How To Rehabilitate An Insurrectionist
Conservative media figures and the GOP are gearing up to rehabilitate Donald Trump in time for 2024. Here's how they'll do it.
by Ben Cohen
It isn’t a given that Donald Trump will run for president in 2024. He has a fragile psyche and fears losing to Joe Biden again so he may just use the prospect of him running to raise cash to pay for his mounting legal bills.
That being said, Trump is making all the right noises in regards to running for president again. From media tours with fellow sexual abuser Bill O’Reilly to conspiracy filled rallies with Q-Anoners, Trump is giving the impression that he is gearing up to “take back” what he thinks is rightfully his.
Based on current trends it seems appropriate to operate on the basis that Trump will most likely run again.
This terrifies Republicans for many reasons, mostly because they are going to have to pretend that Trump really did win in 2020, and that the events of Jan. 6th never really happened. Most Republicans are generally fine debasing themselves in public, but Trump’s fantasy world is now so insane it requires a stunning degree of shamelessness to go along with it.
The fear factor
Republicans fear Trump far more than they love him, so expect to see almost all of them buy back into MAGA 2.0 in the coming months. Republicans know they cannot control Trump, and that he controls almost all of their base. If Trump runs again the GOP understands it must kneel before him and cater to his every demand. There is no leadership outside of Trump, no ideology outside of Trumpism, and no rising star willing to stand against him. The party is currently coming to terms with this predicament and gearing up to rehabilitate the Insurrectionist-in-Chief in the eyes of the public.
Rehabilitating Trump’s badly damaged image in time for 2024 presents a complex set of political problems for conservative media personalities and prominent Republicans. But this is what the GOP and Conservative media complex do, so we can expect to see the following Orwellian tactics over the coming months:
1. Lay the groundwork
This is a crucial step the GOP must take in order to sell Trump back to the American public. They cannot outright endorse him for president, but they can plant the seeds that he is still a viable candidate. Take the Laura Ingraham approach as a good example. “I’m not saying I’m there for him [Trump] yet,” Ingraham told Northern Virginia Magazine recently. “But I think whether he runs or not—I mean, his policies worked. Trump’s blueprint for policy—a forward-looking, optimistic set of pro-America policies—that blueprint, without a doubt, is winning.”
Ingraham will of course heartily endorse, support and vote for Trump should he run in 2024. But with Jan. 6th still fresh in everyone’s mind, she cannot show too much enthusiasm right now. Instead, she is focusing on “the policies” to ensure she has a strong rationale for defending him in the future.
2. Create a grave threat
This is perhaps the most important part of Trump’s rehabilitation. The Democrats and Joe Biden must be presented as a grave danger to the future of America. Forget the fact that Biden has been a public figure for over 40 years, has a strong record of working with Republicans, and is a political moderate. Biden is now a Marxist agitator working with The Deep State and BLM to destroy America. Every effort must also be made to portray Biden as inept, senile puppet controlled by Kamala Harris and Nancy Pelosi. Being simultaneously a radically dangerous Marxist and a doddering pensioner might seem incongruous, but it is paramount to throw as much shit on the wall as possible in the hopes that one of the narratives sticks. Think:
And then:
3. Present Trump as a necessary savior
In order to truly rehabilitate Trump as a viable presidential candidate, he must be presented as the last defender of true red-blooded Americanism. Without him, the country will fall to Woke Marxists who want to misgender your kids and force them to learn Critical Race Theory. Only a tough guy like Trump willing to face down the Marxist threat can do the job. Conservative hosts must repeat talking points that downplay Trump’s terrorist attack on American democracy and highlight his “record”.
As Bill O’Reilly told Dan Abrams in December of last year: “I’m trying to tell [former] president Trump, run on your record. He’s going to run again, all right. I said, ‘Run on your record because your record is pretty darn good.’”
It does not matter what Trump’s record actually was, it is the impression that he has the best record of any president in the history of everything. Future arguments in 2024 will center around the idea that conservative voters should focus on the issues and the threat coming from the Democrats, not the man behind the issues. O’Reilly and Ingraham are testing this strategy out and the rest of the Republican Party and conservative media complex are paying close attention.
4. Don’t endorse the Big Lie, just “ask questions”
This is another crucial part of Trump’s rehabilitation. Many Republicans aren’t comfortable claiming Trump really did win in 2020 given what we know. The evidence is simply overwhelming and Republicans are fully aware that their credibility with independents and moderates will be on the line. Instead, the must “ask questions”. Sean Hannity for example, just wants to know “How many dead people received ballots… in California?….How many people that have moved from their addresses had the ballots sent to them, and the new residents had all these free ballots that they could use?” He won’t come out and say Trump won, but he will undermine Americans’ trust in their democracy.
5. Downplay Jan. 6th at all costs
Tucker Carlson has led conservative efforts to white wash the terrorist attacks on the Capitol on Jan. 6th. Carlson has blamed the FBI for the MAGA mob storming the Capitol and attempting to kill members of Congress, and released a Goebellian documentary titled “Patriot Purge” to convince Trump supporters the whole thing was a “false flag” operation. Prominent Republicans have labeled the violent insurrectionists “tourists”, while others have claimed Antifa was really to blame, or that only a few “agitators” were responsible for the violence. “By and large it was a peaceful protest, except for there were a number of people, basically agitators, that whipped the crowd and breached the Capitol,” Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis. said after refusing to call it an insurrection.
If the presenters and politicians continue repeating these talking points, they can successfully downplay Trump’s culpability and convince the public a terrorist attack on their own government wasn’t really a terrorist attack. Republicans can “condemn” the small number of overexcited tourists, but exonerate everyone else, including Trump.
6. Bully and humiliate critics and potential rivals
If a Republican or conservative media personality refuses to go along with The Big Lie or downplay the events of Jan. 6th, it is imperative that party and media apparatchiks make their lives as miserable as possible. If Trump is the candidate, then Trump’s reality must become reality. Any deviation from this orthodoxy could be immensely damaging, so all efforts must be made to label defectors as RINOs and closet Democrats. Liz Cheney is on the receiving end of this type of treatment already, but a far larger smear campaign and disinformation war must be launched to deter others from speaking out.
Trump has proven definitively that bullying and intimidation works as a method of control in GOP politics, and should he run again he will no doubt demand the whip is cracked even harder.
Read an excerpt from this week’s Members Only piece:
Trump's Suicide Cult Is An Easily Solved Moral Conundrum
Unvaccinated Republicans are throwing themselves at the mercy of Covid just to "own the libs". Am I wrong for not caring?
by Justin Rosario
During last week’s Banter Roundtable Podcast (listen to it, it’s awesome!), Ben and I discussed Glenn Beck’s second very lamentable encounter with Covid. Beck had announced that, after refusing to be vaccinated, he had contracted the virus again. Worse, this time it had entered his lungs. Ben was empathetic towards the notorious right wing talk show host while I was most emphatically not. Ben is a much nicer person than I am.
But does that mean I am not a nice person? Does my absolute lack of concern for Glenn Beck’s life mean I am, in fact, a bad person? Everyone thinks they are the hero of their story. No one ever really considers themselves the bad guy. I know I don’t. Have I, though, been lying to myself if I can look at someone like Glenn Beck and think, “The world would be a much better place if Covid took you out?” Is morality absolute? Take a ride on the trolley with me.
The Trolley Problem
I recently played a card game with my family called “Trial by Trolley”. It’s a riff on The Trolley Problem in which two teams have to convince one player, a neutral party, to pick one track over the other for the trolley to travel down. Each track has people on it who can be anyone from Robo-Hitler to a popular children’s book author to a group of nuns. The trolley is going to kill the people on one track or the other. You have to choose which track lives and which track dies. It sounds really simple but the morality gets really complex, really fast…
This is an excerpt from today’s Members Only piece. You can continue reading for free by getting a three month free trial here.