No link..as you won’t open it. So I’ll try the Red method:
I hear again and again that people shouldn’t ‘amplify’ Trump now that he’s lost power and his platforms on social media. This is a theory and understanding of politics and speech that I have always thought was more or less bankrupt. It crops up again now when Trump releases one of his Twitter-esque statements “from the office of” the 45th President, which he distributes to reporters. This happened again yesterday when he released a lengthy – quite lengthy – tirade against Drs Fauci and Birx. The idea is that journalists posting these on Twitter or discussing them somehow does Trump’s work for him rather than keeping him bottled in what really must be a personal hell of exile from the social media platforms which were so central to his political rise and the supply of endorphins in his bloodstream. But really these blasts only underscore how distant he has become from the centers of power, both literal and figurative. He used to yell in our faces or live in our heads. Now he’s reduced to nailing his rants to a public bulletin board way on the outskirts of town.
It’s like he’s barking into a pipe deep in a mine shaft and you can only faintly hear him out of the exposed pipe end sticking up out from the ground.
Let’s also note that Trump has called off his war with Fox News because he lost. Angry at Fox’s purported disloyalty Trump was determined to destroy them in favor of OANN or perhaps Newsmax. Now he’s suing for terms, basically begging to come back on the air to complain about Joe Biden. OANN and Newsmax, which he briefly shot into the (relative) ratings stratosphere in his war with Fox, are now left in the dust – yet more examples of the associational road kill Trump has left in his wake for decades.
Lara Trump, Trump’s daughter-in-law who is reportedly planning to run for Senate from North Carolina, has now signed on with Fox as an official paid contributor, yet another example that Trump went up against Fox and came up short.
Given that we are a mere two months from the end of his presidency and less than three from the attempted overthrow of the government he inspired and demanded, it is remarkable how far he has fallen and how bereft he seems of any ability to make himself heard or relevant. Losing access to social media is an impediment. But lots of people make their presence felt without it. He’s incapable of compelling attention. You may have seen recent reports that Trump crashed a Mar a Lago wedding and gave a short speech bashing Joe Biden, yet another example of a man who keeps talking louder because no one can hear him or, more menacingly, no one is listening.
Even within the GOP, where he remains dominant and his dominance is uncontested, that dominance seems increasingly passive, more a name-check of party orthodoxy than an active domination. Trump’s name and his legacy of bombast and immiseration loom so large that the fading of his power can be hard to discern. But the person who seems most acutely aware of it is Trump himself. Absent the cudgel of power or the boisterous immediacy of social media Trump cannot dominate or control people who tell the story of his presidency in ways he finds damaging. People like Birx and Fauci have the podiums largely to themselves. Trump rails in the distance. But they’re telling his story, not him. It is a fact to which Republican elected officials seem largely indifferent. They’re hunting for new ways to attack Joe Biden and cribbing mainly from Trump’s playbook with things like the puffed up ‘border crisis.’ But they seem indifferent to Trump’s demands to control and buttress his legacy. That’s yesterday’s news. He’s yesterday’s news, more totem than active player in the politics of 2021.
