Outside the Beltway

X/eet Of The Day

Who’d of thought that Donald Trump would do what he campaigned on doing?!

Matt Bernius
43

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Every now and then, you see something on Twitter that beautifully sums up your thinking on a topic. As the kids say, here’s the “Shot”–earlier today Gary Black, who describes himself as a Managing Partner at The Future Fund LLC, and an SEC registered investment adviser, posted the following to the site formerly known as Twitter:

I’ll note for the “business people should run the government because they are smarter and more successful” types, Mr Black lists himself as a “CEO/CIO/PM.” Anyway, here’s the “Chaser” and my X/eet of the day:

I know that many readers of this blog believe that if the Democrats had just tried “this one trick,” they would have won the election. Of course, I’ve seen little agreement from those folks about what the “one trick” should have been.

Call me wrong (and I’m sure you will), but the dynamic playing out in Mr Black’s tweet speaks to how challenging a task the Democrats faced. And in that particular election (taking place at that specific moment in history), I’m honestly not sure how this could have been overcome.

Granted, this wasn’t the only problem the Democrats needed to overcome to win the election–far from it. And that also speaks to the huge multi-pronged challenge they faced.

NOTE: I suspect some people reading this will see this as me making excuses for the Democrats. To be clear that isn’t my intent–they did a LOT of things wrong over the last four years that helped create the conditions for Trump’s recent victory.

I am trying to highlight some forces that created additional challenges they needed to overcome.

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43 responses to “X/eet Of The Day”

  1. Jc Avatar
    Jc

    Not only should just Trump voters be held accountable, but those that did not vote at all as well SMH. This guy must have been one of the kids in Ben Stein’s class in Ferris Bueller. Lol. “Anyone…anyone..?”

    3
  2. Kathy Avatar
    Kathy

    It’s like this:

    Yeah, I voted for Trump (sic) but I never thought

    Exactly. Maybe next time you should think.

    18
  3. Steven L. Taylor Avatar
    Steven L. Taylor

    I am glad you posted this tweet. I had wanted to include it in my post from earlier, but had failed to bookmark it.

    6
  4. Paul L. Avatar
    Paul L.

    White Supremacy
    Mailvox: Stupid cons and Smoot-Hawley

  5. Fortune Avatar
    Fortune

    Here’s the problem:

  6. reid Avatar
    reid

    Xeet #2 is great. “I know Trump is a malevolent idiot, but I really want to vote for him because (Democrats are evil|I vote R out of habit) so I will accept any ludicrous reason provided to excuse it.”

    6
  7. Daryl Avatar
    Daryl

    So…they don’t believe he’ll do stupid shit he says he’ll do.
    They don’t believe he did the things investigators and courts say that he did.
    They believe he did things he never did.
    Christians support a serial adulterer and sex offender.
    I can’t wait to hear how you suggest overcoming a cult of 77M followers.

    12
  8. DK Avatar
    DK

    92% of black women and 78% of black men voted to block from power the rapist that promised he would do more stupid stuff, after his first term ended in recession and mass death.

    88% of Jewish women and 72% of Jewish men voted for the main opponent of the Putin-puppet criminal who explicitly told his voters “I don’t care about you, I just want your vote.”

    85% of LGBT voters picked Harris, instead of the orange lunatic who incited a terror attack on Congress, publicly waxed on his attraction to his underage daughter, and called for Hitlerian generals.

    We all had the same options. It’s not Democrats that are the problem.

    A lot of people were very poorly parented and did not received a proper education in decency, ethics, or morals. They need to figure out what the hell is wrong with themselves and their cohorts, instead of blaming Democrats for their selfishness and stupidity. Charity begins at home.

    31
  9. just nutha Avatar
    just nutha

    @Jc: Where I live, 370,000 voters selected Harris to 78,000 who selected Trump. In the previous location, the results were 68,000 Trump to 30,000 Harris. I’m blessed with having lived in places where my vote doesn’t matter one iota’s worth since returning from Korea.

    That my vote would matter is the stuff of nightmares for me.

    1
  10. Monala Avatar
    Monala

    @Paul L.: We should listen to someone who uses ((( ))) why, exactly?

    7
  11. just nutha Avatar
    just nutha

    @Daryl: Even for those (like myself) who don’t think they’re a cult, addressing the question of overcoming people who want an entirely different USA is problematic. At best.

    4
  12. Rick S Avatar
    Rick S

    The first time around, I didn’t think Trump would do the things he said he was going to do. After we already saw what he was like as President, that’s not a good excuse this time around.

    5
  13. Argon Avatar
    Argon

    I wonder what Howard Lutnick’s excuse is. As former CE & President of Cantor Fitzgerald, you’d think he know better.

    2
  14. Jim X 32 Avatar
    Jim X 32

    You are talking of 2 different target audiences. There is the smart enough MAGA target audience that believed ,”No one is stupid enough to do that…”. Then there is the significantly-sized group of people that had no idea of what Trump’s aims were because it was filtered through podcasts, TikTok, YouTube pages, and Facebook.

    These are mediums where Democrats have zero to no presence—therefore, from their perspective, what was the alternative to the guy trying to fight for working people and fix the economy so a little more blood circulates to the toes?

    Said another way—a school of fish we could use have migrated to a different part of the lake. A good portion of them aren’t worth eating but some are. Team Red fishermen got in boats and pursued these fish. They fish without any competition from Team Blue—who are still fishing from the docks they’ve always fished from. It would be nice if the fish simply moved back to the docks they’ve normally lived around—but fish don’t behave that way. Only a fool would cast a bait and curse the fish for not being in such a good spot.

    After 5 years living in Desantistan—it’s clear that these people don’t trust their own leaders—but the only voices competing in these areas are RW voice. Credibility in RW leaders CAN be undermined if packaged a certain way. The question remains—will Dems get in boats a go after the fish—-or will they stay on the docks and rue that the group of fish they used to have access too have moved to a different part of the lake.

    11
  15. Matt Bernius Avatar
    Matt Bernius

    @Monala:

    We should listen to someone who uses ((( ))) why, exactly?

    I wasn’t familiar with the ((())) convention and it took a few steps to turn up a result:

    ((()))
    Commonly found on Twitter or other social networks, ((())), aka triple parentheses, are placed around the name of a Jew, person with Jewish ancestry, or any Jew-related entity and is often used in a derogatory manner: (((CNN))), (((Facebook))).
    It was originally used by far right-wing bloggers “The Right Stuff” who explained that it was used to symbolized how Jews’ names have *echoed* throughout history; also stating that Jews have facilitated multiculturalism and mass immigration in “white nations”.

    Its intended usage can be either disparaging towards the person or entity in the parentheses (commonly used by alt-righters) or used ironically by Jews themselves or others who want to mock its usage, much like how Trump supporters have adopted the term “deplorable” to be a term of endearment amongst one another, or to signal that they are a Trump supporter on social media.
    Alt righter #1: Hollywood is filled with a bunch liberal Jew elitists trying to push multiculturalism on the youth!

    Alt righter #2: Shit, (((Steven Spielberg))) is gonna make a bleeding-heart libtard movie about “Dreamers” escaping their shitty conditions in Mexico by sneaking over the border and making a living for themselves in America!

    source: https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=%28%28%28%29%29%29

    More also here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triple_parentheses

    Perhaps Paul is suggesting that the “Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act of 1930” theory is typically advanced by White supremacists. I honestly don’t know and have given up attempting to try to understand his posts.

    BTW, for the record and for those with really poor reading comprehension skills, I wasn’t posting this to in any way comment on the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act of 1930 or its impact on the Depression. This was about someone who knew what Trump was saying and specifically chose to ignore it (or rather believe he wasn’t serious).

    7
  16. Joe Avatar
    Joe

    @DK: You know who did elect him, the Master Race! Those of superior intellect and breeding, by an overwhelming margin. You know, the only ones you want to see in positions of trust and leadership. Cause, . . . reasons.

    3
  17. Matt Bernius Avatar
    Matt Bernius

    @Fortune:
    Ok, watched the bit. I had missed it when it first came out.

    I don’t understand why this works for the SECOND Trump administration (i.e. already having experienced the Horse in the Hospital once and therefore having a pretty good idea of what its going to do the second time).

    Or to explain people who convinced themselves to vote for Trump by thinking “he’d never actually do what he keeps saying he’s going to do.”

    7
  18. Kathy Avatar
    Kathy

    On related developments, buyer’s remorse among Muslims in Michigan.

    Now, granted the rapist did not say anything about the insane idea of clearing out the population of Gaza and taking it over for a resort, but did they forget the Muslim travel ban, or the town Bibi named after him in Israel, or hewing to Bibi’s line as regards the nuclear deal with Iran, or the shitty agreement with the Taliban?

    8
  19. Jay L Gischer Avatar
    Jay L Gischer

    @Jim X 32: I couldn’t agree with you more. I am past thinking, “this would be good” and into thinking, “how do we make this happen?”

    We have an asymmetry of money. The oligarchs whose wealth is related to oil are mostly on the “destroy the democrats” page. (Musk appears to be on the “I hate trans people” and “how dare you criticize me for making jokes in poor taste” page.)

    They are spending money on making sure that their story line gets on YouTube, gets on Instagram, gets on TikTok. Fox News reaches some, but they are look for the fish at the other end of the pond. They are spending money on this. We have had multiple news stories go by that demonstrate this.

    So, it might not take a lot of money to be an influencer, but it takes some. How do we get it? How do we spend it? How do we evaluate our spending? I don’t know the answers to these questions. I would be willing to help someone who does, though.

    3
  20. Fortune Avatar
    Fortune

    @Matt Bernius: He’s done some things similar to what he said he’d do, but remember he promised thousands of things and the ones he’s focused on seem almost random. He was more interested in tax cuts than tariffs for most of his campaign. He talked about inflation and he had previously talked about Schedule F, and I think that morphed into cutting government staff – remember most people were expecting him to cut about 50k senior policy people and replace them, not hundreds of thousands throughout government. He’s done a little on immigration and maybe he’ll clamp down the way he promised, but I think he’s lost interest in it. DEI was mostly a throwaway line in his speeches but it became his first big initiative. Maybe promised investigations will happen but there’s been no sign of them. Crime, ditto. Military, more likely we’ll be seeing cuts than modernization. Maybe we should wait until the State of the Union address, but we should be honest, things haven’t played out the way we expected. As for what liberals expected, it was prosecutions, anti-contraception, military takeover of cities, I don’t remember what else but it was never going to happen.

    3
  21. Matt Bernius Avatar
    Matt Bernius

    @Fortune:
    Thanks for taking the time to explain that thinking.

    I don’t think it’s productive to go too far into litigating the details beyond saying I have a different read on things than you WRT to what we expected him do. My take is so far, as many in fact expected, the administration has been following a lot of the Project 2025 blueprint (though in a much more extreme fashion than a lot of us expected in many cases–something you acknowledge above).

    One thing I will call out:

    He was more interested in tax cuts than tariffs for most of his campaign.

    Perhaps we’re looking at different sources, but by mid summer tariffs were already a regular talking point for Trump at campaign events and pressers–in particular that they “pay for themselves” and that “foreign countries pay them.” It was common enough that we had multiple articles on the topic. So I’m not sure this washes–but we all have our own confirmation biases.

    Again, I’ll also note that given that Trump enacted sweeping tariffs in his first Administration, I still don’t understand how someone was surprised to discover he would do the same thing once he returned to power.

    9
  22. Gustopher Avatar
    Gustopher

    I know that many readers of this blog believe that if the Democrats had just tried “this one trick,” they would have won the election.

    It was close enough that one weird trick might have done it.

    I might have gone with not running away from trans people and trying to appease the center rather than showing some leadership. I think voters like someone who will fight for something.

    6
  23. Daryl Avatar
    Daryl

    @just nutha: I’m curious about why you think they’re not a cult? There are no characteristics of a cult that they don’t align with.

    4
  24. Jay L Gischer Avatar
    Jay L Gischer

    I’ve been fantasizing over a scenario where the Democrats in the Senate filibuster everything until the illegal impoundment – including the Ukraine aid – of funds ceases. I am not sure they can filibuster an increase in the debt ceiling, but if they could I think I would like them to.

    Frankly, my thinking today is that if Trump does not think he needs to follow the law, how can the rest of us stop following the law in a way that is coordinated and valuable?

    I used to regularly see conservatives assert, “I just want to see the law enforced”. Apparently that was exactly the posturing I thought it was.

    4
  25. Jay L Gischer Avatar
    Jay L Gischer

    @Daryl: Well, I have known a few people who ended up lost to a cult personally.

    Cult members are all-in on the cult. They eat, sleep and breathe the cult and the leader. Most MAGAs have only a brief contact with the cult. Remember the woman who saw on social media that Trump was gonna make IVF free. She’s not a cult member.

    Most of the people close to Trump are not there because of ideology but because of money and power. This is not how a cult acts.

    Every human being on the planet, having made a decision, will try to stick to that decision. They will interpret new data in the light of that decision. They will take further actions in the light of that data. It is very unusual for a human being to change course.

    So they are acting like normal human beings who have somehow been talked into a lie.

    A friend of mind (a woman) said Trump followers were like that girl you knew who took up with an older guy that the rest of her friends suspected and didn’t like. But the girl would be all defiant with them, and impossible to convince. We don’t normally call this a cult.

    Why do I care? Because understanding what one is up against leads to better solutions.

    7
  26. Steven L. Taylor Avatar
    Steven L. Taylor

    @Matt Bernius:

    I have a different read on things than you WRT to what we expected him do

    Indeed.

    I will state that things have actually been worse than I expected, at least as it pertains to the DOGE/Elon business.

    But anyone who paid attention to the campaign shouldn’t be surprised that he is doing the unilateral things that he can do. That includes the EOs, tariffs, and foreign policy. He doesn’t need Congress for that stuff.

    Tax cuts require congressional action, so the fact that he hasn’t done that yet is linked to Congress’ calendar, not because he is eschewing that goal.

    He did lie about being a dictator for only the first day (but he did promise to be a dictator). He lied about Project2025 by word, but by deed (i.e., the people he associated with), it was clear that he would pursue that blueprint as well.

    If anyone reading this voted for Trump, you are getting what was promised.

    17
  27. Matt Bernius Avatar
    Matt Bernius

    @Steven L. Taylor:

    I will state that things have actually been worse than I expected, at least as it pertains to the DOGE/Elon business.

    Ditto–far worse and more reckless than I could ever predict. This is true of most people I know who were “on the inside” and went through Trump 2016 as well.

    . He lied about Project2025 by word, but by deed (i.e., the people he associated with), it was clear that he would pursue that blueprint as well.

    Again 100%. Though it’s also fair to say that Trump most likely didn’t care about Project 2025. His appointees–all vetted by Heritage–and the appointees and hires under them, now they CARE about their respective sections of the 2025 blueprint.

    3
  28. JohnSF Avatar
    JohnSF

    Oh, those horrid, rotten, face-eating leopards.
    So untrustworthy.

    4
  29. just nutha Avatar
    just nutha

    @Argon: Luttnick may be there for the tax breaks and the lulz. Billionaires may tend to believe that they live after economic effects happen and are unaffected.

    2
  30. just nutha Avatar
    just nutha

    @Jay L Gischer: I do the metaphor differently: “Any fish will bite if you got the right bait…”. Well and good; what bait do the Dems have that’s “right?” I dunno.

    1
  31. just nutha Avatar
    just nutha

    @Daryl: It’s more that “they’re a dangerous cult” doesn’t address the problem. They want a different world than you do. That they’re a cult doesn’t matter to that point.

    4
  32. Kathy Avatar
    Kathy

    Another thing people seem to have forgotten, were the various tariffs the rapist did impose in his first disaster of a term. Not to mention the large subsidies paid to farmers to make up for lost foreign sales of soybean and other crops.

    So who would not believe he’d do something he never shuts up about and has already done?

    2
  33. wr Avatar
    wr

    @Fortune: “As for what liberals expected, it was prosecutions, anti-contraception, military takeover of cities, I don’t remember what else but it was never going to happen.”

    You mean like the Trump-appointed US Attorney trying to get a grand jury indictment of Chuck Schumer because he criticized the Supreme Court in a speech? Or border czar Tom Homan attempting to launch an investigation of AOC for the crime of informing her constituents of their constitutional rights? Can you still say “it was never going to happen” when it already has?

    See, this is the reason you usually don’t make arguments — when all you’re posting is inscrutable zen koans and obscure rhetorical questions it’s hard to see immediately how full of crap you are.

    14
  34. Rick DeMent Avatar
    Rick DeMent

    Well done, Matt you gave voice to where I am these days.

  35. just nutha Avatar
    just nutha

    Before I go back to lurking today, I’ll note that my take on the yahoo prompting the post may well be confused that Trump is doing what he said he would (and may, therefore, be wondering about the free Bubble Up, rainbow stew, and silver spoon*) but is most likely laying down cover fire in case this thing goes in the crapper.

    Sorta like the joke about rich white folk painting “soul brother” on their garage doors back in the day.**

    *h/t Merle Haggard

    **h/t (IIRC) Richard Prior and apologies (yet again) to Huey, Angela, and the rest

    2
  36. Scott F. Avatar
    Scott F.

    @Matt:

    NOTE: I suspect some people reading this will see this as me making excuses for the Democrats. To be clear that isn’t my intent–they did a LOT of things wrong over the last four years that helped create the conditions for Trump’s recent victory.

    This isn’t directed at you and this statement specifically, but maybe that “one trick” would be to stop NOT making excuses. You aren’t comfortable claiming that the Biden/Harris administration was extremely effective across multiple fronts and so you preemptively concede the flaws of the last 4 years may have driven voters to Trump. On the other side of the aisle, Republicans are perfectly happy to claim that the results of The Donald’s botched COVID response shouldn’t be counted against Trump’s otherwise stellar performance in his first term, so the people should vote him despite that. “Other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, how did you like the play?”

    The asymmetrical behavioral expectations are too often self-imposed.

    8
  37. Scott F. Avatar
    Scott F.

    @Gustopher:

    It was close enough that one weird trick might have done it.

    This is certainly true. The problem is that the thing one person wishes the campaign had done more of is so very often the thing that another (counterbalancing) person wishes they did less of. It’s unknowable.

    I’ve decided for myself that the Democrats did all the right things. And it was just a whisker short of overcoming all of the situational disadvantages present for the incumbent party in 2024.

    Mind your own damn business. Tariffs are a 20% tax increase on Americans. They are going to implement Project 2025. Trump & Vance are just weird. Trump’s former aides say he’s a fascist and we should believe them. The J6 rioters will be released, even the violent ones. The Biden economy is better than all our peer countries, so inflation won’t be an easy thing to fix. Freedom! Even the Leopards Eating People’s Faces Party will eat your face. Harris/Walz made these points the center of their campaign. How rare to be proven right on every key point so quickly!

    5
  38. Gustopher Avatar
    Gustopher

    @Matt Bernius:

    This was about someone who knew what Trump was saying and specifically chose to ignore it (or rather believe he wasn’t serious).

    To be fair, so much of what comes out of Trump’s mouth is bullshit that it’s frequently impossible to know what things are and are not actual concepts of a plan, unless he has tried to do it before and failed. And even then, it’s hard to know.

    I would think this is disqualifying on its own.

    He was pro-LGBT, including the dreaded T, on the 2016 campaign trail — specifically saying that Kaitlin Jenner should use whatever bathroom she was comfortable with, even getting her pronouns right.

    He said he was going to raise taxes on wealthy people, and then did the opposite.

    He said all sort of terrible things about NATO in his first term, but did basically nothing on it.

    He hates Latinos, sure, but what’s he going to do about it? Make noise about building a wall, put up a little bit of fencing, separate kids from their families and then deport fewer than his predecessor? (His “deport everyone” plan jammed up the courts — Obama went after the people easiest to deport (criminals, etc) rather than everyone.)

    He and the Republicans in Congress tried to repeal Obamacare dozens of times, and just couldn’t get their bill over the line.and so far… not a peep this term, which has been going on for 14 years or so by now.

    Look, it’s stupid as fuck to vote for someone who people say take him seriously but not literally, or maybe the other way around” — it’s the rough equivalent of voting for “whoever wins power all the week after the election” — you don’t know what you’re going to get.

    But the least likely scenario was that he was going to do what he said he would do.

    3
  39. Raoul Avatar
    Raoul

    Way too many elections the candidate that lies the most wins, what is the opposition supposed to do? Interestingly enough, when Trump tells the truth, as in saying he will imposed tariffs, many people don’t believe him. It really does not make sense.

    4
  40. ElonDoge Bootlicker Avatar
    ElonDoge Bootlicker

    @just nutha: maybe, just maybe those who aren’t clapping are the ones who have formed the dangerous CULT.

    1
  41. Assad K Avatar
    Assad K

    @wr:

    Also, it’s only been 2 months… plenty of time left to send the army into Chicago.

    1
  42. Chip Daniels Avatar
    Chip Daniels

    MAGAs are authoritarians, and authoritarians have only one policy:
    Whatever the Authority wants, at the moment they want it, updated daily.

    That’s it. There is no other policy.

    In this instance, the authoritarianism is put into service to racism and misogyny which is the core goal.

    2
  43. Winecoff46 Avatar
    Winecoff46

    I also think Trump showed, in the last several years, that he believed he was always above the law, i.e., that it should never apply to him or to those acting on his behalf.

    This, too, has continued after the election, so the people who voted for him cannot be surprised by his extra-judicial actions now. (However, unlike “having one’s face eaten by a leopard” or seeing one’s personal life directly affected by increased costs, firings, loss of income, etc., I’m not sure the Trump Administration’s refusal to obey court orders or comply with laws is anything MAGA supporters would feel personally harmed by. But we’ll see if I’m wrong about that).

    2

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