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 why they are so opposed to everything woke, even if Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ attacks on wokeness are beginning to wither under Donald Trump’s attacks on him.
Trump invaded the GOP and turned Republicans into pod people. The party verges on collapsing into a lifeless husk, replaced with soulless drones intent on domination. It’s no wonder they see wokeness as a threat. It’s what keeps the rest of us from turning into shrieking pods.