Donald Trump is fading
Throughout 2021 we’ve heard endless narratives about how Donald Trump is on the verge of a magic comeback, or is a lock for 2024, or otherwise has us right where he wants us. This has been such a consistent drumbeat from the media and the pundits, you’d think Trump was still President.
But in reality, the facts have been saying the opposite all year. Polling in 2021 has consistently shown that roughly half of Republican voters want someone other than Trump to be the 2024 nominee. This is without any viable Republican alternatives having emerged; Republican voters simply see Trump as washed up and non-viable and would rather roll the dice with whoever is behind door number two.
In addition, Trump’s handpicked candidates in 2021 have had a hard time winning primary races. This hasn’t been surprising, given that Trump tends to pick candidates based on their willingness to kiss his backside, as opposed to their electability. In fact Trump had a difficult time getting his handpicked candidates over the primary hump even when he was still President – a trend that the media almost never acknowledged because it was at odds with their prevailing narrative about Trump always magically getting his way no matter what. But in 2021 that trend has become even more pronounced.
This is all on top of the fact that that Trump has come off as half senile and half dead during his fairly rare public appearances in 2021, making it obvious why his handlers have rarely allowed him to appear in public. And then there’s the fact that he appears to be close to criminal indictment in New York, the recent reports that the January 6th Committee is looking to have the DOJ criminally indict Trump on the federal level, and so on.
Yet all year we’ve kept hearing about how Donald Trump is still the de facto 2024 frontrunner and has an iron clad grip on the Republican Party. It’s not difficult to figure out why we’ve kept hearing these narratives; they’re great for ratings. There’s no better way to scare average Americans into staying tuned in than to convince them that Trump is going to magically retake power no matter what, and that they’re only being “vigilant” if they stare paralyzed at their screen.
But at some point even the most ratings-friendly of false narratives become so obviously false that the media has to give up on them. To her credit, Rachel Maddow used her MSNBC show weeks ago to acknowledge that Donald Trump’s influence is fading. Yes, she was late to the party; this fact has been clear since at least February. But to her credit, she was willing to say it before almost anyone else in the mainstream media was. Now at least one CNN columnist is willing to say the same thing.
It’s not that Donald Trump is someone we can simply ignore. To the contrary, it’s more crucial than ever that we remain focused on his scandals, the congressional and criminal probes into those scandals, and his ongoing downfall. Corrupt people who are thinking about trying to pull a Trump need to see him held accountable for his crimes, so they think better about following in his criminal footsteps.
But the reality is that this hype about Trump being on the verge of a movie-style comeback, or still calling the shots, is merely ratings-driven nonsense. Trump is on his last legs, unable to figure out any way to save himself, and intent on causing as much chaos as possible on his way down. The notion that he’s sitting at Mar-a-Lago, controlling everything with magic levers on his desk, and about to carry out some secret evil genius plan to recapture the White House, is nothing short of laughable.
If you want to be vigilant, and be effective at it, you have to start by acknowledging the facts. When those facts are in our favor, as they overwhelmingly are when it comes to Trump, we have to acknowledge that things are in our favor. Then we can accurately steer our vigilance accordingly. Openly fretting all day about imaginary doomsday scenarios isn’t vigilance; it’s mere performance art. Every one of you reading this is better than that.
