The Other McCain

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Trump (Predictably) Wins Big in Iowa; MSNBC (Predictably) Melts Down on Air

Posted on | January 16, 2024 | Comments Off on Trump (Predictably) Wins Big in Iowa; MSNBC (Predictably) Melts Down on Air

It has never been my style to say or do anything merely to “own the libs,” as the kids say, but if owning the libs is what you want to do, then voting for Trump is certainly the best way to do it. Congratulations, then, to Iowa GOP caucus-goers, who provoked unprecedented conniptions in the liberal media. MSNBC actually refused to broadcast Trump’s victory speech in Iowa, and CNN cut away from the speech as soon as Trump started talking about the “invasion” at the U.S.-Mexico border.

This kind of reaction says more about the media than it says about Trump. The journalistic establishment is so deep into Trump Derangement Syndrome that they are now actively involved in censorship. And on MSBNC, Rachel Maddow made it clear that what they hate and fear — the enemy they wish to destroy — is not merely Trump, but the millions of people who have voted for Trump:

The big picture take away from that — and I don’t mean to be, again, too dark, as you said, on this. But, it is not — if we are worried about the rise of authoritarianism in this country, we are worried about the potential rise of fascism in this country, worried about our democracy falling to an authoritarian and potentially fascist form of government, the leader who is trying to do that is part of that equation. But people wanting that is a much bigger part of that equation.
And the American electorate is made up of two major parties. One of those parties has been flirting with extremism on the ultra-right for a very long time. They’ve brought them in in a way that they haven’t been central to Republican electoral politics ever before.
Once you have radicalized one major party so that those are the preferences of the people who adhere to your party, the leader’s interchangeable. And yes, Trumpism is sometimes what we call it, the MAGA movement is probably a better way to do it. But there isn’t an authoritarian movement inside Republican politics that isn’t being bamboozled by Trump. They are pushing Trump to get more and more extreme because the more extreme things he says, the more they adhere. And that is coming from a very large proportion of the American right that appears to the Republican Party. That’s why this is a Republican Party problem more than it is the problem of one man.

Does she even hear what she’s saying? Or is she unaware of the meaning of her own words? Perhaps she is confused, but we should not be. What Rachel Maddow was saying Monday night is that if you don’t vote the way she wants you to vote — if you vote Republican, if you oppose the policies she supports — then you are a fascist, an “ultra-right” extremist. There can be no legitimate opposition to Democrats, she is saying.

We must once against congratulate the Iowa voters — all 58,000 of you “ultra-right” people who voted for Trump in the caucuses — and also thank them for inspiring Maddow to say so plainly what we have known for many years: Democrats don’t really believe in democracy, if democracy means Democrats might lose an election.



 

Category: Election, Iowa, MSNBC

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