Progressive media personality and major liberal influencer Rachel Maddow didn’t offer any comment when she shared her producer Stephen Benen‘s article about Donald Trump‘s wet fuse arraignment protests — though she might have paraphrased T.S. Eliot to give Benen’s take some poetic ballast: “This is the way the (Trump) world ends / Not with a bang but with a whimper.”
[Silence is also famously poetic, so Maddow may be employing that technique as she amplified the article to her 10+ million followers on x.]
Benen writes that despite Trump’s ominous social media warnings and calls for action — “IT’S TIME!!! … WE JUST CAN’T ALLOW THIS ANYMORE. … WE MUST SAVE AMERICA! PROTEST, PROTEST, PROTEST!!!” the former President wrote in March — the protest dynamite hasn’t found a spark.
If Trump’s posts are explosive, his allegedly incensed crowds are not.
— Rachel Maddow MSNBC (@maddow) August 6, 2023
First in Manhattan, then in Miami, and last week in Washington, D.C., the irate army of Trump supporters (on whose behalf the former President says he is being indicted) never materialized. This despite Trump’s all caps post — “SEE YOU IN MIAMI ON TUESDAY” — and his telling Trump circle insider/lawyer/fixer/confidant Roger Stone on a podcast that week that “Our country has to protest.”
Is no one listening? Are the measly protest crowds — despite the summons — a sign of waning support of the thrice-indicted Trump?
Benen isn’t yet willing to conclude that Trump fealty, historically thick, is becoming close to water than blood. He notes other causes may be responsible, especially the idea that aggressive prosecutions surrounding January 6 conduct by “protestors” may be hindering the action — even if it has not dimmed the ardor.
Benen doesn’t mention another potential cause of the paltry protest uptake for Trump on the streets: Perhaps MAGA street level protestors feel redundant and unnecessary as they see so many high level government officials like House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, Sen. Ted Cruz and a phalanx of Congress members (Reps. Greene, Boebert, Jordan, and Comer) doing so much pro-Trump protesting on TV.
Why hold up a “DOJ Liars” sign during a heat wave, they might figure, when Comer can make their case in an air-conditioned Newsmax studio?
Still, Benen allows his colleague Zeeshan Aleem to provide his conclusion for him, finishing his article with Aleem citing the puny protest crowds as evidence that “Trump is looking weak.” Time will tell.
.jpg){kind=link}