Is Trumpism a Supply or Demand Problem?

By now, you probably don’t need any more mastication about the debate between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump. This was an event that required little after-the-fact explication. Harris deftly maneuvered Trump into displaying his worse qualities and unfitness for office. If you want to see how I weighed in, you can check this out. But it was troubling that two polls taken following the debate that captured the obvious—a majority believed Harris had won—showed that about a third of the viewers said Trump had triumphed. (CNN put the number at 37 percent for debate watchers; YouGov placed it at 31 percent for registered voters.) This gives us a good idea of how many Americans are either part of the Trump cult or susceptible to its pull. It’s not a majority or a plurality, but it’s a large slice. 

Looking at these numbers, I was reminded of a recent New York Times column by David French, a Never Trumper conservative who has had to bear particularly cruel attacks from far-righters for his anti-Trump views. He reported that on a recent trip to Chicago he passed by the Trump tower there, and this triggered a thought:

I was reminded once again that Donald Trump is a singular figure in American politics. There is no one like him, and that means that no one can replace him. While it’s always perilous to make predictions about American politics—or anything else—here’s one that I’m almost certain is correct: If Trump loses in 2024, MAGA will fade. He is the irreplaceable key to its success.

French pointed out to his readers that after a recent column in which he said he was voting for Harris in order “to save conservatism from MAGA,” the MAGA response “was, in essence: You’re fooling yourself. Trump or no Trump, we own the party now.” No, he retorted in this offering: “If Trump loses, MAGA will fade. It will not go away, of course. Reactionary populism is a permanent fixture of American politics, but don’t believe MAGA’s hype. Its national success depends on one man.”

Of course, it is premature to ponder the fate of the GOP and the radical right should Trump lose the election (even after this week’s thrashing). But columnists have to column-ize. (Ditto for newsletter-ists.) And it struck me that French was, in a way, peering through the wrong end of the telescope.

Indeed, Trump is an unparallelled politician: a celebrity reality TV star and billionaire full of braggadocio and personality disorders who somehow convinced tens of millions of angry Americans he is their hero. He does possess unique characteristics—including malignant narcissism and profound dishonesty—that have helped him trounce all GOP rivals and seize control of the party and the MAGA movement, as he has tossed the bloodiest of red meat to our Republican neighbors. Yet at issue here is not supply but demand.

I explained this in my recent book, American Psychosis: A Historical Investigation of How the Republican Party Went Crazy. You cannot have selling without buying. You cannot have a con without a mark who wants to believe the con. Since Trump became a political figure on the right with his championship of the racist birther conspiracy theory, he has been a carnival barker peddling grievance, culture war, hate, bigotry, and paranoia—the same way he has pitched luxury apartments, steaks, vodkas, ties, tea, books (about himself), a board game (about himself), Trump University (a fraud), casinos (that failed), an airline (that failed), a social media platform (that is failing), and, more recently, sneakers, Bibles, pieces of his clothing, NFTs, trading cards, and, yes, crypto.

He has usually found an audience for his junk and his bunk. As I pointed out in American Psychosis, before he entered politics, the conservative movement and the GOP base had been radicalized for decades by an assortment of its leaders and outfits, from Joe McCarthy to Barry Goldwater to Richard Nixon to the New Right and the Religious Right to Ronald Reagan to Pat Robertson to Sarah Palin to the tea party. Repeatedly, significant figures on the right made common cause with extremists to push the crass politics of hate and othering. The basic message has been that liberals, Democrats, progressive activists, civil rights and social justice advocates, feminists, environmentalists, academics, the media, and that entire ilk are all godless commies conspiring to destroy the real America—and they must be annihilated.

Over recent decades, conservatives with big megaphones—think Newt Gingrich, Rush Limbaugh, and subsequently much of Fox News—have pressed increasingly harsh and divisive rhetoric. Bill and Hillary Clinton were murderers. Barack Obama was a secret, born-in-Kenya socialist with a plot to destroy the economy so he could take over as a dictator. A feedback loop was established. Conservative thought leaders dished out the swill, riled up voters, were rewarded with lucrative gigs or votes, and, subsequently, intensified the poison. The impulse to exploit and boost the worst fears of right-leaning voters was incentivized and rewarded.

Trump saw this market opportunity and rushed in with his wares of rage and all his lies. Republican voters had long been encouraged to cultivate a taste for demonization. Trump saw how easy it was to feed this beast and ride it to glory. That is, self-glory. Canny as he can be, he realized there was a demand for Trumpism.

What happens to this demand should he lose? Part of that might depend on what occurs after such a defeat. Will he again generate chaos, chicanery, conflict, and violence? Let’s assume that he does go (somewhat) quietly—granted, a huge assumption. What becomes of MAGA? Without the pitchman, French believes, it withers. He notes that there is “no ready heir to his MAGA crown,” observes that MAGA candidates, such as Kari Lake in Arizona, have not fared well in recent elections, and says MAGA is generally a hot mess of weirdness and scandal (see JD Vance, Tucker Carlson, and Marjorie Taylor Greene).

Will the craving for Trump’s politics of cruelty, carnage, conspiracy, and contempt evaporate? There may be no obvious successor. Yet with Trump gone, the radicalized base of the GOP will still be here. Certainly, there might be disruptive battles within the party among those who desire to claim the throne and no quick and clear resolution. (Tom Cotton versus Ted Cruz!) But the 30 percent or so of Republicans who believe the QAnon conspiracy theory that the government, media, and financial worlds are controlled by a group of Satan-worshipping pedophiles who run a global child sex trafficking operation—a bonkers idea that Trump has legitimized and amplified—are not going away. Nor are the more than half of Republicans who still buy Trump’s lie that he won the 2020 election. And their yearning for that red meat of hate and demonization may well remain.

I understand why French and other anti-Trump conservatives want to view MAGA as an anomaly and tie its dominance on the right to the machinations and success of just one extraordinary man. Get rid of that guy and the GOP has a shot at becoming once more a normal party. This absolves French and other lifelong conservatives of having spent decades within a party as its base was guided by GOP leaders and influencers into its extremism of today. MAGA was not a break from the GOP’s past; it was an evolution. Many anti-Trump right-wingers can’t come to terms with that. (One who has is Stuart Stevens, formerly Mitt Romney’s chief strategist, who acknowledged his own role in the GOP’s devolution in his book, It Was All a Lie.)

Trump is not the cause of the disease that ails French and the rest of us. He sussed out how to capitalize on dangerous sentiments that have been brewing and nurtured for years. He is just the symptom. It’s pretty to think that one election can rid the body politic of this virus. Preventing Trump from returning to power is a first step, but stronger and longer treatment will likely be necessary to cleanse this system of Trumpism.

This week was one of the dumbest weeks on record. I’m not just talking about the many false and idiotic statements Trump made during what (according to him) will be his only debate with Kamala Harris. He deserves a lifetime achievement award for his piece of ignorant rhetoric about Haitian immigrants in Ohio: “In Springfield, they’re eating the dogs...They’re eating the cats. They’re eating, they’re eating the pets.”

This was Trump deploying noxious and debunked disinformation. (Challenged on this point by ABC News host David Muir, Trump replied, “Well, I've seen people on television.”) Despite the lack of evidence of any canine consumption or feline feasting, Trump and his cult kept pushing this racist slur. Among the biggest disseminators of this crap was GOP vice presidential candidate JD Vance, who spread this unconfirmed cockamamie story, even while saying, “It's possible, of course, that all of these rumors will turn out to be false.”

Meanwhile, Trump, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), and other MAGA-heads pumped out memes that contributed to keeping alive a BS tale that apparently generated bomb threats to government agencies and media outlets in Springfield. Dumbass remarks aren’t always funny. They can be damn dangerous.

On CNN, Sen. Markwayne Mullin (R-Okla.) defended Trump spending so much time recently with Laura Loomer, the racist and loony MAGA activist. She was spotted on Trump’s campaign plane before the debate and the morning after. Asked about this, the senator said, “President Trump is really good about surrounding himself with people that give him positive advice and information that is useful to him."

WTF. Loomer is one of the craziest and most hateful influencers of the right. She has described herself as a “proud Islamophobe” and a white nationalist. She has called for the death penalty for Democrats. She has promoted assorted conspiracy theories, asserting that 9/11 was an “inside job.” A few weeks ago, Loomer referred to Harris as "a brain-dead bimbo who sucked so much c**k in order to get to the political position that she's in today."

This week, she tweeted, “If @KamalaHarris wins, the White House will smell like curry & White House speeches will be facilitated via a call center and the American people will only be able to convey their feedback through a customer satisfaction survey at the end of the call that nobody will understand.” That was even too much for Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.), who has been feuding with Loomer. Greene huffed, “This is appalling and extremely racist. It does not represent who we are as Republicans or MAGA. This does not represent President Trump. This type of behavior should not be tolerated ever.” Well, Trump has been tolerating—and fancying Loomer—for years. She is MAGA.

The Harris-Trump debate, as noted, drove Trump to new heights of dumbassery. It also prompted a tsunami of stupid statements from Trump and his acolytes and defenders who whined about the ABC News hosts daring to fact-check Trump (four times) on his biggest whoppers. (How do you know who lost a debate? See who complains about the moderators.) Dave Rubin, the far-right influencer who we learned last week was paid hundreds of thousands of dollars by a covert Russian operation, tweeted, “ABC: American Bullshit Corporation.” Just as would any useful idiot for Moscow.

Megyn Kelly accused Muir and co-moderator Linsey Davis of “openly working to sink Donald Trump.” And Piers Morgan groused, “Trump had a bad night but there’s no doubt the ABC moderators gave him a much harder time than Harris.” Well, that’s what happens when you lie dozens of times. By the way, given that Trump lied about the last election, secretly schemed to overturn the results, and incited an insurrectionist riot to stay in power, he ought to be treated differently than any other politician. Why is that so hard for these folks to understand?

But Lance Wallnau, a Trump fanboy and Christian nationalist evangelical pastor who’s part of the New Apostolic Reformation movement that aims to spark a spiritual war to Christianize America, topped them all by suggesting that Satan rigged the debate against Trump:

When I say “witchcraft” I am talking about what happened tonight. Occult empowered deception, manipulation and domination. That’s what ABC pulled off as moderators, and Kamala’s script handlers set up the kill box. One sided questions and fact checking sealed the box. Witchcraft. It’s not over yet, but something supernatural needs to disrupt this counterfeit momentum because the same public that voted in Obama is voting again and her deception is advancing.

For blaming the devil for Trump’s embarrassingly lousy performance, Wallnau is our winner. The judges declare no black magic was involved in this decision.

There were many hearty responses to the recent Our Land issue on media “sane-washing” of Donald Trump. Kathy Reinhard emailed:

Can you now please interview the New York Times and others? I’d love to see what they have to say. As a co-founder of a nonpartisan and nonprofit political newsletter called Armchair Lehigh Valley, I am completely dumbfounded over how traditional reporting has disappeared.

My argument has been that the problem has been traditional political reporting. Many reporters and editors within the political press cannot break out of their customs—which often includes summing up Trump’s gibberish in a way that makes him seem more coherent than he is—to deal adequately with Trump and the threat he poses to American democracy.  

Harry Freiberg posed a question:

Has any thought been given to the idea of a real conspiracy to elect Trump and initiate Project 2025 that encompasses not just the standard nuts but supposed stalwarts such as the New York Times, the Washington Post, et al.? Yeah, I’m getting old. And probably paranoid, but that doesn’t mean that there isn’t something going on.

This is not a conspiracy. I can tell you that few reporters on the politics beat at the major outlets want Trump returned to power. But the standard operating procedures they follow—which often entails treating him as a regular candidate doing regular candidate things—end up benefitting Trump greatly.

Harvey Berman shared this:

I hope you are recuperating nicely from your surgery. In the opinion of this psychiatrist, "sane washing" is a form of insanity in and of itself. By going to great lengths to deny or minimize Trump's cognitive impairment, the media are willfully deceiving Americans and thereby influencing their votes. That's ironic, since it is theoretically based upon a desire to be even-handed, but it amounts to putting one's thumb on the scale in the interests of preserving the narrative of a horse race. Trump is grossly mentally unfit for the presidency. That should be the number one story in this election campaign. If mainstream media won't do their job and report that, at least we can count on you to spread the word.

Thanks, Harvey. The recovery from my back surgery is proceeding well. And I do what I can.

A bunch of readers expressed their appreciation for my never-ending effort to remind people that Moscow is once again waging covert information warfare against the United States to help Trump win. Several noted they were puzzled why this is not bigger news.

Sandi Meyer emailed:

What if Americans were not so damn gullible? What if they knew how government works and what we have sacrificed to have this government? What if civics was taught in every single year of the 12 grades? The rest of the world has us pegged as spoiled, ignorant, and arrogant. We are easy to fool. The phrase I think of every day is “You don’t know what you have until you lose it.”

I prefer Joni Mitchell: “You don’t know what you got ’til it’s gone.”

Cliff Hughes and I had an exchange over my use of the term “Ministry of Fear” to describe GOP efforts to frighten conservatives into making political donations. Referring to George Orwell’s 1984, he wrote: “The Ministry of Fear reminded me of Trump's rally specialty: Two Minutes Hate, e.g. ‘Lock Her Up.’” I replied: “Reminded me, too. But that was the Ministry of Truth!” He shot back: “The Ministry of Truth Social. What a coincidence. You have a huge following, including me for many years: maybe you could find a use for it.”

Charlotte Dunham sent this message:

Please, please, please, is someone going to cover the voter suppression in Texas? When a state that has a special police unit for detecting voter fraud raids the home of an 80-something Latina activist, something is seriously wrong. Voter fraud is practically nonexistent in Texas, and state Attorney General Ken Paxton knows this. But it provides a convenient excuse to keep Sen. Ted Cruz and other MAGAs in office.

For those not following what has occurred in Texas and Paxton’s raids on Democratic campaigners, here’s a recent report.

Tony Santolla responded to my recent review of Erik Larson’s new book on the start of the Civil War:

As Erik Larson is one of my favorite authors, I recently read The Demon of Unrest. I was stuck over and over by the feeling that history is repeating itself and that we have not really grown as a country. I fear the loss of our democracy and freedoms as we continue down a white nationalist path. This led me to a book by Larson written in 1994 that I somehow missed. Lethal Passage: The Story of a Gun is a chilling piece on gun culture in the US and an apt read as another school shooting has graced the headlines. It is a frightening and disheartening account of our fascination with guns and the ease with which anyone can purchase not only hunting rifles and handguns but assault weapons as well.

Alas, this is a story that never goes out of date.

“Moxie, you seem very relaxed at this moment.”
“She’s got it.”
“Are you sure?”
“No one eats dogs. Who would want to eat a dog? He must be crazy. You could turn it off now.”