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Tag: victory
Fox Shows Herald A 'Kinder, Gentler' Trump, But That Guy Never Shows Up

Fox Shows Herald A 'Kinder, Gentler' Trump, But That Guy Never Shows Up

As Donald Trump prepared to speak following his unexpectedly narrow victory over former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley in the New Hampshire Republican primary, Trump loyalists Kellyanne Conway and Sean Hannity predicted a courteous and focused performance from the former president.

“I think Trump tonight will continue to be very gracious,” Conway said. The Fox News host responded, “I think you're right, I think he will do that tonight,” adding that Trump’s recent “tone” shows he's “been dialed in in a way that I've not seen, honestly, since 2020.”

That kinder, more deliberate Trump did not appear on stage. Instead, the likely Republican presidential nominee raged throughout his speech. He castigated Haley as “delusional,” criticized her “fancy dress that probably wasn’t so fancy,” suggested that she would be “under investigation” if she won the nomination due to things “she doesn’t want to talk about,” and falsely claimed that he won New Hampshire in the 2016 and 2020 general elections.

After the speech ended, a deflated Hannity said that while Trump's ire with Haley was “understandable,” he wished Trump had instead focused on President Joe Biden.

There’s a long tradition of political journalists declaring that a new tone from Trump is either imminent or has finally arrived, only for the former president to double down on his typically unhinged behavior and make those people look ridiculous. The likes of Hannity, Conway, and several others at Fox who offered similarly rose-colored views of Trump over the last few days seem to be going further than that — they are desperately trying to will such a pivot into existence.

Martha MacCallum, a Fox anchor who the network props up as one of its “straight news” types in spite of her obvious right-wing views, applauded Trump’s “very kind of different, earnest demeanor” in a recent Fox town hall. “I think that his tone was very different,” she told TheWrap in an interview. “He did not talk about a rigged or stolen election at all during the entire hour. I don’t know that you could go back and find it an hour when he hasn’t brought it up since all of that happened back in 2020. I think he wants to broaden his appeal and we’ll see if it works.”

Fox contributor Newt Gingrich also argued that Trump had adopted a new, less polarizing tone. “If you watch his tone, he has very correctly begun to move toward a unifying [message], bring us together, solve problems,” he told Hannity on Monday. “So I am encouraged that this could be a remarkable general election.”

A similar discussion broke out on Fox Business' Varney & Co. after National Review editor Deroy Murdock praised Trump’s “new tone” as “delightful, warm — kind of a kinder, gentler Donald J. Trump.”

“You see that too?” an elated Stuart Varney replied. “It is a different tone, and it started with Fox's town hall.”

“He just seems calmer, less bombast, less name-calling, that sort of stuff,” Murdock said. “And if he keeps that up, that will calm people down. A lot of people just want to see that, and they’re happy to go along with him otherwise.”

Murdock’s comments get to the heart of the matter. Right-wing figures at Fox and elsewhere will inevitably back Trump for financial and ideological reasons. They’re undeterred by the numerous crimes the former president allegedly committed, his naked corruption and authoritarianism, or his attempts to overthrow the 2020 election and end American democracy. But it would be more pleasant for them to rally behind Trump if they didn’t have to alternatively defend or ignore his deranged public statements.

Unfortunately for Hannity and company, that behavior is the core of who Trump is. Defending the indefensible is the life they’ve chosen in exchange for maintaining their audiences and securing a policy agenda of tax cuts for rich people and bans on abortion, and there’s no way around it.

Reprinted with permission from Media Matters.

Why Trump's First-Place Finish In Iowa Proves Weakness, Not Strength

Why Trump's First-Place Finish In Iowa Proves Weakness, Not Strength

On Monday night, Iowans slipped and slid over icy roads to give Donald Trump a 51% victory in the first Republican caucus. On Tuesday morning, the media seemed saturated with stories about Trump’s “landslide win.” The truth is the Iowa results can’t be seen as anything other than a weak candidate in a divided party.

That’s because for the first time since 1892, when comeback Democrat Grover Cleveland beat incumbent Republican Benjamin Harrison, this is an election with essentially two incumbents. Trump is the leader of his party. He’s running against candidates who have repeatedly thanked him for his assistance in winning races, declared him the “best president of the 21st century,” and largely promised to fulfill Trump’s policies—only more so.

With all that going for him, half the Republican Party still said no to Trump.

CBS, and CNN, The Washington Post and The Financial Times, and of course, Fox News are all running headlines this morning swooning over Trump’s “landslide” win. The question shouldn’t be why Trump scraped out a bare majority of Republican voters, but why he didn’t win bigger.

Does anyone believe that if President Joe Biden took just over 50 percent in any state, the press wouldn’t be screaming, “Biden is in big trouble!”

Trump’s opponents are so frightened of displeasing his rabid base that they have barely dared to raise their voices against anything he’s said and refused to go after him even when he demeaned them. Instead, they’ve devoted their time to tearing into each other in a race for second place that seems far more about raising visibility for 2028 or securing the spot for the next guy Trump approves of than it is about getting behind the Resolute desk.

Trump barely got half the vote in a cakewalk against opponents who couldn’t stop genuflecting in his direction and who devoted their time and money to sniping at each other. That he defeated this crew by one percent is not something to brag about. It’s a signal that even in his own party, many voters are looking for an alternative.

This isn’t the first time a president has mounted a try for another term after being defeated. Millard Fillmore tried it. Ulysses S. Grant tried it. Teddy Roosevelt tried it as a third-party candidate. Martin Van Buren tried it twice.

The only person who did it successfully was Cleveland, and there’s something that his races against Harrison share with Trump’s 2016 and 2020 runs. In 1888, Republican candidate Harrison lostthe popular vote but managed to snag a win in the electoral college. In 1892, Harrison lost the popular vote again, as a comeback Cleveland took a wide margin in both popular and electoral votes.

Trump isn’t Cleveland. He’s Harrison. Only Harrison had the good sense not to run again after twice losing the popular vote.

Donald Trump barely cleared the hurdle of getting more votes in Iowa than Ted Cruz did in 2016. No one should be proclaiming Trump’s landslide victory for snagging half of those who came out on a bitterly cold night. They should be wondering why Trump isn’t getting far more. They should be wondering why candidates, and Republican backers, are plowing millions into running against him while nothing like that is happening in the Democratic Party.

If anything good happened for Trump, it was probably Ron DeSantis edging out Nikki Haley. With Haley well ahead of DeSantis and nipping at Trump’s heels in New Hampshire polls going into last night, DeSantis’ second-place finish likely means that the Florida governor devotes even more time to going after Trump’s former UN ambassador while Trump is free to sit back, pull strings, and laugh. And wait for the media to declare his next landslide win.

Correction: A previous version of this story incorrectly identified the years of Benjamin Harrison's elections. The years are 1888 and 1892, not 1890 and 1894.

Reprinted with permission from Daily Kos.

Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell Ends In Rare Victory For Obama And Progressives

Progressives have a lot to be disappointed about in the Obama presidency.

Inequality remains stark and the jobs picture downright scary.

The healthcare law — while it will save many lives – lacks a public option and further entrenches private insurance companies.

But on a key question of social justice, fairness, and equality, the president has delivered. Starting on Tuesday, gays and lesbians won’t have to hide who they are to fight and die for the country they love.

“With the long-overdue end of the discriminatory ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ policy, our nation will finally close the door on a fundamental unfairness for gays and lesbians, and indeed affirm equality for all Americans,” said Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA).

“When the Democratic majorities in the House and Senate took action last year to end this wrongheaded policy, we reaffirmed the core American principle that anyone who wishes to serve, secure, and defend this country must be judged by their abilities and honored for their dedication and sacrifice.”

Army Veteran and Servicemembers Legal Defense Network Executive Director Aubrey Sarvis celebrated in a triumphant Monday statement.

“The repeal of ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ is an historic milestone along the journey to achieving LGBT equality in America’s military, and Tuesday is a monumental day for our service members and our nation.”

Perry Hits The Ground Running In Iowa As Republican Strategists Fret

Rick Perry is making George W. Bush look sensible, and Mark McKinnon, the Austin-based political strategist who knows Perry from his time steering George W. Bush’s media strategy in Texas, thinks he could be driving moderates away from the party, imperiling the Republicans next November.

“I worry the physics of this year’s Republican primaries are pulling the party so far to the right that it will leave moderate Republicans and conservative-leaning Independents feeling homeless,” McKinnon, who played a top role in both of Bush’s successful presidential bids, said.

Jonathan Martin and Ben Smith think Perry stole the show in Iowa Sunday, noting that rival Michele Bachmann surrounds herself with a “cocoon” of protection, insulating her from genuine interaction with fans. Perry, on the other hand, seems calm and at-ease meeting voters.

And that Perry has talent on the campaign trail shouldn’t surprise: He had a bitter, but quite successful, gubernatorial primary fight against Kay Bailey Hutchison to hone his skills, and ran his 2010 general election campaign against Obama, despite actually facing a more conservative Democrat, former Houston Mayor Bill White. So this very speech has had time to mature and grow and the candidate by now is quite comfortable delivering it.

This doesn’t mean some in the party aren’t a bit nervous about having a primary slugfest between two hard-right candidates in Michele Bachmann and Rick Perry. Karl Rove, who spearheaded Perry’s switch to the Republican Party in 1989 before the two had something of a falling out when Rove became George W. Bush’s political boss, appeared on Fox News today to warn his party about “…candidates moving so Right in the Republican primary that it becomes impossible for them to win the general election, because it will become a self-defeating message in the primary.

“People want to win,” he continued. “They don’t want somebody who goes so far to the extremes of either party that they lack a chance to carry a victory off in November.” (Watch the clip below).

Rove always made sure Bush offered rhetorical gestures to the moderates of America — one of his first post-9/11 actions to visit a mosque and reject blanket blame of Muslims is an example, just like the Medicare prescription drug benefit was a more substantive instance of at least acknowledging the other political movements out there. Perry seems content to lambast the rest of America when he isn’t ignoring it. Whereas Bush employed moderation in defense of a mostly extreme governing approach, Perry would appear to be a hardliner through and through.