Don’t fall asleep

Created
Thu, 11/05/2023 - 00:30
Updated
Thu, 11/05/2023 - 00:30
Better woke than the alternative Donald Trump’s believers, Sarah Longwell finds, are as committed as ever to their man-boy-love-god despite standing indictments and indictments yet to come: “As far as a mug shot goes, he’s going to market the hell out of that,” said Chris, a two-time Trump voter from Illinois, imagining a future arrest. “Every one of us is going to buy one of those shirts.” Most hands went up when I asked who would buy one. Republicans “are in a trap of their own making,” Longwell writes in The Atlantic: They thought that by covering for Trump they were tapping into his power, but they were actually giving away their own—mortgaging themselves and their reputations to Trump’s lies and depravities. By defending him then, they have made it impossible to credibly accuse him of anything now. This problem is compounded by the deep relationship that Trump has cultivated with Republican voters. He’s been a constant presence in their lives for eight years—or, for Apprentice fans, much longer. They defended him on Facebook and argued about him over Thanksgiving dinners. Millions of them have voted for him twice. […] Unless the Republican field coalesces around an alternative soon, Trump will almost certainly cruise to the nomination—just as he did in 2016. Today, Trump is in the pole position, and gaining. Fox and CNN lifted their shadow bans on him. And, thanks to the indictment, he’s back in his sweet spot of aggrieved victimhood. It’s MAGA’s sweet spot too. Longwell’s encounters with GOP voters suggested to me…