File this one under, Ya Think?
On Saturday's edition of MSNBC's The Weekend, co-host Eugene Daniels, interviewing the authors of a book about the 2024 election, mused:
"Have we just underestimated Donald Trump's popularity with the American people?"
Of course "we"—meaning the liberal media—underestimated Trump's popularity. They couldn't imagine that a majority of voters would support someone that the MSM had spent the previous eight years denouncing as Hitler redux, the proverbial "existential threat" to American democracy.
Josh Dawsey, one of the co-authors, and an investigative reporter at the Wall Street Journal, pointed out what should have been obvious to Daniels:
"Well, he certainly has popularity with a large swath of the American people. I mean, this time he won the popular vote, right?"
Trump's sweep of the swing states had a decisive impact on the election's outcome. But it's fair to say that his winning of the popular vote was the more bitter pill for Democrats and the MSM to swallow. It undermined their mantra that America is really with them, but that Republicans manage to win presidential elections only because the Electoral College system gives inordinate influence to red states.
Daniels provided another example of liberal groupthink:
"We think about 2020 as like, ooh, people really loved Biden and didn't like Trump."
The out-of-touch "we" strikes again!
Daniels prefaced his statement about underestimating Trump's popularity by curiously saying:
"Maybe this was always how it was going to end, with Donald Trump back in the White House."
Almost as if it were fate. A whiff of panicky liberal defeatism in the air?
Note: Before moving to the Wall Street Journal, Dawsey had been a reporter at the Washington Post and a certified member of the liberal media mind meld. Thus, in August of last year, our Tim Graham in his podcast caught Dawsey co-authoring a Post article entitled, “In Harris-Walz camp, tidings of joy overtake existential dread,” whose entire first paragraph was: "Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz is joyous about the joy."
MSNBC
The Weekend
7/12/35
9:48 am EDTEUGENE DANIELS: Josh, one of the things that I took from the book, like kind of zooming out, is that maybe this was always how it was going to end, with Donald Trump back in the White House, right?
Because I think, you know, we think about 2020 as like, ooh, people really loved Biden and didn't like Trump. Trump still almost won, despite the fact that thousands of people in this country were dying every day from COVID, right? There was the assassination attempts. There were, he had all these things that were happening that with other candidates, maybe would have been a problem.
Have we just underestimated Donald Trump's popularity with the American people?
JOSH DAWSEY: Well, he certainly has popularity with a large swath of the American people. I mean, this time he won the popular vote, right?
And afterwards, I mean, if you remember, the day after Jan 6, there's a scene in the book. It's Jan 7, 2021. Washington is sort of reeling. There's curfews. You know, there are hundreds of people being arrested. The Capitol's in tatters.
And there's an RNC retreat in Florida, and they have all the members of the party there. And Ronna McDaniel, who was the chair of the party at the time, calls Trump and puts him on speakerphone.
And all the members start screaming out, we love you, we wish you were here, you're great. Now that was Jan 7, 2021. And in sort of in that moment, you realized, okay, he still has a lot of popularity because it was not, I mean, the Capitol was still literally like not cleaned up fully yet, right?
DANIELS: There was crap on the walls.
DAWSEY: And the people had sort of stuck with him. And I think you saw, even in sort of '21 and '22, Trump has a lot of power in the Republican Party, right? He could still win primaries. But his numbers were not very good nationally. And some of the midterms, some of the candidates he picked, the election deniers and so the like, didn't do so well, right?
And really, you only saw people come back to him in mass after he got charged in New York, right? The other Republicans all come out and say, You know, the charges are baloney, basically.
Trump told us for the book, he said, I couldn't believe they all defended me so quickly, right? It was kind of an amazing moment.
