The world ended round noon Tuesday, japanese American time.
That was the one conclusion to be drawn from watching the inauguration of Donald Trump on American cable networks MSNBC and CNN.
The temper of their presenters was not simply dire — it was determined. The whole lot they stood for was being dismantled. American democracy was over, apparently.
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A brand new authoritarianism, backed by the tech oligarchs that they had beforehand lionised, would enslave the residents of america who had recklessly put their religion in a person they so clearly despised.
The worry and loathing within the media Left was tangible. MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow was near tears for her complete phase. Her colleague, Chris Hayes, raged towards the dying of the Democratic mild. Stephanie Ruhle talked darkly of The Resistance forward.
I’ll need to admit to a responsible secret. For the reason that November election, I’ve taken to watching MSNBC repeatedly for leisure. I take pleasure in their protection of Trump’s second presidency far more than the rabidly-supportive Fox Information.
US President Donald Trump. Credit score: JIM WATSON/AFP
MSNBC’s hosts have been apopleptic and encouragingly present no indicators of restoration. Their commentary is so dour, so blinkered and so very pretentious that it turns into addictive. Perversely.
It’s like a toddler selecting at scabs on a wound. You recognize it should harm — and their moms most likely advised them to not — however they only can’t cease.
What they worry essentially the most is that, in contrast to many current presidents, Trump carries out his election guarantees.
No marvel MSNBC’s proprietor, Comcast, introduced it had determined to promote the channel. “Since election day, MSNBC has averaged about 521,000 viewers, a 38 per cent decrease from its 2024 average before 5 November,” the Guardian reported.
What isn’t heard on CSNBC and CNN is that Trump gained the electoral faculty vote by 312-226, a cushty margin. He was solely 20 faculty votes in need of Barack Obama’s victory in 2012 and received six greater than Joe Biden in 2020.
Trump additionally gained the favored poll this time by 77.28m votes to 74.99. What’s not democratic about that end result?
The New York Submit reported in late November that CNN had misplaced a mean 413,000 viewers for the reason that election, a 22 per cent fall. Trump fatigue has set in on the Democrat echo chambers.
“Meanwhile, at Fox News, the audience continues to grow in the weeks after the election,” the Submit famous. “The network’s total day audience jumped 38 per cent and its primetime audience grew 21 per cent.”
That is simply one other signal of Trump reshaping America, bulldozing the social, political and media landscapes. And he’s solely received one time period wherein to do it, regardless of lunatic fears he intends to remain within the Oval Workplace without end.
Trump is a homespun psychologist in a buffoon’s disguise. His strongest intuition is to mess with individuals’s heads, each his opponents and his supporters.
He loves disrupting norms. And hyperbole. He additionally likes being the one one that is aware of what he’ll do whereas forcing everybody else down rabbit holes.
Trump clearly doesn’t play by the established guidelines of politics, so it’s not good for the media to anticipate him to. Or to measure him towards redundant paradigms.
His verbose threats have a means of making motion by others even earlier than he does something. Whether or not or not he would have carried via on the risk is moot.
Trump’s psychology is to get beneath his opponents’ pores and skin, into their heads and make them lose rationality.
His inauguration speech was a living proof. It was graceless, provocative and brimming with resentment, fuelled by rancour about his remedy by the hands of the Democrats over the earlier eight years.
We should always do not forget that Democratic Celebration leaders started plotting Trump’s first impeachment even earlier than he assumed the presidency in 2017.
So with the outgoing president and his most-recently vanquished rival sitting at his shoulder for his second inauguration, he accused each of “a horrible betrayal” of the American individuals.
“As we gather today, our government confronts a crisis of trust,” Trump mentioned. “For many years, a radical and corrupt establishment has extracted power and wealth from our citizens while the pillars of our society lay broken and seemingly in complete disrepair.
“We now have a government that cannot manage even a simple crisis at home while, at the same time, stumbling into a continuing catalogue of catastrophic events abroad.
“It fails to protect our magnificent, law-abiding American citizens but provides sanctuary and protection for dangerous criminals, many from prisons and mental institutions, that have illegally entered our country from all over the world.”
By that point, Trump knew about Biden’s last-minute pardons for his three siblings and two of their companions, having already eliminated his crooked son Hunter from additional prison prosecution.
The wording was notably galling, given Biden’s relentless congressional and authorized pursuit of Trump, primarily on spurious grounds.
“Even when individuals have done nothing wrong and will ultimately be exonerated, the mere fact of being investigated or prosecuted can irreparably damage their reputations and finances,” Biden mentioned within the presidential order defending his members of the family and political associates, like “the father of Covid”, Anthony Fauci.
Constitutional scholar Jonathan Turley, the Shapiro professor of public curiosity legislation at George Washington College, didn’t disguise his outrage, claiming Biden had “repeatedly lied about the influence peddling” that enriched his household.
“With only 15 minutes to go as president, Joe Biden snatched infamy from the jaws of obscurity,” Turley wrote for on-line political information website, The Hill. “With record-low polling and widely viewed as a ‘failed’ president, Biden completed his one-man race to the bottom of ethics by issuing pre-emptive pardons to members of his own family.
“The pardons were timed to guarantee that the media would not focus on yet another unethical act by this president. He need not have worried. For four years, the media worked tirelessly to deny or deflect the corruption scandal surrounding the Biden family.”
Think about the Biden household’s self-evident corruption that requires a blanket pardon in comparison with the victimless crime which permits Trump’s enemies to name him a convicted felon.
Trump wasn’t prosecuted for paying hush cash to cease porn star Stormy Daniels telling tales about him, as many individuals suppose. That’s not an offence. The offence which a partisan Democrat prosecutor notoriously contrived to criminalise was a book-keeping misdemeanour about how the funds had been recorded.
However Trump does deserve condemnation for his personal day one tsunami of pardons and sentence commutations.
His largest mistake to date was to pardon so most of the January 6 mob. He is aware of that the worst of them weren’t supporters, however a loopy mishmash of anarchic misfits.
Trump can not credibly say he stands for the rule of legislation whereas excusing such violent extremism.
The MAGA motion is a revolution and Trump has blindly rewarded the revolutionary zeal that thrust him again into energy with a mandate that terrifies his opponents.
Simply earlier than the election, opinion polls confirmed solely round 30 per cent of voters believed the nation was headed in the suitable course. The brand new course would possibly make the opposite 70 per cent giddy.
It’s not simply despots in China, Russia and North Korea who’re quaking of their boots in regards to the second incarnation of Trump.
The worry and loathing is as excessive in California, as soon as a part of Mexico and now eager to be something however a part of america of America as its Democratic Celebration rulers sweat on Trump’s remaining fling.
Whereas the wildfires had been licking on the houses of rich Democrats earlier this month, California’s lawmakers met in a particular session in Sacramento, to not tackle the disaster and the insurance coverage disaster it sparked, however to put aside $50 million for authorized challenges towards Trump.
Donald Trump. Credit score: AAP
“This is tone deaf,” Republican State Senator Brian Jones mentioned. “Focusing on suing the administration that hasn’t even done anything yet in the midst of a catastrophic wildfire in LA. We shouldn’t be Trump-proofing California. We should be focusing on fireproofing California.”
The person touted to interchange former Speaker and Trump hater-in-chief, Nancy Pelosi, California’s State Senate funds chair, the appropriately-named Scott Wiener, was unapologetic.
“This funding agreement cements California’s readiness to serve as a bulwark against Trump’s extremist agenda.” Wiener mentioned, noting $25 million was to defend undocumented immigrants towards deportation.
Why? The place’s his mandate?
In the meantime, India has proactively recognized at the very least 18,000 of its residents dwelling illegally within the US — the actual quantity might be nearer to 700,000, the third largest cohort after Mexicans and Salvadorans – which it says it would repatriate.
Why? In order that Trump doesn’t shut a US expert migrant visa scheme which is 75 per cent crammed by Indians, round 200,000 a yr.
As soon as once more, Trump didn’t need to take motion. Simply let or not it’s identified that he would possibly.
And, little by little, a brand new order is established.
