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dpibel

(3,825 posts)
13. Straw Trump
Thu Feb 5, 2026, 12:48 PM
Thursday

I don't believe I've ever seen anyone on this site claim that Trump is omnipotent. So you are gainsaying a position no one takes.

It is undeniable that Trump has pushed, and continues to push, the envelope. He has gotten away with massive wrongdoing. That doesn't make him omnipotent, but it makes him and his handlers pretty darned effective.

Just a quick for instance: If, a year ago, someone had said, "Trump's going to tear down the East Wing," it would have been the sort of thing one could dismiss out of hand--too foolish, too brash, just impossible. Yet here we are.

But don't take my word for it:

We are now one year into Donald Trump’s second term, and something strange is happening in political media. A lot of people who spent years insisting that the so-called “alarmists” were being hysterical have started, tentatively, to admit that maybe they got it wrong.

Last April, David Brooks published a long essay in The Atlantic titled “I Should Have Seen This Coming,” in which he acknowledged that he’d underestimated how much conservatism had become pure anti-liberal reaction. Jon Stewart, who spent the early weeks of the second Trump administration chiding liberals for being too quick to use the word “fascism,” eventually conceded on air: “I did not think we would get this authoritarian this fast. I really didn’t. I’m sorry. Who could’ve known? Maybe if somebody out there had yelled at me on Bluesky about this, I would have known. But no one did. Except every day. In all caps.”

Political scientist Corey Robin, who had spent years dismissing those who called MAGA fascist, admitted on an October podcast: “I was skeptical coming into this second administration that they would be able to wield the kind of power that people feared they would wield. I have since turned out to be wrong.”


But sure. Do. The. Math.

Got it.

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