We’ve seen evidence that the extremes of Trumpism are falling out of favor with some voters in our community. However, whether most voters are indeed tiring of Trump’s schtick and grift isn’t as easy to pin down as some anti-MAGA pundits profess it is.
If you tend to get sucked down YouTube rabbit holes as often I do (don’t deny it), then you’re likely aware of the myriad of podcasts, video essays, and shorts, with titles like this:
Progressive pundits insist that Trump’s latest, perhaps most blatant, graft – accepting a $400 million plane from Qatar – is the straw that has broken the MAGA camel’s back, resulting in en masse dismay with the president, ending nearly a decade of their being duped by what what the rest of have always known was a con.
However, is MAGA really “melting down” over Trump’s plan to take ownership of a plane that he says will serve as Air Force One? This gaudy, gold-plated sky palace will surely be riddled with so many listening devices that the Qataris and their allies will know precisely how many times Trump farts on during a trans-Atlantic flight.
[Sorry about the stomach-churning example – but you get the point.]
Yet, they don’t seem to care.
As much as you and I would love to announce that the tide has finally turned against Trump and MAGA grift, I’m afraid to say that ain’t the case.
As we have learned over the last decade of norm-shattering American politics, Trump is good at riding out scandals (with a lot of help from a robust and powerful right-wing news media apparatus) and that progressive pontificators en large don’t know shit about the people in which they regularly opine.
And it’s not just the former- and current- Obama acolytes that think this way.
Take the Bulwark, for example. For those who don’t know, the Bulwark was founded by traditional Republicans exiled from the party in the Trump era. Their Reagan-esque ideals have no place in the populist MAGA World despite having stolen the “Make America Great Again” motto from The Gipper.
I watch their analyses often, not because I always agree with them, though sometimes I do. And I am often amazed at how woefully out of touch they are with America and its inhabitants.
Take this interview headline for example:
“Most Obvious Corruption Ever,” they write about Trump’s Qatari plane deal, as if such a proclamation carried the same veracity as the color of the sky and day of the week, something on which most, if not all, of us can agree on, even in the deep-fake, AI era.
To this I must object as full-throatedly as I can:
The fuck it is obvious!
To about a good third of voting Americans, the corrupt act of accepting the Qatari plane, a blatant bribe for the business Trump and his sons are doing with them, even though they support Hamas and Trump has previously criticized them for those ties.
To them, the gift of a plane from a questionable source is just smart business because the smart “businessman” they elected told them it is.
Both pundits on the left and right like to explain this acceptance of Trump’s righteousness regarding everything he says and does, on their being brainwashed into joining the “cult” of MAGA.
That’s an easy answer, attempting to explain away a greater phenomenon while employing a term many of us don’t fully understand: What exactly is a “cult?”
I can make a pretty good case for Catholicism being a “cult” considering its obsession with eating and drinking the blood of its founder (by the way, did you know I went to the same university as the new pope?) though won’t here because that’s a whole other discussion for another time.
Belief in Trump’s do-no-wrongedness in the minds of many isn’t as simple as brainwashing in service to a “cult” would have us believe for two reasons, I think:
- I’d hazard a guess that some Trump supporters know they’ve been swindled and can’t bring themselves to admit it. They bought the ticket to the discount Caribbean cruise and are determined to tell everyone they’ve been having a wonderful time despite being confined to their cabins with bowl-rupturing, chronic diarrhea.
- Others cannot see a scam in action. Many of us can’t – myself included. I’ve been duped out of so much money by so-called friends and supposed loved ones, you’d think I was clinically brain dead (jury might still be out on me, but I digress).
It’s often hard to see, let alone admit the error of one’s ways, until it is too late to do anything about it. Chalk it up to pride, ignorance, or plain-old stupidity.
That’s how Trump keeps getting away with it, and likely will, for the foreseeable future.
