At heart we Americans are simple people. That doesn’t mean we’re simple. We’re capable of doing amazing things, and not really even noticing simply because we just decided to do them. Like landing on the moon for instance, or sending a freaking Tonka Toy up to Mars to run around taking pictures of shit. Hell, we live for a challenge.

But because we’re simple folk, we love a good slogan. I like Mike. Have it your way. You deserve a break today. When Smith Barney talks, people listen. And God knows that politics is full of them, 54-40 or fight!. Remember the Maine. Remember Pearl Harbor. Tippecanoe and Tyler too. I like Ike.

And if anybody on the planet understands that, it’s Donald John Trump. After all, he’s spent the last 50 years slavishly branding everything he does. Trump Tower. Trump steaks. The Trump Shuttle. Trump wine. Trump water. Trump! the Game. It goes on and on, like snot from a kid with a runny nose.

And Trump took that lesson into politics with him, using slogans as simple, repetitive mind control, You’re fired! Lock her up! Make America Great Again. They all keyed on two aspects, they all showed toughness, and they all played on emotions.

Which is why Trump is not going to be able to recreate the mass riot he caused at the Capitol on January 6th. Even before all of the votes were counted in the 2020 election Trump, knowing his end was near, engineered the master stroke slogan of his career, Stop! The! Steal! And he hammered that same monolithic message home for two months leading up to January 6th.

Here’s why it was a masterpiece. Trump lost the election, but that’s not the way he played that slogan. Trump spoke of getting robbed, but he took the extra step of personalizing it for his audience.

This is the critical part. Trump lost, but They’re stealing your election! They’re stealing your votes! They’re stealing your country away from you! Trump played on his base’s own sense of personal grievance and victimization to turn them into an angry mob, controllable only by Trump. He made January 6th into a patriotic national imperative.

Fast forward to today. Trump is in imminent danger of being indicted by a Manhattan grand jury, likely on Wednesday, with the announcement likely to come on Thursday. And being Traitor Tot, Trump is once again calling on his wild eyed mob to come to his rescue with violence. But Trump learned the first time, he is now substituting the word protest for the previous fight!, but the meaning is clear enough. He wants mass mayhem in the streets to hopefully intimidate his accusers.

Here’s the problem. Trump isn’t the President anymore, and there’s no election concerned here. Trump is accused of making an illegal hush money payment to a porn star in return for a roll-in-the-hay. And Trump has largely been social media and just plain media absent for the last three years. And now he wants his supporters to take to the streets once again.

Where’s his slogan? Remember, in 2020 Trump was the catalyst, not the reason. Trump summoned and dispatched them by playing on their own feelings, sense of grievance, and nationalism. Trump’s slogans were the catalyst, their own feelings were the reason.

How does Traitor Tot summon them to his side now? What sense of grievance and self pity does Trump tap for tearing off a piece while his wife was nursing their son? Get out and defend me! If they can get me for hiding a side piece, they’ll get you too! If you want me to be your President again in 2024, you gotta get them off of my ass for being a horny old man! If you get me outta this, I promise you I’ll pardon every last one of you when when I take office again in 2025!

That’s why there won’t be any mass uprisings for the Stormy Daniels indictment, the Fulton County indictments, or the federal indictments when they come down. In 2020 ye used his supporters fears, insecurities and nationalism to motivate them to try to keep him in power. In 2023 Trump is not in power anymore, and he has no compelling personal or nationalistic reason to rally them to him again. As they say in Hollywood, What have you done for me lately, baby? 

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7 COMMENTS

  1. I agree with your analysis 100%. Also, and this is a corollary to what you are saying, the insurrectionists at the Capitol felt safe, because they thought Trump would pay legal fees, pardon them, all of it. I don’t know if the MAGAs are stupid enough to go en masse into the streets again, when they see what it got the first group.

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  2. Too many of his “troops” are already in jail. When he made no effort to pardon them before leaving office, his “followers” got the message – he can’t be bothered to take care of them. He may still have followers, but they are not going to do anything that might result in prison time.

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    • Yeah, I imagine the prison terms that have occurred due to Jan 6 have cooled the enthusiasm for riots quite a bit.
      After all, it was fun…but ultimately it wasn’t.

  3. A narcissist is only concerned with himself. Even stupid people, also only able to be concerned with themselves, eventually will feel betrayed. Of course, THAT is the one thing they can count on, i.e., Trump will betray them everytime. I wonder what the message is from behind bars? I bet there are no Letters From the Birmingham Jail!

  4. Yeah it’s already being circulated that this round might be a trap to jail rioters since the last group got jailed even though their leader was in power and could have pardoned them. A lot of the leaders aren’t happy.

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