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It seems like Trump is getting his twitter back. The weird thing is I think red tribe doesn’t want him to get twitter back. I don’t. Blue tribe will put up a big fight over it but actually be very happy if he got twitter back. Then they get his tweets to rally against. For now Musks says he’s thinking about it. From a free speech absolutist view he does have to approve it. But I still want him to say no.
https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1593673844996288512?s=46&t=o4yJPOOQnQoAxYXvJuPdlQ
Man, I have such mixed feelings about this.
I really want Trump to get out of the fucking way. He had his shot at being the hero of the populist right, he failed comprehensively. Somehow his enemies were stronger than ever after his tenure, with an even tighter grip on the culture, the levers of power, and the minds of our youth than ever before. His entire presidency was the perfect examples of one step forward, two steps back. He simply was not the guy.
Is Desantis the guy? 70% chance he's not in my estimation. But I'm willing to give him a shot.
I'd heard some talk that after so many Trump backed candidates ate dirt in the midterms, and Desantis fucking cleaned house, that meant America was "over" Trump. But that doesn't necessarily mean he'd lose a Republican Primary. Especially not with a crowded field, and a 30% cut of the base that's ride or die for him. Republicans will have to pull the same shit the DNC pulled on Bernie, and keep some Trump adjacent candidate in the race to try to split his base, while every other nominee falls in line and endorses someone else chosen behind closed doors.
With my luck, Desantis will be the Trump adjacent candidate they use to split the base, and fucking Jeb Bush will be the anointed insider candidate.
Anyways, Trump getting back on twitter is step 1 to growing his reach again. Right now he's so marginalized only that ride or die portion really gets his messages anymore. He doesn't go viral. Barely anybody even knows what he's saying anymore, beyond second hand accounts of his "melt downs" on Truth Social. My only hope is that he has too much pride to come slinking back to Twitter without Elon issuing a personal apology for the terrible way Twitter treated him, and begging him on his hands and knees to please grace Twitter with his genius and insight again. I guess I have to further hope Elon doesn't then go and do just that.
As much as I'm a free speech guy, and thought his banning was patently ridiculous, now that he's gone, I wish he'd just stay gone. But it's looking like he's going to take the RNC down with him every bit as much as Clinton took the DNC down with her in 2016.
He appointed an unprecedented three SCOTUS judges in a single term and others. I would not call that a failure. Did other stuff too. Did he make the left worse? Possible, but correlation not causation. Of course, this was not contingent on Trump per say.
He seems even more of an 'establishment guy' than Trump.
Why would he ask or expect an apology when both he and Elon know it was the old management who banned him.
That was McConnell's victory, not Trump's. Trump wanted people who would be "loyal" to him (he was obsessed about "loyalty" for more than he was concerned with any coherent political philosophy), but his advisors pushed him to trust McConnell. Any Republican president with a heartbeat could have done the same thing.
I wouldn't call Trump "establishment" in any sense, so I agree that Desantis is definitely more establishment than Trump. That said, Trump is a proven failure while Desantis at least has potential.
Trump was willing to appoint conservative culture warriors and give them free reign so long as they were sufficiently loyal to him, personally.
Now sometimes those were clowns, corrupt do-nothings, or both. And a lot of the time he fired competent people for not being loyal enough. But "Mad Dog" Mattis defeated IS, Bill Barr brought back the federal death penalty, Scott Pruitt actually cut environmental regulations, and I doubt any of them would have been allowed to do so by Jeb!, even if they'd been appointed in the first place.
I do agree that had Mitt been elected in 2012, the supreme court would've overturned Roe just the same.
You're giving an awful lot of credit re ISIL to one guy, esp since the timeline is wrong: Wikipedia tells me, "Since 2015, ISIL lost territory in Iraq and Syria, including Tikrit in March and April 2015,[109] Baiji in October,[110] Sinjar in November 2015,[111][112] Ramadi in December 2015,[113] Fallujah in June 2016[114] and Palmyra in March 2017." So, they were on the way to defeat long before Mattis came along.
That's probably true.
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