Donald Trump’s grip on the Republican Party has survived countless political setbacks, a global pandemic, and the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol. It will survive his ugly Monday morning social media post about the death of Rob Reiner too.
However, the immediate backlash to that post, in which Trump suggested that the Hollywood director had somehow brought death upon himself due to his disdain for the president, illustrates just how much that grip has slackened.
So far, in the intervening hours, congressional Republicans and other figures on the right have taken to the internet, without being prompted, to criticize Trump. The critics aren’t just swing-district Republicans, like Rep. Mike Lawler, of New York, or Trump adversaries, like libertarian Rep. Thomas Massie, of Kentucky. Instead, even an otherwise loyal Republican, Rep. Stephanie Bice, of Oklahoma, has chastised the president for the post. “A father and mother were murdered at the hands of their troubled son. We should be lifting the family up in prayer, not making this about politics,” wrote Bice on Twitter.
“Something is changing here.”
I don’t even need to read this article to know it’s pandering bullshit designed to make you think your side is winning and the bad guys are losing, keeping the kayfabe flame alive and burning so we don’t realize we’re all getting played by a group of rich, dumb fucks who have learned how easy it is to keep all our wheels spinning forever, or at least tuned-out enough that we stop paying attention to any news stories. Either result is a win to them.
Yeah, they did this shit in his first term already. “Please continue to do nothing and everything will be alright! This time for realsies!”
sLaMmEd
Copium
If they’re so against this they should start an impeachment procedure and actually have the balls to go through with it for once.
He’s already been successfully impeached twice. Only president in American history to ever manage to rack up two of them, in fact.
Unfortunately, once successfully impeached, it is up to Congress and the Supreme Court to then do something about it.
It’s up to the senate to vote for removal. I don’t think the Supreme Court has a role in the impeachment process.
The chief Justice presides over the Senate trial, so the supreme court isn’t uninvolved, but it’s basically up to the Senate.
Impeachment and removal, at the very least.
Is this that virtue signaling we’ve heard so much about?
If they are pissed, how about impeachment? No? Well, they are not pissed off enough.
This is less of an indication that Trump is losing sway with Republicans, and more of an indication that Trump isn’t the God King they hoped he would be by now.
In their ideal world, elections are suspected and they don’t face backlash for his awful policies. They are seeing that is unlikely to happen, trump doesn’t have the juice they hoped he would. As a result, we’ve seen a major swing in every special election, districts that were historically safe are now tossups.
Everyone knew Trump’s policies were going to be unpopular, they just thought he would consolidate enough power by now for it not to matter.
This headline is bullshit, he still has over 85% of GOP support, Fuck them all.
And fuck these media outlets and “news” orgs who publish this pandering bullshit knowing that only the people who want to see it will have it appear on their feeds.
These are the people destroying our country. Far more than the dumb dipshits who latched onto Trump’s kayfabe storyline, it’s the grifters and liars on both sides of every news story.
Headlines like this are designed to disarm liberal dissent. Trump’s base of support remains unchanged.
Precisely. Just because there is further contraction to the hard-core does not mean the hard core isn’t there.
The hard core have always been there, they are just that much closer to being in YOLO mode - especially among his top supporters who have, e.g. committed war crimes or similar in his service.
Take heart. It’s going to get a whole lot worse before it gets better and we are certainly not just voting our way back to whatever we thought reality was a couple years ago.
100%. I hate this pandering bullshit.
Every single headline, on BOTH sides of every issue:
“People you hate are losing bigly and are getting OWNED by opposition, YOUR side is winning and things are finally about to change!”
This is exactly why Trump won. Not because people looked at these stories and believed them, but because people stopped believing this shit entirely. People have broadly gone numb to this rhetoric and tuned out of news and information because they get it from aggregators and the stuff that rises to the top is invariably “hot stories” people click on, which is always this pandering bullshit.
I have tentatively have Reuters and Associated Press as primary headline news sources, they’re a lot better about neutral reporting, and naturally those stories never make it to the aggregators because they’re far less exciting or emotionally validating.
People voted for the mess we have right now because they didn’t know what was going on, what was true and real, and said that Trump seemed “genuine” and while true to the extent that he’s open about his hate, that should say volumes about how desperate people are for anything remotely “real.”
Agreed - journalism is pretty much dead in the US. Billionaires now own all the major media outlets, which are multinational for-profit corpos mind you, and it’s raw propaganda all the way down.
A few good podcasters, dropsite news, and to a lesser extent the intercept and the guardian, are pretty much all that’s left. It’s a sad, stark reminder of the rampant anti-intellectualism of the modern era.
Nothing is changing. The most honest thing Trump has said is"that he could shoot someone on the street and not lose a vote."
Trump’s supporters don’t change.
The most we can hope for is they die out and nobody else is fooled.
This sounds like the Susan Collins Maneuver.
Furrow some brows; still support the conservative agenda anyway.
It’s going to be a common trend the closer we get to election day, the more Republicans will want trump to shut up for 5 minutes.
If Republicans don’t want people suggesting that Charlie Kirk died of Gun Violence Affinity Syndrome, then they all shouldn’t be supportive of Trump’s words here.
Over in r/conservative, they all think his message was classless and wish he wouldn’t do shit like that, but they say his childishness is a known factor. They don’t like it but they don’t stop supporting him.
“It’s just trump being trump”.
It’s all part of the kayfabe narrative, your main storyline character has to stay consistent and stay controversial so that they’re the center of the story.
But of course if anyone else is “classless” about some Nazi getting shot in the throat, they lose their damn minds.
