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He already looks like a walking corpse. His brothers have died at younger ages than he has. Imagine what his inaugural speech will sound like at 1.5 hours on one of the coldest days of the year.

I don’t want sound like a conspiracy theorist but isn’t it kind of weird we haven’t seen Trump for a week? Last time he was turning these cabinet announcements into media events and bragging about “the best people.” You couldn’t get the dude out from in front of the cameras. This time, it’s press releases on Truth Social and not really much else. It’s just weird. What’s going on?

Also, I can’t imagine Rubio and Vance not trying to undermine each other. Both of them want to run in 2028 and both want to add to an executive resume. Rubio is more experienced and connected politically but Vance is smarter and connected to MAGA. Rubio has more to lose if he fails but Vance is banking on inheriting MAGA. Also, I wouldn’t be surprised if Trump knows this. Like I said somewhere before, he likes having his underlings battle each other.

It’s Wiles’s job to control access to him. It’s hard to see where she stands, but considering her background she is probably there to be the funnel for the “we still need careers after Trump” Republicans. I imagine she’ll probably keep the crazier elements out of the Oval Office but he is going to spend most of his time in Mara Lago where he gets ideas from whoever is sitting next to him at dinner at any given night. I giver her 3 months, 6 max, unless she’s doing the whole shadow presidency with Vance — who unlike Trump is interested in doing the actual job, unfortunately.

Could be he’s so brain addled that he’s just handed things off to his inner circle and is either not interested or capable of doing the actual work.

He still wants to be president one day so I expect him to be watching out for himself. I’ve heard he’s been referred to as a “ratifier” because he will apparently throw anyone under the bus if he think it benefits him. He’ll be a good barometer for how much chaos is going on behind the scenes. I think the next big thing is going to be watching who replaces Rubio and Vance and how the special elections go without Trump on the ballot.

That’s not true. There are no shortage of billionaires that support the Democrats and progressive politics. They just don’t have much of an audience because people don’t like their messengers. They need people out there that sound like Bill Burr, Snoop Dogg or Larry the Cable Guy instead of some gender studies professor or some self righteous activist that never got their hands dirty. If you have more radical ideas in mind, then you’re out of touch. Socialism is dead and never coming back. The only choice is between a state that uses taxes to ensure public welfare or an oligarchy which rich bros get to dictate policy. Anything outside of those bounds are not worth discussing because they won’t happen.

Democrats are still in all those spaces. Fact checkers, ads, Musk … whatever, they don’t really matter. You don’t have any trouble finding Democrat material on any social media. MSNBC works directly with the Democratic Party so, they do have a version of Fox. Just not the viewers. So, Democrats and Republicans have access to the same spaces. One just isn’t as successful as the other. Doesn’t matter if you level the playing field more.

It didn’t work. The media made a big deal of it but “brat” was more like “wat?” for the majority of people that voted. I think it got her the attention of TikTokers but it didn’t get her votes. TikTok might be knocked out of its current spot as king of social media in four years anyway. I think Trump got one thing right. Stick with a single line of messaging, take it everywhere and let your followers do the work. Harris’s messaging was all over the place and I think that might’ve been something that hurt her since people wound up knowing little pieces of her plans. Every time Trump did said something outrageous, Democrats would drop their messaging and go after it. That wasted a lot of time.

What do not have? There’s a TV network (MSNBC), several print publications, influencers on social media and thousands of YouTube channels. They seem to have everything Republicans have except for the number of eyeballs. i don’t think the media apparatus is the problem. The problem may be their delivery or people don’t like their messengers. Maybe Democratic voters simply don’t consume media like Republicans do. Maybe they just need to go into the spaces that Republican eyeballs are at and fight the lions in their den?

War with Iran may be on the horizon. With Trump giving Netanyahu free rein to level the place, it seems the chances of an incident on American soil will shoot up and he will need someone serious in positions that deal with that. I doubt most Republicans have become stupid enough they don’t think they need a serious person in there.

It sounds like common sense on its face but remember, these tests were used during Jim Crow to … you know. A test like that can easily be abused. Like asking a question like “who’s your favorite president” and “do you believe in God?”

You can think that but anyone that says it out loud sounds like an asshole to most people, even if in their head they agree.

VR spaces is where the next generation of teenagers will probably be. That’ll be a new load of outrages and headaches.

They shouldn’t have to talk about pronouns any further than “if it makes you feel good do it.” There’s no need to go down the rabbit hole and giving some gender studies explanation of it which will just make people think pronouns are somehow a Democrat priority. That said, Democrats are not going to win on trans athletes or taking the power away from parents who don’t want their decisions on things like hormone treatment and puberty blockers taken away. That’s one thing, at best, they’ll have to leave to states for now. It’ll probably enrage some people, but sometimes you have to set things aside when it keeps you from winning. I know it’ll piss some people off and harm people, but the choice is no rights under Republicans or 90 percent of the rights you want under Democrats. Under Democrats, you can at least be sure that 10 percent of rights will probably come when society is ready to accept it.

You want every vote you can get. You just don’t need to say “we’re doing this for you Republicans.” They got many Republican voters in 06 and 08 without doing anything more than acknowledging that they’d work with them and Obama saying he’d have a republican in his cabinet. I think they really got complacent in 2012 when they bought into the whole “demographics are destiny” thing. I think they just assumed the growth of the nonwhite population would ensure a permanent majority within a decade. Didn’t pan out and I think the “demographics are destiny” idea is officially dead.

Musk will probably quit when he finds out he’s not surrounded by yes men to tell him all his ideas are great. Dude melted down after what should’ve been predictable questions from Don Lemon.

Whatever Republicans they were going to get, they got in 2020.

I don’t think it’s too terribly different than the Republican domination of the media in the early 00s. The media was different but the right wing still dominated alternative media like the Internet forums and blogs, radio and cable news. Back then it was terrorism, illegal immigration, racism and homophobia … so not much different. Republicans dominated the house and senate by degrees that make today’s split seem insignificant. Eventually, though, people started to actually feel the impacts of Republican’s shitty policies. When people felt it, that’s when things changed. No amount of Fox News and Limbaugh could’ve changed that. Really, the big difference now is that Democrats don’t take the fight to those spaces. Aside from Mayor Pete and Newsom, you don’t see Democrat office holders on Fox News, the manosphere or other places. Democrats have had the media disadvantage from the start of the 21st century. The big difference is now that they seem to believe that they can create their own alternative space and people will come … but they don’t. They’ve got to get back into going into enemy territory.

Trump is the one that amplifies them. He gives them access and they carry his water. DEI, transphobia and whatever they’re harping on now aren’t going to be what people are worried about in the near future. Their shelf life expires for the majority. Plus, people get bored fast when the rage is gone.

You’re saying no Trump needed but everything you said goes back to Trump. He is the one who is at the heart of the woke harping and conspiracy theories because he pushes them nonstop and the people who follow tune into these other media sources to compliment what they get from Trump, not vice versa. There is no one that matches Trump. Not Rogan, not Shapiro and not even Carlson. Without Trump, the heart of Trumpism dies. Others tried to move in and become that after he left office and not even DeSantis came within spitting distance. Without Trump, the rightwing media system will fracture and most of it will likely die. The majority of his followers are not ideologues, they are cult members. Without their leader, cults usually die pretty quickly.

I’m not sure if it is as much as the media environment as it is Trump. If he has one skill, it’s his ability to manipulate the media and getting people to buy into what he’s selling. I don’t think any other Republican can do that because they don’t have his charisma. When he’s no longer a factor, you have a bunch of unlikeable people who sound like politicians whose ideas are shit. The current media environment is built around Trump — right, left and legacy. All bets are off when he is no longer there.

There is a lot of people who keep talking about Democrats being “annihilated” and “finished” but the deficit with the GOP was much greater in the first half of the 00s. Remember 2006 and 2008 where Republicans were decimated to the point where people thought they’d be a permanent minority. Sure, the media environment is different but hard times and disorder always sink in with most people. Biden didn’t have disorder but his poor communication skills and the sidelining of Harris through much of his term allowed that perception to grow. I think the Democrats will learn that lesson about communicating the narrative next time.

Unless we get a new constitution or the US totally falls apart, we’re pretty much stuck with what we have. I don’t think having an executive branch is the problem, I think we just have gotten to a point where presidents can be unchecked. I think Bush II was the real breaking point when the executive was handed so much power after 9/11. I think Germany and Switzerland have two of the best systems when it comes to the executive branches of their government. I think a future government of some sort could combine the two in a way.

The only time Trump really comes close to saying something true is when he projects things onto others.