Ever since the Manhattan D.A. announced Trump’s indictment for charges related to his lawyer’s alleged payment to Stormy Daniels to buy her silence, MSNBC has run wall-to-wall, giddy coverage. A Trump criminal prosecution — no matter the merits or the significance — is like catnip to these people.
Soulless news actor after soulless news actor, in one segment after another, nearly orgasm on air at the prospect of their political rival in a jail cell.
Because they’re nothing if not stale and uninventive, they’ve trotted out the tired old talking point about the “walls closing in” on Trump, a phrase uttered literally thousands of times on corporate media (watch the compilation below for proof) over the past six years.
I took a look at their recent offerings on YouTube. As expected, the single-minded obsession over Trump and their lust for legal vengeance appears to have only accelerated as of late. 90+% of their uploads pertain to the Trump indictment. Is this end-stage Trump Derangement Syndrome (TDS)?
The reasons for this myopic coverage are two-fold. First, these people view Trump as an existential threat to the grift they’ve been engaged in for nigh on fifty years since neoliberalism became the dominant economic ideology in the West. Second, they have nothing else to offer their viewers. They have no real vision to sell.
As Glenn Greenwald explains, the goal isn’t to get rid of the Republican Party per se — after all, the false mirage of a democracy conferred by the two-party kabuki theatre that is, and has been for decades, U.S. politics has served them well.
It’s only a very specific brand of conservative that is persona non grata. Anti-Trump, establishment GOP figures are still very much welcome in polite liberal society.
George W. Bush’s former press secretary Nicolle Wallace, as just one example, has her own show on MSNBC. Former GOP chairman Michael Steele appears regularly as a respected commentator. The corporate state is perfectly fine with Lindsey Graham and Mitch McConnell. Liz Cheney is considered no less than a hero for her central role in the January 6 neo-McCarthyite show trials.
What these figures have in common is that they are safe, docile, complacent, malleable, and compromised. Perfect boys and girls all, they are no threat to anyone actually in the power center.
Things were going splendidly from their perspective, in the time of Paul Ryan, before Trump came along and wrecked the party. If only they could resurrect the GOP of yesteryear, they imagine they might put the genie back in the bottle.
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