[insert title here] 2025-26 Election Cycle Thread

[scoobdog]

17 hours ago, katt_goddess said:

Both Miller and Melon are dangerous in their own way because the ear they whisper into is the ear of a petulant toddler who doesn't want to actually do any work but wants to hear how awesome they are and get money. 

Absolutely.

21 hours ago, _lost_username_ said:

Musk had money. Everything else was an illusion. Trump just keeps proving that with every attempt Musk attempts to rally a group of followers that don't exist. Musk's fanbase was totally dependent on Trump, when Trump threw him out, he was done. Everyone hates Musk now, Catturd even turned on him. People make a big deal out of all the money he throws around but it didn't scare Republicans and his third party is dead out of the gate. Musk might've convinced people he was dangerous but then he was just a kid that was passed the steering wheel while sitting on his dad's lap who let him pretend to drive for a bit.

Miller, unlike Musk, is the one driving the car. The guardian had an article about this not too long ago: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/jun/15/trump-immigration-stephen-miller-influence

Look... to say Musk doesn't have a cult of personality is ridiculous.  He does and, prior to his misadventures at DOGE, it was a healthy cult owing much to the fact that he was able to draw from the rich conservative tech sector and still harness the 20 something white males who relate to his social media persona.  He got Trump elected by convincing a lot of these same Gen Zers that Trump was a more stable option than VP Harris.  Whether he could do that now is debatable after Trump gave him a bullhorn to express his own latent white nationalist tendencies, but his downfall is entirely of his own making, not that of either Miller or Trump, because the voting demographic that pushed Trump over the top does is entirely from his CoP and does not include idiots like catturd or Laura Loomer.

The problem here is that you're under the assumption that all disaffected white crybabies are the same.  Miller isn't driving anything, he's acting as an avatar for the ardent racists out there who, in turn, are the ones exerting some kind of force on Trump.  Musk doesn't represent white nationalists, but he does speak to his own bunch of racist followers who, unlike the white nationalists, don't want to advertise their bigotry.  They all agree that women and POC are unfairly taking their privileges away from them; they just don't agree on how to do it.  The truth is we're not hearing from Musk's group because they're not the type to publicly out their racism, but they most certainly haven't gone away either.

The whole third party thing is a farce on its own, but it doesn't say anything about Musk's cult and its reticent devotees.  Neither Trump nor Musk has a cult on par with what we would expect from, say, a Roman emperor (who literally had his own religious institution) or a dictator who would rewrite a constitution so he doesn't contend with elections (something military juntas do frequently).  Whether they want to admit it or not, neither man is loved for themselves, they are loved for what they represent and that adoration can't be completely one-sided.  It's proverbially selling one's soul, only that they didn't have souls to begin with - they were always selfish, arrogant bigots who knew how to channel that bigotry into a message palatable for other closet bigots.  These guys aren't Walt Disney - they aren't hiding themselves to culture an image that is inclusive and all-welcoming.  They're being awful in the open and elements of that awfulness resonate with the people that support them.  If Walt Disney were to come back from the dead and start a political party, it could work because the image is more important than the man and the kind of people that support the image that Walt created could most certainly be good people (though that is a completely different conversation).  Musk's followers are as self centered as he is and there is no way in hell they could ever coalesce around one message while sacrificing some of their own ambitions.

TL;DR - Nobody - Musk, Miller or Trump -  is driving.  That doesn't mean they don't have their own access to a power base.