The WSJ (paywall site)
says bluntly that Trump is responsible for the party’s three consecutive electoral defeats. Trump responded with recycled rhetoric to the effect that everybody but him was responsible for those defeats.
The Trump dung cart is rolling to a stop, with cargo. The one and only main driver he has left is that he may run in 2024. From the look of his legal situation, he’s unlikely to have the time or the money to do that. From the financial debt situation, it may be much worse than that. He’s currently being investigated for tax issues; that’s more, very big, trouble.
…But if there’s one sure thing about Trump, it’s that he’ll focus on single issues rather than the overall situation, every time. That nearby real-world personal black hole he has there isn’t getting any attention at all.
So who’s surprised? He’s a textbook case of “Rewards R Me”. Applause and kudos mean more than an earthquake to this guy. Throughout his presidency, and in fact much of his life, he’s proven he can’t respond effectively to criticism in any form.
Donald Trump is almost entirely a media product. He may or may not exist as a person, but it’s hard to care. His image is a 100% media image. From The Apprentice onward, it’s all a sales pitch.
His 2016 campaign was entirely driven by Cambridge Analytica’s social media projections. He said what he was told to say about whatever subject. He waxed ineloquent on subjects he may or may not have mentioned before in his life.
This is a media product which doesn’t even get its own marketing. FOX and other media gave Trump more totally undeserved coverage than literally anything else happening on Earth for the 2016 campaign and for four years afterwards. His media presence, in fact, was who he was.
It’s also a major vote driver. How many people even cared who or what Trump was, prior to the saturation coverage?
Not anymore. That media presence is now moving on. He can’t make them give him coverage. They’ve got the message. Trump typically starts something with a roar and winds down to a whimper on everything he does. That pattern is repeating in his political situation.
The hostility levels are now murderous and extremely dangerous. Just about anyone with a phone and a lawyer seems to be after him, and they’re going to catch him. He also seems to have antagonized the whole of New York. That’s almost impossible, but he’s done it.
The WSJ, by the way,
has a readership of about 3 million people, and that’s the financial sector, the people who run America’s money. Try telling those people with big money what to do with their time, let alone their money. It’s not easy. If Trump’s telling that audience they don’t exist, it’s not a good look.
