TRUMP WILL NEVER CHANGE

Donald Trump has long been able to manipulate the MSM’s normalization mechanism. Most recently there were reports Trump had changed, that he would be different after the attempted assassination. He would become a more normal candidate who would call for unity.

The “normalization” lasted for a whole 17 minutes of Trump’s acceptance speech at the Republican convention, until he went off the teleprompter speech and began playing his greatest hits.

At a rally in St. Cloud, Minnesota, this past Saturday, former president Trump said: “They all say, ‘I think he’s changed. I think he’s changed since two weeks ago. Something affected him.’”

And then he declared, “No, I haven’t changed. Maybe I’ve gotten worse, actually."

The crowd cheered.

Trump, along with his family and supporters, have championed the idea his survival was a sign of divine intervention. People described him as “emotional,” “serene” and “spiritual” since the shooting.

In the scripted first part of his speech at the Republican National Convention, Trump claimed he “had God on my side” during the assassination attempt.

He went on to say “I am running to be president for all of America, not half of America, because there is no victory in winning for half of America.”

To understand how and why this media normalization happens, you need to acknowledge that the major U.S. media in the United States are run by large corporations (my term for them is “the intergalactic widgetmakers”) whose only goal is maximizing profit. The corporate media doesn’t care about democracy, norms, or whether a political leader is damaging society. Don’t believe me? The Executive Editor of the New York Times is on the record in a recent interview that “saving democracy” is not their job and that “democracy” itself is just another issue, like inflation.

Ever since Trump came down his escalator nine years ago, he has done abnormal, bizarre, norm-shattering, and, in some cases, illegal things; the media response was to normalize his behavior.

MSM coverage also depends on structures, narratives, and storylines. A natural impulse is to downplay the unusual and to normalize.

Democrats have spent years in long-winded discussions about political norms and the rule of law. The media and the bulk of the county tuned them out. None of it worked.

That has now changed.

Several months ago, Minnesota Governor Tim Walz started calling Trump and the Republicans “weird.” His bluntness went viral. The Democratic Governors Association started amplifying his accurate description of Trump and his policies.

During an MSNBC interview last week, Walz said, “These are weird people on the other side. They want to take books away. They want to be in your exam room. That's what it comes down to. These are weird ideas. Listen to them speak.”

The Harris campaign picked up on that and began repeating it, making it OK for other Democrats to follow their lead.

This change in attitude was seen on Sunday when Senate majority leader Chuck Shumer went on CBS’ “Face the Nation” on Sunday and tried to imagine what Trump is thinking in light of the growing list of strange scandals that have emerged since Vance was announced as his vice president pick “Donald Trump, I know him, and he’s probably sitting and watching the TV, and every day, it comes out [that] Vance has done something more extreme, more weird, more erratic,” Schumer said."It’s one of the best things he ever did for Democrats."

Schumer then reminded Trump it wasn’t too late to rethink his vice presidential pick.“Now the president has about ten days before the Ohio ballot is locked in, and he has a choice: does he keep Vance on the ticket, where he already has a whole lot of baggage — he’s probably going to be more baggage over the weeks because we’ll hear more things about him — or does he pick someone new? It’s his choice.”

For his part, Vance has continued rearranging the couch cushions on the Titanic. He doubled down on his initial remarks last Friday, saying he had “nothing against cats” but that it was “simply true” that people without kids are less invested in America’s future. When he went on “Sunday Night in America with Trey Gowdy,” the Fox News host practically begged him to apologize for his “childless cat lady” remark from 2021, saying “Those of us who talk for a living make mistakes. We say things that, in hindsight, we might phrase differently, better, or not at all.” Vance’s response was to say “We should pray and have sympathy for people without children.” He went on to say that people who don’t have children can fully participate in American life, softening his earlier statements that the childless have a lesser stake in the country’s future. (Thank you so much, Little Shillbilly, you fuckfaced piece of white trash.)

While Kamala Harris is making the election about “freedom,” for Trump, the only freedom that matters is his personal freedom. He’s acted throughout the campaign with the assumption he was winning. Imagine how destructive he’ll become when he starts to see that he’s headed for defeat, followed by criminal trials, bankruptcy, and final imprisonment.

As for the rest of the GOP, winning or stealing the election is the only way to stave off the fact they are on the wrong side of both history and demographics. What will happen to them when Trump is defeated once and for all? Republicans brought this on themselves. There isn’t much left to rebuild around other than MAGA creeps and Glenn Youngkin posers who will never live down their submission to Trump.

What would a decadent party this do to stave off destruction? A better question is what wouldn’t they do? In the next 99 days, do not be surprised if GOP judges step in to help Republicans tilt the electoral playing field. The mighty Conservatism Inc. noise machine will run louder than ever. Trump’s rabid supporters will become more receptive to calls for political violence.

Donald Trump isn’t mainstream. He is weird. He is a person with extremist views who wants to end democracy. Did I mention he is weird? Democrats need to keep calling him weird to drive the message home to the tens of millions of voters who don’t closely follow politics.

The Harris campaign sees this reality. We’re lucky Kamala’s the one calling the shots because unfortunately, Joe Biden (who I love) wasn’t the guy who could engage in this kind of fight. She has no trouble bringing a gun to a gunfight.

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