The media goes off the rails as it becomes more clear that Donald Trump is going to prison
Once New York went to the Supreme Court to obtain Donald Trump’s financial records, it was clear that if he lost reelection in 2020, he’d be criminally prosecuted and end up on a path to prison. Trump ending up in prison if he lost was the story of the 2020 election cycle. Yet the media mostly just ignored it, in favor of the more scary and thus more ratings-friendly narrative that if Trump lost reelection he’d somehow just remain in office forever anyway.
Even after Trump was gone from office, the media still mostly ignored the fact that Trump was on a path to a New York prison, and instead chased ratings by baselessly insisting that Trump was going to make some kind of comeback in 2024. But now that the Manhattan District Attorney is ramping up grand jury testimony on his way out the door, and it’s possible he’ll have Trump criminally indicted before he leaves office this month, the media has to worry about what’s going to happen to the “Trump will come back in 2024” ratings cash cow that it was planning to milk throughout 2022 and perhaps 2023. After all, it’s difficult to run for president while you’re under criminal indictment and awaiting trial. It’s even more difficult to run for president once you’re in prison.
Now we’re starting to get the worst parts of that answer. Newsweek just ran an article with the headline “Millions of Angry, Armed Americans Stand Ready to Seize Power If Trump Loses in 2024.” Uh, no. We’re not sure whether to give Newsweek grudging credit for being willing to go so over the top to try to keep milking the “We’re all doomed in 2024 no matter what” narrative, or to just scratch our heads and wonder who’s actually running Newsweek these days.
We’re not going to give Newsweek what it wants by linking to this particular piece of histrionic doomsday clickbait (you can google it if you want), but suffice it to say that millions of armed people are obviously not going to somehow magically seize control of the United States after Trump loses in 2024. The people who come up with this nonsense, in the name of chasing page views, simply have no shame. And, no you’re not being “vigilant” by saying “well, maybe we should take this obviously fictional article seriously just in case.” You’re just being gullible by giving Newsweek the page view that it went to such bad faith extremes to manufacture.
Yet this article does give us some insight into how the media will handle Donald Trump’s now-inevitable indictment and arrest in New York. Instead of acknowledging that it’s a terrible blow to Trump and that it’s (obviously) the end of whatever tiny delusional hope he might have had of a magic political comeback, some major media outlets will just insist even more loudly that Trump will run in 2024 and that (cue the familiar theme) we’re all doomed no matter what.
As always, your job is to be proactive about this nonsense. Learn to factually pick these kinds of doomsday hysteria articles apart. Prepare yourself for the media trying harder than ever to manipulate your worst fears in order to milk more ratings and page views out of Trump’s ghost. Remind yourself that this stuff isn’t real, and is merely a desperate attempt at milking the fading “Trump 2024” narrative for a bit longer. The media is trying to play you with this kind of crap. Don’t play along. We have real battles to fight. “We’re all doomed in 2024 no matter what” is just doomsday fiction, written for effect.
