Just yesterday (literally, Thursday), Trump was finished. It was so over. The wheels had come off. The long national nightmare had ended. He was vanquished, once and for all.
The drape measuring had begun. The plans for the neocon restoration were set into motion.
Then, unexpectedly, the sun rose on Thursday morning. The September payrolls number came out better than expected. Economic growth is looking strong. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene quits Congress.
Suddenly, doubts begin to creep in. From The Hill newspaper,
Congress rejected Trump’s cover-up of the Epstein files, but it may yet succeed.
Also from The Hill,
The Epstein files are a turning point in the Trump presidency, but it’s not over yet
Wait, I thought it was over. So over. Never been more over.
For at least a decade now, I have subscribed to the idea that had Donald Trump not already existed, it would have been necessary to invent him.
Trump, both circa 2015-16, and in 2024, emerged as a reaction against national decline. He rises like a Phoenix (or a Godzilla) from the ashes. Trump cannot be destroyed with conventional weapons.
I’ve noticed a media pattern in the past few weeks that feels like a reversion to Trump 1.0. A Fake News Outlet (FNO) will make up an issue out of nothing, citing anonymous (nonexistent) “sources,” call it issue “Z.” FNO publishes headlines to the tune, “Administration to implement unpopular Policy Z.” Other outlets pile on, quoting FNO’s exclusive Policy Z bombshell scoops.
The Administration states that there is no Policy Z, There never was and there never will be. Then FNO declares victory in forcing a Policy Z “reversal” and inflicting a humiliating defeat upon the Administration who had counted on a Policy Z win.
Then there is polling about how unpopular Policy Z is among likely mid-term voters. FNO reports how the unpopularity of Policy Z is harming Republicans and Trump.
Then come the stories about the Administration’s Policy Z flip-flops, and how the Administration is unable to get out from under the drumbeat of bad news around Policy Z.
Next, FNO quotes MAGA “influencers” who are livid about the Administration’s obsession with Policy Z and how the Administration has abandoned MAGA issues and principles in its dogged and misguided pursuit of Policy Z. FNO then quotes “typical” Trump voters, who now regret their choice in the wake of the Policy Z scandal.
Keep in mind that Policy Z never existed in the first instance. The only “action” taken by the Administration during this whole process was a one-time denial of plans for Policy Z.
These phenomena remind me of my decades-old and misremembered study of higher mathematics. There exists a tool called the iterative method, where you take an initial value, then apply equations and formulae within a black box, round after round, and eventually it spits out a solution on the other end.
The starting value can be just about anything. The magical machine does all the work, it just needs a place to start.
Here, the initial value is Policy X. Media then work their time-tested formula to produce the preordained answer, which is the destruction of Trump.
Rinse and repeat.
