The tawdry secret behind Trump’s wins in 2016 & 2024
- jjcarney100team
- 3 days ago
- 2 min read
When Fox News was launched in 1996, its amoral investors quickly discovered that pushing culture war content was more profitable than reporting the actual news. It demanded less of viewers and tapped into innate resentment, bubbling since Ronald Reagan gave voice to it, that the root of the country's problems is lazy and undeserving black and brown Americans taking handouts instead of working.
Citizens United in 2010 put the whole thing on steroids as media moguls realized how corruptible the political system was. Then along came Trump and his inbred misogyny that added women to the mix of black and brown people to blame.
Never mind the reality that between the 1980s and today Republican policies have transferred more than $50 trillion from the bottom 90% of Americans to the top 1%. Between the 1970’s and today, the gap between CEO pay and average worker pay has exploded - from 30 times then to nearly 300 times now.
Pushing culture wars against perceived culprits (not the real ones) is not only profitable. It is also a great way to distract the public from what is actually happening, a key technique in Trump’s playbook. It used to be, “…the economy, stupid.” As voters have absorbed the drivel on cable news and from Republican mouthpieces, many have voted with their resentments rather than their reason.
Heather Cox Richardson, with the help of G. Elliott Morris of “Strength in Numbers” and a new study by academics at MIT and Harvard, talks about the transition in so-called “news” coverage and its impact on voters. Morris concludes, “It’s the companies that abuse our attention for profit that are the real winners of American politics.”
To top it off, Richardson covers the current battle for Warner Bros. Discovery and CNN - a friendly takeover by Netflix vrs a hostile one by Paramount Skydance, the latter funded in part by Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner and Saudi and Qatari sovereign wealth funds. Trump would have to approve either merger. Any guesses which one he will approve?
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