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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.
I agree that Trump made himself an exceedingly easy target for criticism, but at the same time I'm under the impression that any sufficiently Republican candidate in power is going to be used as a tool by the mainstream in order to further their cultural agenda.
Even if that candidate is 100% clean and somehow never does or says anything wrong, they're going to use whatever they can construe as even slightly objectionable to rub shit in the Republican party's face. The policies and legislative changes that politician enacts which goes against the mainstream are going to be painted in an unduly negative light, and any dirt they'll find will persist in the news cycle for as long as they need - regardless of if there's any basis to the claim or not. As far as I know they're still doubling down on the claim that Trump colluded with Russia to steal the election, despite that having been thoroughly discredited multiple times.
All of this is to say that I don't think The Guy exists, not as long as the flow of information is so heavily controlled by certain interest groups. The information they'll hear from the very outset is going to be almost entirely negative, and first impressions stick. Eventually, that dislike becomes crystallised, and it's very hard to subsequently change people's minds.
I remember the media trying to make Romney’s dog-transportation and making less use of tax loopholes than average into major scandals, so I can’t say you’re totally wrong, but let’s remember that trump legitimately does have a lot more scandals to his name than Desantis or Pompeo.
Oh I don't disagree with that and never stated otherwise. I was just piggybacking off WhiningCoil's comment to state that I'm extremely doubtful that there is a Republican candidate out there which the mainstream media wouldn't make into a political weapon.
Perhaps this is too pessimistic, but I'm of the opinion that no real sweeping changes are possible as long as one political group continues to have such a stranglehold on media (and academia too) - the threat of "Deviate from accepted behaviour and we'll character assassinate you" is a very powerful sanction to impose on a public figure. It's for this reason that I'm far more interested in changing the informational environment than I am in playing party politics.
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