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Why Does No One Understand the Real Reason Trump Won?

Michael Tomasky

Fri, November 8, 2024 at 9:25 AM CST·11 min read

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I’ve had a lot of conversations since Tuesday revolving around the question of why Donald Trump won. The economy and inflation. Kamala Harris didn’t do this or that. Sexism and racism. The border. That trans-inmate ad that ran a jillion times. And so on.

These conversations have usually proceeded along lines where people ask incredulously how a majority of voters could have believed this or that. Weren’t they bothered that Trump is a convicted felon? An adjudicated rapist? Didn’t his invocation of violence against Liz Cheney, or 50 other examples of his disgusting imprecations, obviously disqualify him? And couldn’t they see that Harris, whatever her shortcomings, was a fundamentally smart, honest, well-meaning person who would show basic respect for the Constitution and wouldn’t do anything weird as president?

The answer is obviously no—not enough people were able to see any of those things. At which point people throw up their hands and say, “I give up.”

But this line of analysis requires that we ask one more question. And it’s the crucial one: Why didn’t a majority of voters see these things? And understanding the answer to that question is how we start to dig out of this tragic mess.

The answer is the right-wing media. Today, the right-wing media—Fox News (and the entire News Corp.), Newsmax, One America News Network, the Sinclair network of radio and TV stations and newspapers, iHeart Media (formerly Clear Channel), the Bott Radio Network (Christian radio), Elon Musk’s X, the huge podcasts like Joe Rogan’s, and much more—sets the news agenda in this country. And they fed their audiences a diet of slanted and distorted information that made it possible for Trump to win.

Let me say that again, in case it got lost: Today, the right-wing media sets the news agenda in this country. Not The New York Times. Not The Washington Post (which bent over backwards to exert no influence when Jeff Bezos pulled the paper’s Harris endorsement). Not CBS, NBC, and ABC. The agenda is set by all the outlets I listed in the above paragraph. Even the mighty New York Times follows in its wake, aping the tone they set disturbingly often.

If you read me regularly, you know that I’ve written this before, but I’m going to keep writing it until people—specifically, rich liberals, who are the only people in the world who have the power to do something about this state of affairs—take some action.

I’ve been in the media for three decades, and I’ve watched this happen from the front row. Fox News came on the air in 1996. Then, it was an annoyance, a little bug the mainstream media could brush off its shoulder. There was also Rush Limbaugh; still, no comparison between the two medias. Rush was talented, after a fashion anyway, but couldn’t survive in a mainstream lane (recall how quickly the experiment of having him be an ESPN color commentator went off the rails.) But in the late 1990s, and after the Internet exploded and George W. Bush took office, the right-wing media grew and grew. At first, the liberal media grew as well along with the Internet, in the form of a robust blogosphere that eventually spawned influential, agenda-setting web sites like HuffPost. But billionaires on the right have invested far more heavily in media in the last two decades than their counterparts on the left—whose ad-supported, VC-funded operations started to fizzle out once social media and Google starting eating up the revenue pie.

And the result is what we see today. The readily visual analogy I use is: Once upon a time, the mainstream media was a beachball, and the right-wing media was a golf ball. Today, the mainstream media (what with layoffs and closures and the near death of serious local news reporting) is the size of a volleyball, and the right-wing media is the size of a basketball, which, in case you’re wondering, is bigger.

This is the year in which it became obvious that the right-wing media has more power than the mainstream media. It’s not just that it’s bigger. It’s that it speaks with one voice, and that voice says Democrats and liberals are treasonous elitists who hate you, and Republicans and conservatives love God and country and are your last line of defense against your son coming home from school your daughter.

And that is why Donald Trump won. Indeed, the right-wing media is why he exists in our political lives in the first place. Don’t believe me? Try this thought experiment. Imagine Trump coming down that escalator in 2015 with no right-wing media; no Fox News; an agenda still set, and mores still established, by staid old CBS News, the House of Murrow, and The New York Times.

That atmosphere would have denied an outrageous figure like Trump the oxygen he needed to survive and flourish. He just would not have been taken seriously at all. In that world, ruled by a traditional mainstream media, Trump would have been seen by Republicans as a liability, and they would have done what they failed to do in real life—banded together to marginalize him.

But the existence of Fox changed everything. Fox hosted the early debates, which Trump won not with intelligence, but outrageousness. He tapped into the grievance culture Fox had nursed among conservatives for years. He had (most of the time) Rupert Murdoch’s personal blessing. In 2015-16, Fox made Trump possible.

And this year, Fox and the rest of the right-wing media elected him. I discussed all this Thursday with Matthew Gertz of Media Matters for America, who watches lots of Fox News so the rest of us don’t have to. He made the crucial point—and you must understand this—that nearly all the crazy memes that percolated into the news-stream during this election came not from Trump or JD Vance originally, but from somewhere in the right-wing media ecosystem.

The fake story about Haitian residents of Springfield, Ohio eating cats and dogs, for example, started with a Facebook post citing second- and third-hand sources, Gertz told me; it then “circulated on X and was picked up by all the major right-wing influencers.” Only then did Vance, a very online dude, notice it and decide to run with it. And then Trump said it himself at the debate. But it started in the right-wing media.

Likewise with the post-debate ABC “whistleblower” claims, which Gertz wrote about at the time. This was the story that ABC, which hosted the only presidential debate this election, fed Team Harris the questions in advance. This started, Gertz wrote, as a “wildly flimsy internet rumor launched by a random pro-Trump X poster.” Soon enough, the right-wing media was all over it.

Maybe that one didn’t make a huge difference (although who knows?), but this one, I believe, absolutely did: the idea that Harris and Joe Biden swiped emergency aid away from the victims of Hurricane Helene (in mostly Southern, red states) and gave it all to undocumented migrants. It did not start with Trump or his campaign or Vance or the Republican National Committee or Lindsey Graham. It started on Fox. Only then did the others pick it up. And it was key, since this was a moment when Harris’s momentum in the polling averages began to flag.

I think a lot of people who don’t watch Fox or listen to Sinclair radio don’t understand this crucial chicken-and-egg point. They assume that Trump says something, and the right-wing media amplify it. That happens sometimes. But more often, it’s the other way around. These memes start in the media sphere, then they become part of the Trump agenda.

I haven’t even gotten to the economy, about which there is so much to say. Yes—inflation is real. But the Biden economy has been great in many ways. The U.S. economy, wrote The Economist in mid-October, is “the envy of the world.” But in the right-wing media, the horror stories were relentless. And mainstream economic reporting too often followed that lead. Allow me to make the world’s easiest prediction: After 12:00 noon next January 20, it won’t take Fox News and Fox Business even a full hour to start locating every positive economic indicator they can find and start touting those. Within weeks, the “roaring Trump economy” will be conventional wisdom. (Eventually, as some of the fruits from the long tail of Bidenomics start growing on the vine, Trump may become the beneficiary of some real-world facts as well, taking credit for that which he opposed and regularly denounced.)

Back to the campaign. I asked Gertz what I call my “Ulan Bator question.” If someone moved to America from Ulan Bator, Mongolia in the summer and watched only Fox News, what would that person learn about Kamala Harris? “You would know that she is a very stupid person,” Gertz said. “You’d know that she orchestrated a coup against Joe Biden. That she’s a crazed extremist. And that she very much does not care about you.”

Same Ulan Bator question about Trump? That he’s been “the target of a vicious witch-hunt for years and years,” that he is under constant assault; and most importantly, that he is “doing it all for you.”

To much of America, by the way, this is not understood as one side’s view of things. It’s simply “the news.” This is what people—white people, chiefly—watch in about two-thirds of the country. I trust that you’ve seen in your travels, as I have in mine, that in red or even some purple parts of the country, when you walk into a hotel lobby or a hospital waiting room or even a bar, where the TVs ought to be offering us some peace and just showing ESPN, at least one television is tuned to Fox. That’s reach, and that’s power. And then people get in their cars to drive home and listen to an iHeart, right-wing talk radio station. And then they get home and watch their local news and it’s owned by Sinclair, and it, too, has a clear right-wing slant. And then they pick up their local paper, if it still exists, and the oped page features Cal Thomas and Ben Shapiro.

Liberals, rich and otherwise, live in a bubble where they never see this stuff. I would beg them to see it. Watch some Fox. Listen to some Christian radio. Experience the news that millions of Americans are getting on a daily basis. You’ll pretty quickly come to understand what I’m saying here.

And then contemplate this fact: If you think they’re done, you’re in fantasy land. They’re not happy with the rough parity, the slight advantage they have now. They want media domination. Sinclair bought the once glorious Baltimore Sun. Don’t think they’ll stop there. I predict Sinclair or the News Corp. will own The Washington Post one day. Maybe sooner than we think.

I implore you. Contemplate this. If you’re of a certain age, you have a living memory of revolutions in what we used to call the Third World. Question: What’s the first thing every guerilla army, whether of the left or the right, did once they seized the palace? They took over the radio or television station. First. There’s a reason for that.

It’s the same reason Viktor Orban told CPAC in 2022: “Have your own media.”

This is a crisis. The Democratic brand is garbage in wide swaths of the country, and this is the reason. Consider this point. In Missouri on Tuesday, voters passed a pro-abortion rights initiative, and another that raised the minimum wage and mandated paid leave. These are all Democratic positions. But as far as electing someone to high office, the Man-Boy Love Party could probably come closer than the Democrats. Trump beat Harris there by 18 points, and Senator Josh Hawley beat Lucas Kunce, who ran a good race and pasted Hawley in their debate, by 14 points.

The reason? The right-wing media. And it’s only growing and growing. And I haven’t even gotten to social media and Tik Tok and the other platforms from which far more people are getting their news these days. The right is way ahead on those fronts too. Liberals must wake up and understand this and do something about it before it’s too late, which it almost is.

Why WE Need to Stop Donald J. Trump!


Lest we forget is an often used but largely ignored quote that, in reality, we should always have in mind in this age of mass and fast communication. Reaching people widely through mobile phones and the internet has been a great tool for the world population as a whole, but modernly it has become a tool for the spread of misinformation. The phrase increasingly used to describe the purveyors of this misinformation has been articulated in one or more of the statements below.

POPULIST: Populism often entails presenting “the people” as the underdog. Populists typically seek to reveal to “the people” how they are oppressed. In doing so, they do not seek to change “the people”, but rather seek to preserve the latter’s “way of life” as it presently exists, regarding it as a source of good.

Fascism: is a far-right form of government in which most of the country’s power is held by one ruler or a small group, under a single party.

Autocrat: an absolute ruler, especially a monarch who holds and exercises the powers of government as by inherent right, not subject to restrictions.

It is hard to define Donald Trump as any if not all the above definitions fit to some degree. Previous owners of these descriptions were the fomenters of several wars in the modern age which left the world and countries in chaos. It is odd that with the lessening of Historic education and often religious zeal seem to go hand in hand. The people who espouse and follow the above tenets all follow the same path of destruction and suppression which end s up in public uprisings and falling governments. If we allow the election of Donald Trump as president to cite Donald Trump “we won’t have a country!”

Riding on the coattails of Crap!


Apparently, the supporters of LOTUS have no idea of his inability to govern. ANY positive achievements during his administration were not products of his brain. He has however managed to turn rational people into a national mob who sole purpose is to attack anyone perceived as other no matter how long their American lineage is and what they have accomplished. Without the multinational makeup of the United States, there would be no United States. The hope for the future is to remove the less than qualified members of the Government from service by the vote and make the effort to install reasonable replacements instead of cohorts who should not be working in the Government. Only in a “free” country can an indicted person run for Leader of the country. The advantage for voters is that the misdeeds and their effects are readily available through many types of media (including the biased ones). I would suggest to voters: each candidate comes with some baggage, that being said the key is to unpack that baggage and sort the dirty laundry!!

Reverse Diarrhea?


It is apparent the former President DJT is a danger to America and its allies. We must believe that whatever DJT promises to do if elected no matter how outrageous, are his intentions and purpose. His presidency would be a culmination of all of the evils that currently exist among the dictatorial leaders he so much admires. There will be mass deportations (or attempts) for anyone perceived as other no matter their citizenship (born or naturalized). It is unfortunate that through a systematic and steady erosion of what history is taught or altered that many do not get the benefit of the true past 100 years of history. Our allies will remain as steadfast for us as we have been for them. Keep in mind that these allies have similar national issues as we now experience and with that comes the extreme actions we see in the middle east. We are at a turning point where we need to fully back or retreat from support of some of our allies who appear to be riding the Despot train much to the delight of prominent leaders whose sole objective is backwards looking and attempting to create the conditions that caused the second great war which destroyed countries and millions of lives. It is clear that many voters are undecided, uncommitted or not voting, my question to those folks is “Do you want the type of “non-government that DJT will give us since he is (supposedly) one of the 1%? His type of governing preceded the Great recession and ultimately the Second world war. The Authoritarian and despotic rulers rose to prominence and decided to attack other countries who disagreed with their politics. If you believe enough is enough then do not vote for DJT!!

Voting Made Simple!


Listening and watching a variety of news outlets who were speaking to a range of American voters, I was struck by the seemingly underinformed and single-issue voters who have their opinions without recognizing that whoever is the countries’ leader has less to do with parties than personalities. Some folks are not comfortable with a potential female woman of color, some have an issue with a Braggadocios con man. The prize in all of this is who controls Congress! It has been clear for many years that big money has more control of our government than many realize. WE were warned by President Eisenhower about this when he was in office. This is an excerpt:

“In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.”

This means that the wealthy who have their own interests in mind will continue that line according to who the Titular head of the country is! In someone like DJT, they have a greedy self-serving person who caters to the 1% (who he is not part of and wants to be in spite of what he says). We must remember that many of our Congressional members are in the 1% and have no desire to hurt their own bottom line. If we do not dig deeper as voters, we are not serving ourselves and will continue to have a government (from top to bottom) which will serve us poorly. It is the practice in “politricks” to pander and misrepresent as it suits their personal agendas. Being informed on issues (old and new) makes for a informed voter. The choice has always been and will probably continue to be “lesser of two evils”!

Phone Answering Message


If you have a landline still or have your mobile phone set up to receive messages, I have been complimented (or had comments) on my message. I am posting that message for your use with no strings attached if you desire to use it.

Hello, we are not accepting calls for any special deals or fantastic promotions, we will accept calls from family, friends and known business associates. If we do not know you or recognize your number or if you do not leave a number, we will not call you back and we will report your number to the National do not call registry. Have a nice day.

Enjoy!!.

Consequences!


Consequences result from all actions and spoken words. Since the advent of the “Newt Gingrich” era of politics word more than actions have been the primary source of agitation. Newt was a major influencer of using “certain words” to convey underlying meanings. He along with the “moral Majority” and other “noveau” groups took to airwaves and other media expressing many ideas that have become mainstream now. The Right” has long been advocates of Government over reach for their purposes while suppressing Government activities that benefit a majority of citizens. It would take a minimum of 3- 4 tomes to explain the ways our society has been changed (attacked) by the extremes of both hands (right and left), the tough part is teasing out the facts which has been left to us the readers and consumers of news and information. Key to information (factual information) is spread over many sources and it has been left to the reader (consumer) to collect and understand. Facts never change while the opposite of facts constantly shifts.

Life Or Death!


Recently I was told about a younger friend who had foot amputated due to diabetes. This not unusual to have limbs removed due to the disease however in this case all symptoms were ignored for perhaps years. This is an issue with me in that Men in general fail to pay attention to their health and or ignore changes in their health. 20 years ago, I was diagnosed with prostate cancer, while the detection was early, and the disease contained in the gland itself I elected to have it surgically removed. At that time there were few options other than surgery, those options were, chemo, radiation and “radioactive” seed implants. Depending on general health, chemo, radiation can cause strokes or near strokes. There is the chance of the disease spreading with other remedies, surgical removal often offers the best remedy with one of its side effects being erectile dysfunction. Other side effects can occur but what most men are concerned about is ED -THERE IS A PILL FOR THIS! There is no pill or remedy for death if you do not monitor this health issue (or any other). Any other side effects usually can be addressed in some form by your physician (if you have one). I vehemently urge men to get physician you like and have regular visits to insure your health. Get real with your health and you will live a better life or just live! To paraphrase “Smokey Bear”- Only you can save your life with regular health visits!

Postal Malfeasance? or Political Ignorance?


Louis DeJoy (born June 20, 1957) is an American businessman serving as the 75th U.S. postmaster general. He was appointed in May 2020 by the Board of Governors of the United States Postal Service (USPS). Prior to the appointment, he was the founder and CEO of the logistics and freight company New Breed Logistics and was a major Republican Party donor and fundraiser for Donald Trump.[1] DeJoy is the first postmaster general since 1992 without any previous experience in the USPS.[2] His companies still hold active service contracts with the USPS, generating controversy over conflict of interest.[3]

DeJoy was criticized for cost-reduction policies enacted after assuming office in June 2020, including eliminating overtime, and banning late or additional trips to deliver mail. The Postal Service also continued responding to long-term declines in first class mail volume with ongoing decommissioning of hundreds of high-speed mail-sorting machines and removal of the lower-volume mail collection boxes from streets. These practices were also criticized as mail delivery became delayed. The changes took place during the COVID-19 pandemic and in the lead-up to the 2020 presidential election, raising fears that the changes would interfere with voters who used mail-in voting to cast their ballots, possibly intentionally. Congressional committees and the USPS inspector general investigated. In August of that year, amid public pressure, DeJoy said that the changes would be suspended until after the election,[4] and in October the USPS agreed to reverse all of them.[5]

In March 2021, DeJoy issued a 10-year plan called “Delivering for America” to stabilize the finances of the Postal Service by slowing first class mail delivery, optimizing transportation networks, cutting post office hours, and raising prices. The plan assumed Congress would relieve the USPS of the requirement to pre-pay retiree health care costs, which with DeJoy’s urging it did with the Postal Service Reform Act of 2022.

DeJoy attracted criticism and lawsuits from environmentalists and Democratic governments when he decided to purchase 90% gasoline-powered delivery vehicles in 2022, which he justified in part by the agency’s financial situation. After additional federal funding was provided by the Postal Service Reform Act of 2022 and Inflation Reduction Act, DeJoy revised these plans twice; the final version orders 83% electric vehicles through 2028 and 100% electric thereafter.

I put the current Postmaster general’s Bio to explain my comments (opinion). Mr. De Joy is a Trump crony who along with Trump has no idea how the postal service works. While the agency has and still has problems (all solvable). The agency requires someone who can look beyond the issues that do not plague ordinary businesses. The postmaster General cannot be fired by the Congress or the President. The Board of Governors have that authority. At this time there are 5 Republicans on the board and that may be the block to fire De Joy. Until some moderate board members are elected there will be a Dejoy in control with no real direction as to improving the postal service. There is no Joy in having DeJoy.

TMI-In Excess?


Information overload has caused a gap in facts. The fact that the conservative right, right, far right have quietly been remaking our educational system. They have changed or erased parts of history to keep modern learners ignorant of the real origins of our country that include the good, bad and ugly. History is history and remains unchanged until the manipulators get a hold of it. It has always been incumbent on the learners to source out what true and what is not. It is irrational to follow “the party line” for the sake of deceiving the public and pushing agendas against the public and sometimes national interests. The first world war was started by an assassination based on a rumor or perceived injustice. World war 2 was started by almost the same reasons with the help of (then) modern communication methods. Now the same bad actors are updated with the advent of the world wide web and its associated components (“X”, Google, Microsoft, etc.).

Again, the onus is on the public to be wary of mass communication and become skeptics of what is being reported as facts. Investigating information is fairly easy compared to 5 or 10 years ago, it just requires reading which again is not what it used to be. Something as simple as ‘cursive” writing is foreign to many younger people along with books about real history. Books are the ever-giving resource for information hence the “selective ban” on certain books which have been mainstays in our educational system. It is ironic that many of the banning’s occur in Southern, Republican states under the guise of fighting against “woke”(whatever that means). It is well to remember that the Modern Republicans bear no resemblance to past Republicans while against some Democratic agendas, made a way to function for the country through the fog of disagreement.