So much for Donald Trump’s “ironclad grip on the Republican House”
House Republicans have picked Steve Scalise over Jim Jordan as their nominee for Speaker of the House. It doesn’t appear that Scalise currently has the votes to become Speaker, yet Republicans are vowing to hold a floor vote later today anyway. This should be total chaos.
But let’s a take a moment to acknowledge that even after Donald Trump very publicly endorsed Jordan to be the next Speaker, House Republicans went with Scalise. This is just the latest instance of the Republican House doing the opposite of what Trump was demanding.
Trump wanted a government shutdown in May. He didn’t get it. Trump wanted a government shutdown again in September. He didn’t get it. Trump wanted a Biden impeachment vote. He didn’t get it. Trump wanted Jim Jordan to be the next Speaker. He didn’t get it.
We’ve spent all year having to listen to the media and pundit class unanimously tell us, over and over again, that Donald Trump has an ironclad grip on the Republican House. But if you look at the facts and the track record, you can see that at no point has that been true. The media just keeps feeding us that line because it’s good for ratings.
At what point are we going to stop allowing the media to feed us narratives that are plainly false? It’s not just dishonest, it’s dangerous. This Republican House is corrupt and awful in about seventeen different ways, none of which have anything to do with Donald Trump. Yet all of it gets overlooked – and they get away with it – because the media is too busy feeding us a fictional narrative about Trump controlling the Republican House’s every move.
These kinds of fictional doomsday narratives don’t make us “vigilant.” They make us distracted, confused, and vulnerable. These kinds of false media narratives only serve to allow the bad guys to get away with the things they’re really trying to pull. We need to find a way to force the political media to be more honest with these things.
We wouldn’t allow the weather forecaster to feed us phony hype about how we’re about to get hit by a fictional hurricane that doesn’t even exist. We wouldn’t allow the sportscaster to feed us fake game scores. So why do we sit back and allow the political media to feed us fake ratings-driven stories all day long? If anything we should hold the political media to an even higher standard than the rest of the media, not a lower standard.
