Twitter Account Claims Insulin Is Free, Stock Falls 4.37%. That supposed verified accounts aren’t actually verified in any way could cause a lot of havoc, so Twitter halted their new verification program. That a fake account could crash major US companies or cause mass panic is not funny.
There isn’t going to be a one step solution to either the spin information war problem or the very real dangers with large social media platforms – both with how much power they have to control information or how risky it is to have no verification or security checks on official social media accounts for officials, companies, organizations, etc.
Corruption problems in politics and with the media are as old as politics and media, actually. What has alarmed me for decades now about this spin information war is how completely this merging of partisan politics and big media has been able to drive and control public opinion in America. However, the more concerning problem is how many people will share, retweet, and believe in information without doing an iota of research, trying to verify the information, or even being skeptical at all.
I’ve been concerned about this expanding spin information war and the divides it fuels for decades now. I opened Twitter this morning and some liberal lady was spewing invective at MAGA voters – not Trump or Republican candidates – she was spewing at Americans who exercised their right to vote however they wanted. That’s the problem – this spin war has radicalized not just our politics, it’s turned a whole lot of Americans into buying into this Us vs. Them way of thinking too. I bitch about how a lot of the Republican base, since Trump, has become addled conspiracy theorists, who buy into even the most wild conspiracy theories now, but this problem is also within the Democrat base too, where many buy into that “MAGA Republicans” are evil people and must be banished from the public square, monitored by the government, etc. – all for having different political views.
As a conservative, I get more riled up about what’s going on in the right-side of politics, but the same radicalization has happened among the left-side. None of it is good for America and as long as this scorched earth spin information war continues to be lucrative for politicians and media – they’re going to keep running with it and that’s the way bigger threat to America than who won or lost in this election. It’s like we’re on a dangerous road with no guardrails. And I’ll end with that.
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