![]() ![]() As Adam Serwer recently wrote in the New York Times, Republicans view the Democratic coalition of people of color and white liberals as "usurpers" and "Americans they consider unworthy of the name." Their belief that the election was stolen feels true, even if it is not literally true, because they ultimately don't think the people who voted for Biden should have had that right in the first place.īiden himself trotted out the D-word recently, insisting that "the Republican Party is vastly diminished in numbers" after Trump. Anyone who votes against them, therefore, is inherently illegitimate. Like most myths, both religious and secular, Trump's Big Lie speaks more to a deeper belief held by the right, which is that they and they alone deserve to rule. This number remains unchanged since January, despite a total lack of evidence, a multitude of debunkings, and repeated accounts by GOP officials in the states confirming that the election was fair.Įvidence doesn't matter to Trumpers, however, because the Big Lie isn't really about the literal truth about what happened in the 2020 election. Trump is popular mainly because his followers believe that, due to his shamelessness and unending aggression, he's their best vehicle for establishing the authoritarian rule that is their only real hope of retaining control over a changing nation.Ī new poll from Monmouth University shows that 32% of Americans - essentially the Trump base - claim to believe Trump's Big Lie that Biden stole the election. His followers see the country morphing into a more egalitarian and diverse nation, and feel deeply threatened, believing that white conservatives should have an unquestioned right to rule over the rest of us. Trump's appeal has always been about what he represents. That's because Trump supporters, whatever he might like to believe, are not attracted to his non-existent wit or charm. And while it is undoubtedly boring to listen to Trump go on and on with his lame conspiracy theories accusing Biden of stealing the election, the Big Lie has real power to propel Trump to victory in both the 2024 Republican primary and in the race for the White House. They showed up at the polls in 2020 in eye-popping numbers, only beaten because Democratic voters were even more determined to throw Trump out. Trump has always been a tedious, long-winded narcissist, and his fans always get visibly bored listening to his ever-longer bellyaching sessions he calls "speeches." Yet they show up anyway, again and again. ![]() Want more Amanda Marcotte on politics? Subscribe to her newsletter Standing Room Only. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., was even more unsubtle than usual about being a racist weirdo. The crowd was mostly cranks, the kind of people you'll cross a street to avoid being trapped in a conversation with. Trump's speech was a rambling, whiny mess, in which he predictably harped on the Big Lie, and rambled on about the same obsessions he trots out in every speech, right down to the "lock her up" chants aimed at Hillary Clinton in 2016. No doubt, in the eyes of people who are not fascism-curious, the rally in Ohio Saturday was a pathetic-seeming affair. This round of "Trump-is-diminished" reporting follows a similar round just three weeks ago, in which similar stories in the New York Times and Washington Post covered the seeming paradox of Republican politicians cowering in fear of Trump, even though, as Philip Bump of the Post wrote, "his actual voice has been enormously diminished." They are "fearful that losses and a diminished brand could backfire by allowing Democrats to maintain control of the House and Senate and weaken his standing before the next presidential contest," the Post reporters write. On Saturday, Michael Scherer and Josh Dawsey of the Washington Post also reported that "some around him and in senior positions" in the GOP want Trump to be sparing in his endorsements and attempts to get attention by leeching onto state and local campaigns. Trump has become in his post-presidency, and how reliant he is on a smaller group of allies and supporters who have adopted his alternate reality as their own," writes Jeremy Peters of the New York Times. Trump's speech was "low-key, digressive and nearly 90 minutes long," Peters adds, noting that "cores of people left early" due to the tedium. As Heather "Digby" Parton writes, "nobody really cared" beyond the "MAGA faithful." The rally was "reflective of how diminished Mr. The new word of the day to describe Donald Trump in the mainstream media is "diminished." The former president, after weeks of threats, finally had a rally Saturday in Ohio and it was a merely a shadow of what he was able to pull off when he was president. ![]()
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