Secret congressional codenames revealed during roll call #politics pic.twitter.com/s1zPFBrnMW
— Bad Lip Reading (@BadLipReading) January 12, 2023
Vanity Fair: ““He Is in a Weird Bunker”: Donald Trump’s 2024 Campaign Is Sputtering Out of the Gate”…
Donald Trump may officially be a presidential candidate for the 2024 Republican nomination, but eight weeks into his third presidential run, he’s acting more like a Palm Beach retiree than a White House aspirant. Trump’s virtually invisible campaign––he has yet to hold a rally and rarely leaves Mar-a-Lago––is a topic of much debate and increasing concern among his allies. In recent days, I spoke with a half dozen Republicans close to Trump, and the consensus is that his campaign is a “mess,” to borrow a preferred Trump epithet. “He is in a weird bunker and doesn’t want to go anywhere. Even the inner circle is worried he’s getting no traction at all,” a former Trump administration official said. “Literally nothing. It’s like it’s not even happening,” a prominent Trumpworld figure said when I asked what he was hearing about the campaign. “The early ’22 announcement was a historic flop. Talk about how not to create momentum,” a top GOP strategist said.
There are several theories about why Trump’s campaign has been so underwhelming out of the gate. “Money is a real issue,” the former administration official said. Already, prominent GOP mega-donors, including billionaires Ken Griffin and Stephen Schwarzman, have said they aren’t supporting Trump’s 2024 run. As a presidential candidate, Trump isn’t allowed to tap into the $100 million war chest his various super PACs have amassed since he left the White House, meaning he either has to raise the money himself or spend his own. “A rally is expensive. They cost a half million dollars easily,” a veteran of Trump’s 2016 campaign told me. Trump’s 2024 campaign has yet to file a fundraising report with the Federal Election Commission, but two sources close to Trump told me the money spigot isn’t flowing like it used to. Perhaps that’s why Trump recently promoted a widely mocked NFT collection of Trump superhero trading cards. “That was the most pathetic thing,” the former official said.
Even if the financial situation improves, Trump allies worry he has already committed a series of baffling, self-destructive blunders. “Trump completely overexposed himself with all those stupid midterm endorsements,” another 2016 campaign veteran told me. In November, Trump hosted the Kanye West–Nick Fuentes dinner at Mar-a-Lago. In December, Trump called for the “termination” of the Constitution in a Truth Social post. And this month, Trump enraged his MAGA base by backing Kevin McCarthy for Speaker of the House. An ally of Matt Gaetz said he doesn’t understand why Trump supported McCarthy. “I asked Trump, ‘Why do you stick with this guy?’ And Trump just said, ‘Kevin will be great, you’ll see!’ I really don’t get it.” …
Of course, there are eons of political news cycles before Republicans start casting their votes for a nominee. The original thinking behind getting in so early, according to sources, was to freeze the field so that Trump could run uncontested. “He wanted to get in and lay a marker down,” the adviser said. But recently, with Ron DeSantis and others making noise about running, Trump’s campaign strategy has shifted. According to a source close to the campaign, Trump wants a crowded GOP primary so that he can prevail with his die-hard base (in 2016, Trump faced 16 candidates). “His entire primary strategy is based on getting a plurality,” the source said. “They think he will win because more candidates run.”
Repubs in disarray! Long may they fight amongst themselves.
He prob agrees w some of the Q stuff, most he prob likes seeing tweeted out bc it’s anti-liberal (in multiple meanings of that phrase), & he prob has to approve whatever goes out. But he’s not finding any of it, & he’s prob not seeing it on TV. Someone brings it to him /2
— Dana Houle (@DanaHoule) January 14, 2023
Jim, Foolish Literalist
I’ve been wondering why has hasn’t been on the road. He’s not gonna piss away his own money!
Who else is gonna sort out Starbursts for him? I mean, Scalise might have done it once, but now….?
(also wow! for the football)
Old School
I’ve always assumed the main reason for announcing is that Trump felt doing so would protect him from his legal issues.
buskertype
Half a million??! I would love to hear somebody with real experience in the field respond to this. I have just a little bit of experience with large events and that sounds wildly expensive to me.
craigie
Who is this “Trump” of which you speak?
Shalimar
@buskertype: Security/police overtime is part of the expense. Half a million is in line with the El Paso bill he never paid.
edit: it was $560k.
James E Powell
@Old School:
I thought it was to silence DeSantis & others who may be doing some exploratory, but are not yet willing to come out & say “I’m running against Donald Trump.”
frosty
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: losing the ball on the goal line? Arrgghh!!!
Old School
@James E Powell: The article says that was a reason. He wanted to “freeze the field.”
Ken
@Old School: Suddenly the eternal Baud! 20XX! campaign is cast in a different light.
Suzanne
@Old School: I always assumed that he announced he was running simply because it’s been the only way to get even a little bit of attention in the last few months.
It is just glorious to turn on the TV or open a new browser page and not see his gross, shitty mug every day.
Amir Khalid
TFG caught a lucky break in 2016: he was the shiny new thing in a crowded but lacklustre field of conventional Republicans. He was the best at playground taunts, and many thought that made him the best politician. It’s 2023 now, and he’s been exposed as a self-centred shit-talker with no clue about how to pick an election winner, and more importantly with no coattails. Trumpism has realised it doesn’t need Trump himself. He’s lost his backers, and the money from the voters he’s been bilking all this while is probably drying up too. He may have declared his candidacy, but I think there’s reason to doubt he’ll ever get around to filing the papers.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
He also promised to preserve the social safety net and increase taxes on the rich. People forget that last part especially
at least pre-covid, the Ryan-McConnell tax bill was the biggest hit to his approval rating
JanieM
@Amir Khalid:
From here, 11/15/22:
dmsilev
He’s also eight years older and not exactly living a healthy lifestyle. Plus he had a fairly severe case of COVID. He might well just not have the energy for doing anything beyond golf.
James E Powell
@Amir Khalid:
His lucky break was that the political press hated Hillary Clinton, Comey wanted to harm her to show his bona fides to the right-wingers, and a lot of Americans just will not vote for a woman for president.
RaflW
I think he’s a spent force. Most of the strange crew of people who thought they were going for a wild ride that would end in a profitable loss to that Hillary woman* have moved on, and the guy can at best attract D-list political operatives. Bannon is still about causing problems, but I don’t think he has the pull he once did either.
No, the worry is that a more effective and ruthless autocrat/fascist will beat him in the primary.
*How they think about her, not how I do.
James E Powell
@Old School:
Sorry, I scanned & didn’t see that.
Do you think he froze the field? Who will be the first to declare against him & when will it be? Should we start a pool?
Jim Appleton
@Amir Khalid: My observation in rural Oregon is that the surprisingly large number of folks who still sport Trump Pence signs (as if the two would ever have anything to do with each other again) mainly appear to be bigots.
Amir Khalid
@JanieM:
Oh, dang. Well, I still have my doubts that TFG will try very hard in 2024.
Aussie Sheila
@RaflW:
Yes this. US oligarchs don’t need him so much this time round. Nevertheless, the Dems should hang him around the neck of every and any Republican nominee going forward. I am not worried about Desantis so much, because he is so obviously a right wing troll, but I am worried about a Republican presidential nominee that looks ‘reasonable’, say a popular governor from an ostensibly ‘blue state’.
I am so sick of this flirtation with fascism that has taken hold in the US. It will be the death of many abroad again, even though I know it has killed many usaians at home and will continue to do so.
PatrickG
Well, now I know where the Sanders 2020 campaign staff ended up. /s
Mike in NC
Fat Bastard’s greatest hate rally was the one in Tulsa where only a few thousand MAGAts bothered to show up and neo-Nazi Brad Parscale got fired and went back to Florida to get drunk on his ass. Good times!
danielx
Not to mention that after his record of nonpayment, I suspect his campaign would be asked to put money down before venues will book him.
Redshift
@Amir Khalid:
Also, Fox put on a debate with qualifying and stage position based entirely on polling, at an early point when polling meant nothing but name recognition. Major pollsters told them not to use their polls. He got center stage solely because he’d had a TV show.
Frankensteinbeck
If Trump is not holding rallies, it’s because he can’t. They are the greatest joy of his life, standing on stage imagining he’s Hitler as a crowd roars their love of him and their hate for his enemies.
I can think of three reasons why he might not be able: 1). He can’t afford to, with the sub-possibility that he can’t get big enough crowds to cover the cost. 2). His health is bad. Awful. He can’t be sure he can stand in front of the podium. I don’t think that is true, but it’s on the list. 3). He can’t draw a big enough crowd to convince himself he’s popular anymore. For a man obsessed with crowd size, that would hurt.
Old School
@James E Powell:
Hasn’t John Bolton already announced?
Kelly
A Senator Fetterman tidbit I just noticed. Back in mid December he hired Adam Jentleson, former Deputy Chief of Staff for Harry Reid. Jentleson worked for Reid for 6 years rising from Communications Director to Deputy Chief of Staff. Anybody that worked for Harry Reid has to be a great staffer for a new guy in town.
Aussie Sheila
@Old School: God that’s all we need. Bolton. China US hot war here we come.
Christ almighty, I am so sick of the war hawkery. Make it stop before we all die.
Another Scott
Hakeem Jeffries wrote me an e-mail!!
OMG! There were only 180 minutes left in their mid-month fundraising deadline!!1
(sigh)
Cheers,
Scott.
Kelly
@Jim Appleton: I haven’t recorded a valid sample but there’s a hell of lot of confederate flags flying at homes with Trump flags out here in rural Marion and Linn counties.
Redshift
@Aussie Sheila:
Hmm, who do you have in mind? Maybe I’m forgetting someone, but I can think of the recent governors of Massachusetts and Maryland, who are are nowhere near crazy enough to go anywhere in GOP primaries. Our governor here in Virginia used to be talked of that way, but now that he spent his first year pursuing right-wing hobby-horses instead of anything Virginians want, and campaigning out of state for losing election deniers and other loons. Even the Washington Post columnist who wrote a year ago that he was a reasonable sort who should be the future of the GOP published a column saying “I was wrong.”
Amir Khalid
@Another Scott:
OMG! Did you manage to send your donation in time?
Martin
@Shalimar: What do you need security for. Isn’t everyone there already carrying a gun? Isn’t that the whole point of permissive gun laws?
Martin
@Redshift: Liz Cheney has been effectively pushed out of the party. While the chance of her running is 100%, I’m not sure how to read her chances.
Another Scott
@Amir Khalid: No! I opened the e-mail too late!!
I’m so ashamed.
Cheers,
Scott.
Steeplejack
@Kelly:
I saw that. Jentleson also published a well-regarded book on the workings of the Senate last year—Kill Switch.
sdhays
@Martin: Even if she runs and polls in the double digits among Republicans (big IF’s), would Fox even allow her into the primary debates? I’m guessing whoever wins the food fight over the RNC chair will do whatever they can to make sure she gets absolutely no air.
jonas
I agree Trump is mostly a spent force at this point. He’s not raising the kind of money to allow him to hold big rallies w/o dipping into his own pocket, which he doesn’t want to do because he’s a cheapskate who will only spend OPM on his own ambitions. Moreover, his cheapskate ways are also preventing him from spending $$ to land endorsements and campaign personnel in places like Iowa and New Hampshire. Meanwhile Pompeo, Christie, Haley and DeSantis have people are already on the ground in those places quietly shoring up support. Trump will be met with crickets if he ever bothers to leave Mar-A-Lago to do any real campaigning. Does his private jet even still fly?
prostratedragon
“He wanted to get in and lay a marker down.”
I thought he delegated that sort of thing.
Kent
Also get him the attention that his tortured psychic craves and needs.
gene108
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
The failed Obamacare repeal also hurt him and Republicans. It helped flip the House in 2018.
Also, your first point gets overlooked too often. Trump took a wrecking ball to whatever lies Republicans told themselves about how intellectual conservative ideology was in 2015-2016.
Part of the reason there’s so much Republican infighting is because Trump tore off whatever thin veneer of pretend policy goals Republicans used to unite behind. Now they only have the racism, culture war issues, and whatever ideas right-wing media can feed them.
Kent
Of COURSE they will let her in. It would be huge for ratings. And if FOX (meaning Murdoch) wants to pivot away from Trump they need an assassin to take him down. She fits the bill. I mean, wouldn’t YOU watch those debates just out of train wreck curiosity?
Jackie
Don’t count TFG down and out. If it comes down to him and DeathSantis, TFG wins. But I believe there’ll be more stepping into the ring and enough Deplorables will hand TFG the nomination.
gene108
@Jim Appleton:
I think Pence would happily accept a chance to be Trump’s VP again, after Pence’s presidential bid fails.
theturtlemoves
@Kelly:
My little corner of west Lane doesn’t have the traitor’s flag but there is a house near my gym that inexplicably is adorned with Trump paraphernalia and a Ukrainian flag. I’d assume the dolt doesn’t see the contradiction.
jonas
@Martin: There have been rumors about Cheney teaming up with another “independent conservative” like Ben Sasse or Evan McMullin to mount an alternative to the current Trumpist GOP. Not. Gonna. Happen. To be sure, there are folks out there who would be attracted to a ticket like that, but there’s absolutely no chance that they would get enough support to seriously challenge the wackaloon Republican candidate(s). They may draw enough votes away from it to benefit Democrats, though, but that in and of itself would be enough incentive for any anti-Trump Republicans to still vote against them. Sure, democracy and our whole way of life is at stake, but they’d still rather face the abyss than know their tax dollars are subsidizing renewable commie energy.
Kent
@Jim Appleton:
I’ve lived most of my life in the Pacific Northwest. If you take Portland and the two college towns out of Oregon then you are basically left with Arkansas.
jonas
@theturtlemoves:
Sort of like the semi-literate Tea Party protest banners from a previous era: “Government Hands off R Medicare!!”
Umm…wut?
sdhays
@Kent: Oh, any other network would love to host that debate, but none of the other candidates would both showing up (and Trump would piddle himself and drive away on his golf cart). But I don’t think Fox/Murdoch would.
I think they’re absolutely terrified of a Republican taking Trump down for being Trump, because it simply can’t be done without both making the party look very, very bad and ripping it apart at the same time. They want Trump to drift away leaving the Republican Party and Trumpism mostly intact, not engage in a war over Trump in the middle of a primary (no matter how great the potential ratings might be).
Aussie Sheila
@gene108: Exactly this. He did the US centre left a ‘solid’ in entirely upending ‘genteel’ conservatism, and exposing it for the anti democratic pro oligarchic nonsense it always was.
In the meantime he energised millions of voters in 2020 who had never voted before.
I remain alert to his candidacy though, because a crowded republican field could see him slip through to the nomination. He will be beatable in a general election I think if that happens, but it is better for everyone if it doesn’t.
I just hope the Dems have worked out how to effing thrash the republicans this time (electorally of course) rather than ekeing out a victory in five swing states by 45 thousand votes.
gene108
@jonas:
Who the hell is funding Christie? Talk about setting money on fire. His home state of New Jersey* still hates his guts.
Outside of some network news talk show producers, who like to have him on their
shoesshows, he has no constituency at all.*If you want to know why Christie flopped in 2016, it’s because NJ hated him with the fury of a 1000 white
hithot suns by then. He closed the Fort Lee access to the GWB during his 2013 re-election bid (also known as Bridgegate). News about the real impetus behind the closing started being reported in January 2014. By 2016 getting a case of anthrax polled higher than Christie, in NJ.jonas
@Jackie:
I think if it actually comes down to a Trump-DeSantis throwdown, Trump’s not getting up. DeSantis is a ruthless piece of shit, Fox News loves him, and the knives are already out for Trump. Trump will try to pull all this “DeSantis owes me his office” stuff, but they’re ready for that. I think one of the reasons Trump’s great comeback campaign is flagging is that he doesn’t want to be the target in the big wack-a-mole game DeSantis, Pompeo, and others are setting up right over him. Plus, he’s lazy and really just wants to waddle around his clubs glad-handing idiot sycophants and playing golf.
Kent
@sdhays: I think you are wrong.
Trump has proved that the only thing that matters is ratings. You can be as fucking crazy and unhinged as you want and if eyeballs are watching then it is all good. FOX will salivate over a debate between Cheney and Trump and so will all the Trump wannabees like DeSantis who will be happy to watch and then pick up the pieces since Cheney is OBVIOUSLY not going to actually win a Republican primary this close to 2021 and the insurrection. Maybe in 2028.
In any event, Cheney is actually the kind of Republican that FOX actually likes. She is in the George Bush mold.
jonas
@gene108:
Oh, I’m here in NY and am quite familiar with Christie’s Bridgegate shenanigans. Christie has Wall Street backers — your usual Republican country club set who are too embarrassed to back Trump but want those tax cuts. Plus the media love him. He’s a plus-sized John McCain! Tellin’ it like it is with that lovable Joisey accent! That doesn’t mean he has any reasonable shot at the nomination. Just that there are people who don’t mind him setting their money on fire.
Kent
@jonas: It wouldn’t be Sasse. We could do Romney 2.0 but then Cheney would have to take second fiddle. Which she might actually do.
I would actually expect someone from outside politics, like a general or some CEO type with big name recognition.
gene108
@Aussie Sheila:
I doubt winning some heavily contested states by small margins is going to change. We’re stuck with this, unless the electorate so overwhelmingly supports Democrats, Republicans can never win again or we amend our Constitution to have a national popular vote for President.
I don’t see either happening.
sdhays
@Kent: I had been an adult for a very long time before I discovered that Oregon was originally founded as an entire territory banning black people. It’s been quite a while since I was in the US educational system, but they did a fine job of not talking about a lot of the really ugly history of this country.
I guess that’s what the CRT fuss is all about – there have been some modest changes and a few white people have convinced more white people that they should feel threatened by a more honest history.
Aussie Sheila
@gene108: I agree with you. Constitutional change in the US is simply not possible, at least in the foreseeable future. That’s why the US right is so scary for the rest of the world. I know it is bad for US citizens, particularly the working class of all colours and backgrounds, but it is positively existential for the rest of the world, particularly if US oligarchs decide they want to duke it out with China.
sdhays
@Kent: You could be right. I just think that the Republican Party is currently a powder keg and Fox/Murdoch don’t want to the light the match. I mean, that’s basically been the way they’ve treated Trump since 2015 – afraid of lighting a fire that burns the Republican Party too badly so they really lose elections.
Murdoch tried to go after Trump a little bit in 2015 and he quickly sacrificed Megyn Kelly on the Trump altar within months (no sympathy, of course, for Ms. “White Santa/Jesus”).
Aussie Sheila
@sdhays: So what coalition/group could assist in lighting the match?
Not disagreeing with you at all, I would just love to see the US centre left do the republicans what they did to McGovern in 1972. Any thoughts? 😏
NotMax
@sdhays
That is a bad thing how, exactly?
“Show me on the doll where the fascist touched you.”
//
Kent
Oregon basically had two waves of migration during its founding that greatly influenced the state.
The major cities like Portland were largely settled and developed by wealthy New England merchant types. The debate was whether or not to name Portland “Portland after the city in Maine, or Boston. So early Portland was a very tidy, prosperous, New England moneyed merchant sort of place with most people arriving by ship or later, by train.
Rural Oregon was settled by poor Scotts Irish immigrants fleeing the south and Appalachia after the Civil War and they brought the Arkansas and Tennessee with them. They are the ones who populated the logging camps and mines (yes Oregon used to have lots of mines) in the later 19th century and then settled in places like Roseburg and Grants Pass, which are MAGA and white gun humping bastions today.
In other words, the two sides of Oregon go back to the the original 19th century settlement patterns and are nothing new.
My own redneck kin came from Ohio around 1900, first stopping in CA to work on the Southern Pacific Railroad and then drifted north and settled in the Willamette Valley owning a series of failed farms up through the depression before finally trying again with one more new farm during the war years and finally making it in Amity outside of Salem.
I have many cousins. The ones who got educated now have professional jobs in the Portland area and even more so around metro Seattle or places like Phoenix, Bay Area, Denver, Washington DC, etc. They are mostly Democrats and normal. All my blue collar cousins still live in places like Albany and Grants Pass and are complete unreachable MAGA dipshits, with equal parts right wing evangelicalism and Q-anon mixed in. Unfortunately there are more cousins on the redneck side because they breed harder and sooner than the rest of us. I have cousins who are younger than me who were grandparents before I had my first child.
Nelle
@Kent: How do the Mennonites fit into your family history? Not that they aren’t right-wing, but this sounds different from the Oregon Mennonites I know.
Martin
@Kent: Yeah, when I drove up to help my dad after his heart attack I spent a lot of time driving between Eugene, Florence and Coos Bay and various roads between and both the number and scale of the Trump signs in mid 2022 was pretty disturbing.
For all the anti-Newsom messages you see on the 5 driving up through California, there’s not a lot of Trump stuff. Didn’t start seeing that until I hit Oregon. Was a big shocked, TBH. Expected it in the eastern part of the state, not as much in the western.
ColoradoGuy
@Aussie Sheila: The indoctrination of the rural areas has been going on since the mid-Eighties, when Reagan overturned the Fairness Doctrine. The AM broadcasters were hoping to be rescued by the FCC authorizing AM stereo, but there were 4 incompatible systems, and the FCC refused to do its job and choose one system. They “let the market decide”, so naturally all 4 systems failed together, leaving AM broadcasters with an obsolete, dying medium, permanently consigned to lo-fi status.
Which takes us back to the overturn of the Fairness Doctrine, which required not just “balance” but mandated a degree of public service and coverage of local news. Once that disappeared, AM broadcasters discovered “hot talk” call-in shows during urban drive-time as a cheap way to attract audiences.
Rush Limbaugh transitioned from minor-market sportscasting to major-market racist broadcast only slightly disguised in a pseudo-humorous format. He became syndicated nationwide and could be heard anywhere in the country, well outside the range of FM broadcasters which are nearly entirely urban in coverage.
As a result, from the Nineties onward, Rush blanketed the entire country in eliminationist rhetoric that would be flatly illegal to broadcast in the rest of the civilized world. Go to any small-town garage in the most remote parts of the USA and the radio would be tuned to Rush blathering away for hours on end, like a Communist China radio on a pole in the middle of a village during the Cultural Revolution. Newt Gingrich presented Rush an award, on the steps of Congress, as an “honorary Congressman” after the Republicans swept the House in 1994. Without Rush, they couldn’t have broken the 40-year streak of Democratic control.
Rush of course resulted in scores of Mini-Me’s all across the country, because nonstop far-right ranting became its own AM radio format in the Nineties and later. Dirt cheap to make, no royalties to pay to record companies, audio fidelity of no concern, and an audience hooked on the format. A court case in Florida established a precedent that broadcasters didn’t even have to broadcast the truth, or serve the community in any form whatsoever.
Drive through the rural areas, where the FM band is silent, and the only stations you can pick up are far-right religious, very stale top 40 playing Eighties music, and far-right ranting. That’s it. Gas up your car, step inside and pay, and the radio has eliminationist rhetoric as a quiet murmur in the background. This Soviet-style nonstop brainwashing has been going on for nearly two generations. That’s the Republican base.
WV Blondie
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: TFG backed Kev for speaker and then Kev started making mouth noises about expunging one (or both) of TFG’s impeachments.
Amir Khalid
@WV Blondie:
How would Kevin do that? The impeachment votes in the House happened. They are there in the House record and the public record. Everyone knows they happened. Expunging them would leave a hole in the House record.
And it would be futile. The Democratic-held Senate will surely refuse to expunge the trials from its record.
WV Blondie
@Amir Khalid: It doesn’t matter to TFG or Kev if there’s no way to do it – those impeachments left a gaping hole in what passes for TFG’s soul, because they brand him a LOSER for all time. Kev’s offer is one more act of fealty he can give TFG; it might even be what kept him by Kev’s side during the speaker debacle.
Barbara
@Amir Khalid: It has yet to be proved at a national level that Trumpism can prevail without the nasty but clever taunting of Trump. It’s difficult to pull off that kind of loathsome act — I’m not even sure Trump can do it at this point.
David 🌈☘The Establishment☘🌈 Koch
@ColoradoGuy: So that’s what happened to music on AM
But not only was the fidelity shit, but those stations were flooded with commercial breaks. The only thing AM was good for was live sportscasting. But I did notice when the music went away and became either all news, all sports, all talk (remember Larry King overnight show – “Overland Park, Kansas, Hello!”) or all hate.
It never occurred to me it was due to low product quality that led to the demise. I just thought it was a demo thing, less people listening to Glenn Miller and Bill Haley and more listening to AC/DC and Ozzie.
but yeah, you make perfect sense.
AM in NC
@ColoradoGuy: Yep, and it ate my dad’s brain. He listened to WSB in Atlanta back when it was consumer reporting, game shows, sports and news. Then it started to run rightwing talkers in the late 80s, and Dad just never changed the channel because it was his habit. That toxic shit works. Endless, uncut propaganda works.
Steeplejack
@AM in NC:
Neal Boortz will have a lot to answer for when he arrives at the pearly gates (and hopefully is dismissed forthwith).
NotMax
@Steeplejack
Heaven is a gated community.
//
Gvg
@AM in NC: And I always hated talking radio and change the channel. Just a personal quirk, but I like music when I drive, and I don’t want to havE to choose. Too much talking radio disc jockeys or commercials and I flip channels. My mother and sister like NPR or other new shows but I cannot stand humans while driving.
No wonder I never found much on AM except once in awhile a non major Gator game.
What I did find bizarre is a black neighbor of mine who liked Rush Limbaugh. Just could not understand that. Nice neighbor too, helped me with some car repairs.
Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony
@AM in NC: It does work. AM radio radicalized my Mom too. That’s why i cannot understand why Dems are never motivated to bring the fairness doctrine back. It could have been done.
ColoradoGuy
I’ve heard MP3’s of AM Stereo. Sound quality was near-FM at much greater distances than FM Stereo, which falls apart into bursts of noise 25 to 30 miles out. It would have saved AM radio for music.
But the Reagan FCC abdicated it’s responsibility to the broadcast industry by not setting a technical standard, as they had done before for FM Stereo, NTSC color, NTSC monochrome, and FM radio technical standards. So AM Stereo died a slow death, and the audience for music on AM withered.
Unlike most of the rest of the world, broadcasting in the USA has to make money. (In most other countries, broadcasting was a government monopoly. It was seen as far too dangerous to allow a small group of right-wing businessmen to control it.)
The American broadcasting tradeoff, until Reagan, was allowing commercial, for-profit broadcasting just as long as it served the local and national community. If the station failed to serve the community, the license could be yanked by the FCC. It was rare, but it did happen. This was similar to the arrangement for tolerating the Bell System monopoly. As long as it delivered world-class service at competitive prices, it was allowed to continue.
The Reagan people, driven by the Free Market Uber Alles policy, smashed it all to pieces … because they could.
Princess
@Gvg: I had a Black painter who did a bunch of work for me years ago. Listened to Limbaugh all day long.
artem1s
There is another factor. The actual Invisible Hand of the almighty market isn’t interested in TFG anymore. His campaign was completely on automatic pilot from the moment Obama embarrassed him at the WHPC dinner. He never had to worry about getting interviews or lining up backers. Hell, Maddow alone gave him millions in unpaid ads. He never even had to show up to the studio – the MSM was interviewing him over the phone. How much airtime did the major networks devote to an empty podium? TFG never really had to put together an exploratory committee to get funding. He didn’t run a conventional campaign in 2016. He doesn’t build a war chest for the next campaign, he rakes everything off the top and declares bankruptcy. He doesn’t know how it works for everyone else. He doesn’t
askbeg others for support, they beg him and he graces them with his presence!He’s not disengaged, he’s sitting on his ass in FL waiting for the MSM to call him and put him on the air for free.
lowtechcyclist
@ColoradoGuy:
Thank you for writing this. It’s nice to know I’m not the only one who remembers the Fairness Doctrine and the consequences of its demise. You’re absolutely right that if the Fairness Doctrine hadn’t been killed, most of America would have never heard of Rush Limbaugh, and his legion of mini-me’s wouldn’t have existed.
I’d wondered what happened to AM stereo. I was a paralegal for a law firm with a big communications law practice at the end of the 1970s and beginning of the 1980s, so I knew at least by name the stuff the FCC was considering, and it was hard to miss the AM stereo proceeding, even if the firm I worked for didn’t seem to be involved in that. (Other stuff we weren’t involved with: a proceeding concerning “electronic computer-originated mail” which I had no idea WTF that meant back in 1981.)
But I knew about the Fairness Doctrine, and of course the phrase that broadcasters must serve “the public interest, convenience, and necessity” which was at the heart of the Communications Act of 1934. I knew what happened to the former, but I was never sure where the latter went. Sounds like that Florida case you mentioned was at least part of the answer.
I expect that Republicans were able to convince the courts that the free market could take care of all that, but of course if there’s a substantial market for lies, the public interest isn’t exactly being served by their propagation.
The other thing that keeps coming to mind is that Rush and his legion of imitators was basically the proof of concept for Fox News. Murdoch didn’t have to wonder whether there was a market for his horseshit; that had already been proven. So it wasn’t like he was even taking a gamble of any sort by starting it up.
Cheryl from Maryland
@Redshift: Youngkin just nixed a battery plant for EVs by the LARGEST BATTERY MAKING COMPANY which. is working with Ford for rural VA because of its Chinese ties. The company is not tied to China. WaPo is not happy.
Youngkin is going full culture war. Contrast that with Kemp of Georgia, who wants to make Georgia the center for EV Battery Plants in the US.
Miss Bianca
@Cheryl from Maryland: Yeah, all these people who think DeSantis or Youngkin or, hell, Trump for that matter are going to be the Repubs to watch in 2024? My money is on Kemp. Unscrupulous soulless bastard just like they are, but quieter/smarter about it. He’s the guy that worries me.
Aziz, light!
Most of the counties in eastern Oregon have recently voted in non-binding ballot measures to secede from Oregon and become part of Idaho. This “Greater Idaho” movement has been growing for several years. What motivates them is that we western Oregon libs will continue to outvote them in statewide races. Of course the state is never going to give up two thirds of its area.
SteveinPHX
@ColoradoGuy:
Thank you for this analysis. I am a long-time AM radio listener who’s lived North, East, South & now West for the last 20 years. Only comment I might add is a relentless take-over of the air waves by sports-talk radio. Seems to be as present as the Mark Levins, etc. these days.
I find that KNX 1070AM, or its fellow station at 740AM in Frisco, outta LA will lull me to sleep about as fast as anything. Repeated news stories and traffic reports lulls the brain to sleep.
Capri
@lowtechcyclist: My kids and all their friends don’t listened to over the air radio ever. They have spotify playlists. The idea of not being able to hear exactly what they want at all times is completely foreign to them.
Perhaps one reason the millenials are so much more left leaning than their parents.
rikyrah
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
When he was President, he could just stiff the vendors and municipalities of the $$$.
Folks saw this
Now….they want their $$$ UP FRONT.
J R in WV
@buskertype:
You’re probably leaving out the grift factor, as in “How much will Trump steal at this specific event?”
J R in WV
@Amir Khalid:
But if he hasn’t filed paperwork to run, why couldn’t he use the billion dollars in the political action committee? Plus it doesn’t cost much to file, does it?
ETA: lesson # 2, read the comments before commenting, even if you’re already last again!
brantl
@dmsilev: ….. and Aiming his putz.
Kent
This is a dead thread, but there are super conservative rural Mennonites in Oregon who are very Republican and MAGA
https://www.fairviewmennonite.com
These folks are part of the “Conservative Mennonite Conference” or CMC which is so conservative they don’t even believe in ordaining women or having women serve in any church leadership roles. You don’t even want to know what their views are on LGBT people. They would be 100% behind conversion therapy and all the anti-LGBT laws popping up around the south and are still fighting a rearguard action on gay marriage.
Do you remember that MAGA candidate for governor in PA named Doug Mastriano? He and his wife were part of a CMC church in PA. So that is who we are talking about here. https://anabaptistworld.org/pa-governor-nominee-linked-to-cmc-church-right-wing-politics/
Don’t confuse the rural Mennonites with the few urban Mennonite churches in Portland and Eugene and other big cities and college towns that are mostly populated by folks of Mennonite heritage who moved to OR from elsewhere for college or professional careers.
J R in WV
@Princess:
I worked for an IT manager who llistened for classical music all morning in his office near mine, and then at noon, he turned the volume down to a low murmur. After a couple of weeks I realized he was listening to Rush on the down low.
I knew of Rush’s reputation, had never heard him, so I started listening in m car as I drove to get lunch. OMG. At that point I knew not to trust Boss at all, even tho he promoted me and gave me merit raises, which were rarer than a Dodo in state government.
Sure enough I wound up being interviewed by lawyers (former prosecutors) because a favorite group of contractors were developing an online auto dealership system using state owned hardware and billing their time to a completely honest project not related to online sales. Everyone was fired but me, because I told Keith repeatedly that his Amigos weren’t working on his pet project.
Then one day I get a phone call, “Go confiscate the development tools ( high end laptops with deveoppment tools installed ) from the Amigos!” which was sudden and brutal.
different-church-lady
You know who else spent his final days in a bunker?
different-church-lady
@Amir Khalid:
All along he’s been the symptom more than the disease.
UncleEbeneezer
“A society that has done something special AGAINST the Negro for hundreds of years must now do something special FOR him.” -Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King
UncleEbeneezer
Welp, after a wonderful trip to the Yucatan, our vacation ended with a thud. Very bumpy flight/descent back into LAX (on a fully packed, fairly cramped jet) made me nauseous as hell. Made it home and BAM, both of us got hit with traveler tummy virus. Spent all of Sunday (my wife’s birthday) in bed, miserable. We are just now getting out of bed and slowly working our way back to real food. Not sure where we picked up the bug as it was probably in the last 48 hours in Mexico and we did a LOT of eating. I suspect it was the crappy airport sandwich before our flight. Glad to be on the men and almost back to normal but damn what a rough two days.
cain
It might be schadenfreude but remember we were all cawing about how Hillary had it in the bag back in 2016 since Trump didnt’ even have field offices. He won because a lot of people came out of the woodwork and voted for him. That’s something he could do again – although I think thsi time he’s just an old man with small dick energy.
different-church-lady
@cain: Woodwork or sewers?
trollhattan
You have GOT to be kidding. Is this a reverse-double Scott Walker? I’m really confused, is he going after the rolling coal vote?
Mike G
TRUMP 20-24 Years in Prison
It seems obvious he only declared his candidacy because he thought it would be a dodge to prosecution
RobertS
@RaflW: The other thing is that he’s a known quantity this time.
There were lots of people willing to take a chance on him, and plenty of them wound up with buyers remorse.
Nettoyeur