The Rude Pundit: Why It Matters If Trump Is Dead or Incapacitated Beyond Who Is President

[babylonsister]

https://rudepundit.blogspot.com/2025/09/why-it-matters-if-trump-is-dead-or.html

The Rude Pundit
Proudly lowering the level of political discourse
9/02/2025
Why It Matters If Trump Is Dead or Incapacitated Beyond Who Is President

snip//

Since he lost (no, really, he fucking well lost) in 2020, the speculating punditocracy has wondered if the MAGA (or Trumpist, if you prefer) movement could continue without Trump. The discussion has been around whether or not all this can possibly still go on once Trump is out of the picture, mostly as in not being able to run for president again in 2028, although, you know, that's still to be determined. And if there's one thing we learned after 2020, it's that Trump's presence as a figurehead of the MAGA movement looms large because he can still endorse and bitch endlessly online and at his rallies of the damned. So he'll be there whether or not he's trying to dare the Supreme Court to prevent him from having a third term (or if he just ends elections altogether and stays in power).

That's why, to my mind, the real question is what happens when Trump is really gone, as in not there. I genuinely believe, as I've said before, that this whole thing falls apart without Trump, and everyone around him knows that. If they thought this was sustainable without Trump, they wouldn't be rushing to kiss his ass endlessly and prop him up like a decaying stuffed walrus. The problem with a cult of personality is that without the personality, there is no cult. As I wrote when Trump announced back in 2015 (when I was right about him wrecking the GOP field but wrong about whether he would beat Clinton), "many voters simply will overlook [his many faults and fuckups] because he's the most goddamned entertaining clown in the circus, the only candidate they know, and his pop culture status has given him the aura of earthy wisdom instead of nonsensical shit-tossing." Also, "the voters are fucking dumbasses."

Yes, Trump tapped into their racism, ignited their religious fervor, and fed their fears like they're starving puppies, but the devotion has always been to Trump. You think that all those voters who like the funny TV man are gonna get their asses of their couches to go rally for Vance? This has always been about Trump over everything else. They'll buy his shit, they'll vote for who he endorses, and they'll give up their health and safety for him. They'll turn against their family and neighbors, they'll plaster their houses and cars with memes portraying him as a superhero or Rambo, they'll hate who he tells them to hate and love who they tell them to love, but once he's not there to do it, there is no one to take his place. Not his terrible children. Not any of the Fox "news" troglodytes he's elevated. And certainly not any of the politicians who have latched onto him like desperate remoras on the side of a lumbering whale shark.

You can call me blindly optimistic, even deluded. You can say that he's unleashed something in Americans that will never go away. Yeah, it takes a while for a poison to get out of your system, and it can leave you permanently damaged. But you're alive. It'll take a long time to completely extricate ourselves from his filthy grip - hell, I don't expect to live to see us fully recover - but that starts with him just being fucking gone.

more...

https://rudepundit.blogspot.com/2025/09/why-it-matters-if-trump-is-dead-or.html

[malaise]

1. Love me some Rudie

Rec

[mcar]

2. This might be the best thing Rude has ever written

and I've followed him for 20 years.

Vance/Thiel/Project 2025 are equally as evil. But they ain't cult leaders.

[IbogaProject]

13. Vance has so low a charisma that it is negative

That fool couldn't order donuts in front of a press crew without sounding and looking like an out of touch dweeb.

[mcar]

18. I'd forgotten about that!

[chouchou]

3. Donald Trump pulled the dark sheet off of the hidden ignorant, racist, miscreants.

I started to say Cockroaches but, seems like a sizable population of America is actually worse..

[BurnDoubt]

5. Cockroaches are just doing their job. Don't mix them up with MAGATS. They're honorable and authentic by comparison.

[chouchou]

11. Quite true. Such a shame that they don't look cute and fuzzy. I've heard they really don't like our natural smell

[BaronChocula]

4. I'll play the skeptic

Before trump and birtherism, it was the tea baggers. The tea baggers were a group of white republicans who had been so hopped up on OxyLimbaugh that the idea of a black president made them hunger for a united front. They looked around and jumped on a small bandwagon of fiscally conservative kooks and eventually took over what became the tea bagger movement. Of course that tea bagger movement had nothing to do with fiscal responsibility and everything to do with what Limbaugh stood for which was hating anything liberals supported like unemployment benefits, consumer protection, renewable energy, ya know, crazy stuff.

An unalived trump will leave a vacuum as there is really no heir apparent in maga, but the ooey-gooey, rich, hatred will remain as it has since the way-too-late death of Rush Limbaugh. The fervor of this ilk may eventually wane somewhat, and before that it may go by several other names beyond maga, but some people thought confederacy fever would eventually die, yet here we are.

[ITAL]

10. It's not so much the loons won't be there

It's that Trump was the leader who could actually get them to the polls in droves.

[BaronChocula]

16. True, but I don't think that was the point of piece

He was definitely a poll driver, but the tea bagger/birther/maga movement will continue under some other name going forward from his death. I was responding particularly to this line in the essay:

I genuinely believe, as I've said before, that this whole thing falls apart without Trump, and everyone around him knows that.

Regardless of their electoral enthusiasm, this very old movement will persist. Someone will come up with a catchy name and maga will become FLA (Forgotten Legacy Americans) or COC Bloc (Constitutional Organization of Christians) or something else stupid.

[ShazzieB]

6. I absolutely agree with him about Vance.

Vance got elected to the Senate on Thiles's money and then rode to he White House on Schlump's coattails. He has zero charisma, and even Schlump's devoted followers don't seem to particularly like him. There's no way he'll be able to hold MAGA World together on his own, and Republicans in Congress will never kowtow to him tbe way they do to Schlump. That's why any time someone talks about Schlump dying in office and someone else says, "But then we'd be left with Vance," I'm like, "No worries."

[Nasruddin]

15. I'd be worried

There are a lot of ambitious people being kept under wraps by Trump.
Vance is not going to be able to do that.

These ambitious people have learned from Trump, and know that lawlessness and power grabbing can work. The question is, do any of them have enough charisma to attract a following that would sustain it? The answer is almost anyone other than Vance does.

[ShazzieB]

19. I think Trump had a very unusual mix of traits that enabled him to do what he's done.

And I don't agree that almost anyone other than Vance would have enough charisma to replicate his success. I'm not saying it's not possible that someone could step into his shoes and keep MAGA going, but I believe there are very few people who could pull it off.

That said, predicting the future is a dicey business, and I would be the first to admit that I suck at it. I don't think any of us can fully envision what would happen if Trump was suddenly out of the picture. There could (and probably will) be surprises that none of us can anticipate. The point i was trying to make in my previous post is that Vance himself isn't much of a threat, and that is the one thing I feel pretty confident about.

[tclambert]

7. Implement the "Weekend at Bernie's" presidential plan!

"We need a credible body double for Trump!"
"Quick! Get a walrus and a blond wig!"

[Layzeebeaver]

17. Aha the "Dave" option

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dave_(film)

[summer_in_TX]

8. The Rude Pundit is on the nose with that analysis.

FWIW, Jack Hopkins agrees.

MAGA Dies With Trump: The One Thing Pundits Refuse to Admit

Here’s the brutal truth: MAGA isn’t bigger than Trump. MAGA is Trump.

He’s the spark plug…the circus master…the one man who turned grievance into a political religion. Remove him…and you don’t get a smooth handoff. You get chaos… fragmentation…and erosion.

Yes…the anger will remain. Yes…the authoritarian current in America will keep flowing. But the singular juggernaut we call MAGA? That dissolves the moment he’s gone.

Because when the linchpin is removed…the whole machine comes apart.

Period. End of story.

I am convinced they are right. With Trump 79 and in ill health, and the family history of dementia, I hope and pray he will not last even to the mid-terms.

[boonecreek]

9. Back in 2015,

when Trump announced his candidacy, he said "Political correctness is the number one problem
facing our country today". I wondered what the hell that meant then later realized that he was saying
I'm going to make racism and bigotry acceptable again.

[markodochartaigh]

12. In 2015 the

Republican party was going to have a brokered convention to choose another candidate but they realized that because Trump was so wildly popular among the 80% of their base who are authoritarians they could not win without him. So they put party before country and chose an authoritarian Strong Leader who was not committed to democracy as their candidate. After the tax bill was passed in his first term there was a brief attempt by some Republicans to move away from Trump, but because the support was still there that faded away. After the failed coup attempt there was a drop in support, but when it became apparent that Trump would not face any personal consequences his support rose to what it had been. His supporters didn’t care that he had tried to end democracy in the US, they only cared that he had failed and that he might face consequences.
Now, the Republicans are ramping up their gerrymandering, disenfranchisement, and propaganda to unprecedented levels.

I don't know whether the Republicans and their allied oiligarchs will be able to get their base to drink another flavor of Kool aid once there is no more orange. And it appears that the Republicans are not confident either.

[Nasruddin]

14. Vance

This man's problem is worse than just being the potential successor to a cult figure. He has no ability to hold the room, and no constituency other than some wildly unpopular tech bullshitters.

This makes him Trump's ace in the hole, because (almost) no one is itching for the replacement.

[Joinfortmill]

20. Amen, brother. His death can't come soon enough.