Donald Trump’s big weakness just came front and center
The numbers are in, and Donald Trump’s 2024 inauguration saw about ten million fewer viewers than President Joe Biden’s inauguration received in 2020. It’s fun to see the narcissistically ratings-obsessed Trump get clobbered in such humiliating fashion. But it also points to something else.
Even most of the people who just voted for Trump didn’t bother to turn around and watch him get inaugurated. It means they don’t really care. Even most of Trump’s voters are not in any way enthused by the prospect of him returning. Outside of Trump’s base, which only makes up about 25% of his vote total, no one really likes Trump – not even most of his own voters.
So how on earth did this guy win? That’s pretty straightforward. The media falsely depicted Joe Biden as being senile and forced him out of the race with a hundred days to go, even as the media mostly ignored Trump’s severe cognitive problems and felon status. Trump was dishonestly propped up by the media, even as Biden was destroyed by the media’s dishonesty, and Kamala Harris entered the race too late to properly compete.
But none of this means that the persuadable people who voted for Trump actually like him. None of them have high expectations. Trump’s approval rating is already down to nearly 40%, historically low for someone who’s just taking office. And only about 20% of Americans now say they think Trump will be able to lower consumer prices.
In other words, expectations for the Trump 2.0 era are just about zero. The people in the middle who voted for him are idiots, but they were also falsely told by the media that Trump was the best of the bad options. They remember that Trump sucked the first time, they just weren’t sure what else to do this time.
The reason this matters is that Donald Trump is incredibly vulnerable. Most of his own voters don’t even like him and don’t have much hope for him. That means it’s going to be really easy to turn most of Trump’s own voters against him. Not his base, of course. But his base is irrelevant. This is about everyone else who voted for him. If we can turn all of Trump’s non-base voters against him, his approval rating will be in the twenties, and House and Senate Republicans will be afraid to give him what he wants for fear it’ll cost them their seats.
So let’s keep our head in the game and remember that Donald Trump is a lame duck already. Yes, he’s trying to do all kinds of corrupt and evil things right now, and he’s going to pull off some of them. But if we can fight back and stop him at as many turns as possible, we can make him powerless for the rest of his term and then we can take back the presidency and undo his damage. Let’s keep fighting. This is a tough battle, but it’s winnable.
