So much for Donald Trump being emboldened
There’s safety in numbers. It’s why the media spent late 2017 and early 2018 almost uniformly insisting that Donald Trump would pardon all his co-conspirators at any minute. It’s why the media spent last month insisting that war with Iran was a foregone conclusion. It doesn’t matter that these types of logicless doomsday predictions are nearly always wrong. When these things inevitably end up not happening, you’re too relieved to notice that the media used these narratives to manipulate you for ratings. And even if you do resent having been played, you’re not going to single out any of the pundits who participated in the nonsense narrative, because they all did.
This brings us to the latest trendy doomsday narrative, which says that Donald Trump is going to be “emboldened” by his sham acquittal, and that this will somehow magically result in him winning in 2020 despite his terrible reelection prospects. If this makes sense to you at all, it’s only because you’ve heard it repeated so many times lately by so many pundits and news outlets. Go search Google News for “Trump” and “emboldened” and you’ll see just how often you’re being fed these two words in the same sentence right now.
When you take a step back and logically examine the “emboldened” narrative, you realize it’s so absurd, it’s almost giggle-worthy. We all know Donald Trump has never been the kind of guy to restrain himself for fear of getting caught. He spent his first three years in office carrying out nonstop dimwitted corrupt schemes, some of which have lined his pockets, many of which have backfired on him politically, and none of which have helped his weak 2020 prospects. There was never any restraint on his part. The notion that he’s now going to become “unrestrained” is absurd. It might be true of someone else in Trump’s position, who previously had been restrained, but it’s obviously not the case with Trump.
Today is Donald Trump’s first day as an acquitted man. Did he spend it being emboldened? Of course not, because that’s not a concept that applies to his particular psychology. Instead he spent the National Prayer Breakfast ranting angrily about Mitt Romney and Nancy Pelosi. Then he held an unhinged White House press conference and started yelling about how impeachment was “bullshit” while making up fake new words like “apprenti.”
This is supposed to be an “emboldened” guy? Yeah right. This is the same Donald Trump as ever. That’s certainly not a good thing, but it’s clear that nothing has changed with him. He’s clinically compelled to be who he is. He’s going to spend the rest of this election cycle whining about his adversaries who have gotten the best of him, behaving stupidly in public, and attempting the same old dimwitted corrupt schemes that he’s been attempting nonstop all along. Unless you think acquittal is going to make Trump a smarter criminal, there’s nothing to see here. It’s the same old nightmare with this guy, not a new and “emboldened” nightmare.
Weeks from now, when it finally becomes crystal clear to the public that this is the same old Donald Trump and nothing about him has changed, we’ll see the media quietly retire the “Trump emboldened” narrative. Most of you won’t even notice. But if this current doomsday narrative prompts any of you spend the next few weeks sulking, instead of getting out there and resisting, you’ll be handing Trump a 2020 advantage. By every single measure, we’re on track to finish Trump off in November. Just about the only way we can lose is if we spend that time acting like we’ve already lost, instead of putting in the work required to win.
