Tommy Tuberville just gave away the game about Donald Trump
Days ago the Senate revealed that it had found a procedural way around Tommy Tuberville’s stunt, and would soon be able to confirm most of the military promotions that he’d been blocking. Shortly before the Senate went ahead and confirmed those promotions yesterday, Tuberville announced that he no longer intended to oppose them. How convenient.
It’s a reminder of what right wing political figures actually care about. For the months that Tuberville was blocking these promotions, he didn’t care that he was portrayed as a villain. He didn’t care how much condemnation he got from the media. All he cared about was that the stunt made him look powerful in the eyes of his right wing supporters. After all, right wingers only care about the perception of power and nothing else. Not good or bad. Not smart or dumb. Not right or wrong. Just powerful or weak.
Once Tuberville realized the promotions were about to go through anyway, he suddenly “announced” that he wasn’t blocking them anymore. That’s because he didn’t want to look like he’d tried and failed to keep blocking the promotions. In the end all he cared about was keeping up the perception that he was powerful enough to block the promotions.
It served as a timely reminder of what right wing politicians do and don’t care about, and what actually motivates them. We have a tendency to take how a normal person would view such things, and apply it to right wing politicians in a way that doesn’t really fit. “He finally came to his senses!” No, that’s not how it works. “Maybe he finally got tired of all the bad press!” No, he wanted the bad press. All he cared about was looking powerful. It’s the one thing that universally appeals to right wing supporters. At the end of the day there is nothing else.
What applies to Tuberville also applies to Donald Trump. Right now there’s a ton of panic on our side about how Trump is going to retake power and become a dictator. Yeah well, guess who put that narrative out there? Trump and his people intentionally put this whole 2025 Project thing out there so that everyone would start yelling “Oh no, Trump is going to become a dictator!” That’s precisely the narrative that Trump wants out there. It makes him look powerful in the eyes of his remaining right wing supporters. It convinces them to ignore his worsening cognitive problems, which make him look weak. It convinces them to keep donating to his faux-campaign. The notion that Trump might still be powerful is what keeps his base fired up. Short of that, right wingers would see Trump as just a has-been who isn’t as powerful as he used to be.
We need to be much more aware of how right wingers actually view things, and of how right wing politicians try to goad us into being the unwitting messengers for the messaging that they want their supporters to hear. Donald Trump is at a point of all time weakness. Every time we sound the alarm about how “dangerously powerful” he is, we’re just making him more dangerously powerful. We have to stop empowering him in that way. We need to paint Trump as being weak. That is the one and only thing that will cause right wingers to finally give up on him.
