The Trump media era ends not with a wow but a whisper
For about half an hour Tuesday, a former president of the United States appeared on television to offer his unfiltered assessment of the state of American politics, of foreign policy and of the various controversies flitting around the political world. You probably missed it, because it was Donald Trump offering the same pudding of rhetoric we’ve heard so often to an anchor on the far-right network Newsmax. It was to presidential appearances what a pre-dusk set at the Indiana State Fair would be to Kid Rock.
I heard part of Trump’s spiel and thought about highlighting the ways in which his nonsensical claims about the 2020 election being stolen (it wasn’t) have evolved slightly. I’ve written before about how the Republican Party has seized on the idea that changes made to election processes before the contest were unconstitutional, as a way of implying wrongdoing by Democrats without embracing Trump’s obviously untrue claims about fraud. So Trump has seized on those, too, presenting them as another part of his pride-preserving all-you-can-eat buffet of dishonesty.
There’s still an audience for this, of course. There is still a large group of people eager to hear what he has to say, people who would have come across his Newsmax appearance with the same giddiness as Nelson Muntz stumbling upon an Andy Williams performance. It remains important that Trump is still pushing the same untrue claims about the election (Did you know that Georgians voted for Democratic Senate candidates in January because they were mad Trump lost?) and that there are still people hearing and believing them.
Courtesy Phillip Bump, WAPO
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2021/04/06/trump-media-era-ends-not-with-wow-whisper/
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