Is the jig finally up?
For the past year and a half, polling has consistently shown that about half of Republican voters want someone other than Trump in 2024. Those are devastatingly bad numbers for someone who has that big of a name recognition and recent incumbency advantage. Trump has been toast all along. The numbers show that his future political viability ended the minute his goons invaded the Capitol.
For that matter, Trump has consistently had trouble getting Republican voters to turn out for his endorsed candidates in Republican primaries. For every one Trump primary win that the mainstream media has overhyped, he’s had at least one primary loss that went under-reported.
Tuesday’s January 6th public hearing was devastating for Trump in terms of proving his guilt. Then on Tuesday night, Trump’s endorsed candidates once again lost more Republican primary races than they won. On Wednesday, MSNBC finally put a chyron on the screen suggesting that Trump’s hold on Republicans “could be slipping.”
It’s great that MSNBC is finally coming closer to acknowledging the factual reality that Trump is finished. But if the numbers currently say that Trump is finished, then the numbers also said he was finished a year and a half ago. Nothing has changed, beyond the fact that Trump’s year and a half of incoherent whining has done nothing to boost his 2024 numbers into viable territory.
But if nothing else, perhaps the mainstream media will finally stop trying to chase ratings by overhyping an imaginary “Trump 2024” narrative. As I’ve been trying to point out to anyone who will listen for the past year and a half, the biggest threat in 2024 is not a depleted Donald Trump, or even an overhyped Ron DeSantis. It’s the clown car of terrible people who will run for President as Republicans in 2024, all of whom will be insufficiently vetted while the media overhypes Trump and/or DeSantis. We need to focus on actual 2024 threats, not the scary bedtime story that the ghost of Trump is going to rise up and drown us all in ketchup.
For the most part, the mainstream media will always push whatever narratives are going to keep the most eyeballs tuned in. If the media is indeed starting to give up on the “Trump 2024” narrative, it’ll be because Trump’s long running non-viability is now so obvious to audiences, the media doesn’t think it can keep hyping Trump 2024 and retain credibility with viewers.
One thing to keep in mind: if the mainstream media is always going to push whatever narratives it thinks will keep viewers tuned in, that means viewers can control what the media does and doesn’t cover. If viewers educate themselves enough to know which narratives are real or fictional, and they vote with their eyeballs accordingly, the media will ultimately have to steer itself toward more truthful narratives so that audiences will stick around. Knowledge is power. Let’s use it.
