Republicans Walking Out Of Trump’s Rally Tonight. Trump Has Played the Media, Here’s How That Will Backfire

New Hampshire might be a replay of Iowa. In Iowa, it was touted that Trump would win by a landslide. And he did. A landslide of what, exactly? A landslide of a fraction of the voters that turned out for the Iowa Caucus, the lowest turnout in 24 years. I think some of that low turnout was due to the bitter cold and I think the rest of it — or perhaps most of it — was due to the quality of the candidates.

As you recall, the final statistics of the Iowa Caucus, according to Meidas Touch, were Trump 51%, DeSantis 21%, Haley 19% and Ramaswamy 7%. If you add the figures together of the Caucus goers who voted for somebody else besides Trump, the number is 47%. So, Trump’s landslide consists of a small segment of registered Republicans and half of them wanted somebody else. Now, take a look at tonight’s New Hampshire rally and you’ll understand why this is.

Sad! https://t.co/ATVG4p3V9n

— MeidasTouch (@MeidasTouch) January 21, 2024

He made an interesting comment right there at the end, “DeSanctus is pulling out of Nevada.” Interesting. Because DeSantis has also canceled his appearances on the Sunday shows. He’s got to suspend his campaign. As I wrote here a few days ago, Jonathan Last of the Triad is speculating that DeSantis has no more money. You can’t campaign with no money. We’ll talk about that in greater length but right now let’s stay focused on Trump and people walking out.

Agreed, MAGA is a very vocal minority.

— GMan (@GeeMan1266) January 21, 2024

And here’s how harmonious it all was tonight in New Hampshire.

Now here’s where we’re getting to the part about how Trump has played the media and the media is now playing Trump. The mechanism of political reporting is broken in this country. That has been the case since 2016. The main stream media didn’t know how to report on Trump. The real reporting on Trump, if the truth be known, was done by the feature magazines, and the political blogs. Outlets like Daily Beast, Slate, The Intercept, and all the political blogs, such as Crooks & Liars, Daily Kos, PoliticusUSA were writing the truth about this clown. (PolitiZoom wasn’t in existence before March, 2018. Murfster and I began writing in 2017 for a blog called Daily Sound and Fury which is now defunct.)

While the MSM was normalizing Trump and characterizing everything in their horserace terms, which is the essence of political reporting, they failed to identify the salient fact that the man was not normal and that he was insane. As an executive at CBS said, “Trump is bad for the country but good for CBS.” So the media played his game and helped him win in 2016.

Now, just the opposite is happening. The media is still playing Donald Trump’s game — but this time it’s going to backfire. They’re still normalizing him and doing the horserace thingy. But now, it’s going to blow up in Trump’s face. Very simply, yes, Trump is “leading” in these polls. But he’s leading in a political party that is on the way to collapse, even as he himself is on the way to collapse.

The polling numbers he’s pulling would be impressive indeed in a normal system. We weren’t in much of a normal system in 2016, when the GOP decided to self-immolate and put Trump on their ballot. And self-immolate they have. It simply didn’t take place in 2016. In 2016 the novelty act of Trump worked, a lot of things worked. The vagueries of the electoral college worked in Trump’s favor, the fact that right-wing media had been trashing Hillary for 20 years, worked in Trump’s favor, the fact that Obama had been in office for eight years and the pendulum of politics usually swings to the opposing party as a matter of course, worked in Trump’s favor.

He didn’t have any of that working for him in 2020 and that’s why he lost. Joe Biden is not Hillary. Trump had a disastrous four years in office. He demonstrated conclusively that he was a bag of wind and could fix nothing. So he had no platform to run on for a second term. The electoral college still worked in his favor, otherwise he wouldn’t have gotten even the votes he did, because he lost the popular vote by even more in 2020 than in 2016.

Then, as well you know, the Trump brand has managed to cause the GOP to lose in 2018, 2020, 2022, plus all the special elections. The GOP hangs onto the House by the barest sliver and a lot of their fringe candidates may depart in 2024 — if we’re lucky.

But the MSM still plays up Trump as a legitimate candidate and talks about his “landslides.” He may have another landslide in New Hampshire. Right now the stats are: Trump leads Haley 53% to 36%.

DeSantis is in the basement, where he belongs, at 7 percent. Another 5 percent prefer another candidate, are undecided or refused to answer. Let’s do the arithmetic. 7 plus 5 plus 36 = 48%. 48% is more or less half. So, another landslide in New Hampshire could be the same thing as the Iowa Caucus. Half of the Republicans who bother to caucus (and let’s see how the turnouts compare with turnouts of yore) won’t vote for Trump.

So Trump is basically king of an anthill, not a mountain. Because it’s clear as glass that if you have half of your party voting against you already, you’re not likely to do well in the general election.

Donald Trump was a circus freak side show. He managed to put one over on the electorate in 2016. This is not 2016. He’s not only a failed one-term president, he is an adjudicated rapist and at the end of this month he may lose the privilege of doing business in the State of New York — and be fined $370 million bucks in the bargain. He will almost assuredly lose or sell Trump Tower. We don’t know what could happen to Mar-a-Lago but since he claims it’s worth as much as castles in Europe, great. We hope he finds a buyer that will give him a billion dollars for the place. Lots of luck with that. And hey, some Saudi prince, maybe MBS himself, might buy the place for shits and giggles. Who knows?