Voters reject elitist narratives, embrace Trump’s economic vision



Journalists continue to struggle with Donald Trump’s decisive election victory — and they are failing miserably. They have constructed a caustic narrative around his win, relying on tired tropes. The Huffington Post, for instance, published the headline, “Trump Just Ran the Most Racist Campaign in Modern History — and Won.” NPR reporter Margaret Low declared, “Donald Trump has won the presidential election ... the first time a convicted felon has been elected president after a campaign of hateful rhetoric to Latinos.”

This coverage mirrors the tone used by outlets such as the New York Times, the Washington Post, and Politico throughout the year leading up to the election, highlighting two significant problems.

The tactics that once effectively silenced opposition are losing their impact, signaling a major shift in the political landscape.

First, the media refuse to adapt. Donald Trump’s 2024 presidential victory, achieved despite nine years of media attacks, two impeachments, ongoing legal battles, disputed convictions, and even assassination attempts, underscores a new reality: Political insults are losing their effectiveness in shaping public opinion.

Historically, self-identified progressives have labeled adversaries as “racist” to rally public support, a tactic endorsed by senior communist organizer Eric Mann in his 2011 book, “Playbook for Progressives.” This strategy often succeeded because those accused would comply with demands to avoid association with such a charged term, even when their original position was reasonable or justified.

Trump, however, has consistently withstood these accusations and remained steadfast in pursuing his agenda. His resilience has encouraged others to stand by their principles, even as media critics brand them as bigoted or outdated.

The media should have realized this strategy’s declining effectiveness after Trump easily defeated 12 Republican challengers in the 2024 primaries and won 31 states in the general election. Yet they continue to rely on the race card, ignoring its diminishing influence.

Jimmy Kimmel’s tears

Second, they are out of touch. The chasm between media narratives and public sentiment became glaringly evident during and after the election. For example, former President Barack Obama faced backlash after attempting to chastise young black men for their lack of enthusiasm for Kamala Harris, attributing it to sexism. This viral moment sparked widespread criticism across the political spectrum, exposing a fundamental misreading of voters’ priorities, which extend far beyond identity politics.

Late-night host Jimmy Kimmel’s emotional reaction on election night — “It was a terrible night for women, children, the hundreds of thousands of immigrants who make this country go [...] and everyone who voted for him; you just don’t realize it yet” — highlighted the growing disconnect between some media figures and a large segment of the American public.

Journalists and pundits who continue to frame Trump’s victory as driven by racism and sexism often draw from critical race theory concepts taught in academia. These ideas include the notion of “whiteness” and the belief that American standards predominantly benefit those who align with “white culture.” This perspective enabled them to label Trump’s campaign as “the most racist in modern history” despite exit polls showing Trump gained support among black men, Latinos, Asians, women, and young voters between 2020 and 2024.

Instead of acknowledging that shifting demographics challenge their established narrative, some commentators intensified their rhetoric. A guest on Roland Martin’s show, for example, claimed, “These people are trying to fight their way into whiteness, and they are willing to sacrifice everything, including members of their own family, if they can grasp the ring.”

Statements like this, along with similar remarks from figures such as Jimmy Kimmel and Sunny Hostin — who accused women and minorities of voting against their own interests — reveal a troubling paternalism. These commentators fail to consider that individuals may be perfectly capable of determining their own best interests without input from media personalities.

Trust in media plummets

This disconnect highlights how many reporters and pundits see themselves as intellectuals with little to learn from the people they critique. They amplify voices that align with their narratives and criticize those that don’t, all while ignoring pressing concerns such as inflation, border security, and tax relief.

One major consequence of the media’s divisive rhetoric and reliance on identity politics has been a sharp decline in public trust in journalism. A 2023 Gallup poll revealed that only 34% of Americans had a "great deal" or "fair amount" of trust in mass media — a historic low.

This erosion of credibility has serious implications for our republican form of government, which depends on an informed citizenry. The 2024 election cycle worsened the issue, as many outlets doubled down on narratives disconnected from the realities of average Americans.

This growing credibility gap has fueled the rise of alternative media sources, some of which lack the rigorous fact-checking standards of traditional journalism. As a result, the media landscape has become more fragmented and polarized, making it harder for citizens to access objective, reliable information for their political decisions.

While much of the post-election analysis centered on identity politics and cultural issues, Trump’s economic messaging deserves closer attention. The years leading up to the 2024 election were marked by significant economic challenges, including persistent inflation, supply chain disruptions, and widespread concerns about job security due to automation and artificial intelligence.

Trump’s campaign successfully addressed these anxieties, particularly in Rust Belt states and rural areas that felt abandoned by globalization and technological advances. His promises of protectionist trade policies, infrastructure investment, and revitalized traditional manufacturing struck a chord with voters who believed the political establishment had prioritized coastal elites and multinational corporations over their needs.

This economic focus transcended racial and ethnic lines, boosting Trump’s support among minority voters. Meanwhile, many media outlets overlooked these concerns, choosing instead to focus on identity-based narratives. This oversight underscores the growing disconnect between coastal newsrooms and the economic realities experienced by much of the country.

Looking ahead, any serious analysis of American politics must confront these economic tensions and their role in reshaping traditional political alignments.

Will progressives wake up?

Trump’s political journey reflects the fable of "The Emperor’s New Clothes." Much like the child who dared to expose the emperor’s nakedness, Trump has laid bare the hollow rhetoric of elitist media and celebrity figures, who have long postured as moral and intellectual authorities.

Over the past nine years, Trump has consistently disproved claims that he threatens nonwhite Americans, a point underscored by his growing support from diverse demographics. Conservative leaders can learn from this by embracing and promoting American values instead of retreating in response to criticism.

As Democrats and progressives analyze their 2024 defeat and question their strategies, they often ignore a critical issue: the dismissive attitude many of their thought leaders display toward the middle class and self-made individuals. These groups form the backbone of America. By advocating for a vision that conflicts with the values and traditions of hardworking citizens, these leaders have relied on accusatory rhetoric to stifle dissent.

In the age of Trump, social media, and widespread access to information, Americans increasingly feel empowered to challenge these narratives. The tactics that once effectively silenced opposition are losing their impact, signaling a major shift in the political landscape.

Moving forward, the media and political leaders must adapt to this change. Instead of relying on tired accusations and divisive rhetoric, they must engage with the genuine concerns and values of the American people. Only by bridging this divide can they hope to regain relevance and rebuild trust in a rapidly evolving political environment.

‘Teflon Don’ made the elites sleep with the fishes



Donald Trump’s resounding victory over Kamala Harris means that the former president is now president-elect, but as a fellow New Yorker from Queens, I think the next occupant of the White House has also earned another title.

The “Teflon Don” just proved that nothing Democrats — or their allies in media, pop culture, and corporate America — threw at him would stick. Trump isn’t an infamous mafia boss like John Gotti whose track record of beating court cases earned him the moniker. To the pundit class, he is way worse. They tried to paint the former president as a fascist, Nazi-sympathizing, authoritarian wannabe dictator. They’re still trying.

If this election taught us anything, it’s that the pundit class is too arrogant, smug, emotional, narcissistic, and incurious to understand the average American.

Democrats spent months saying Trump is a threat to democracy. They weaponized the legal system and used lawfare to keep him out of the White House. An assassin’s bullet didn’t take him down. They said his vice presidential pick was “weird.” None of it could stop the inevitable.

This isn’t to say Trump was the perfect candidate. He upset his base more than once during the campaign, from his criticism of state abortion bills to his public attacks on the conservatives behind Project 2025. Some social conservatives also didn’t like the party’s decision to give a speaking slot at the Republican National Convention to Amber Rose, the atheist, pro-abortion influencer who used to lead “slut walks” in Los Angeles. Her appearance came around the time the party decided to soften its language around key social issues like abortion and same-sex marriage.

But through it all, the voters chose their man, despite spending the campaign being slandered as hateful bigots who wanted to strip women of their “right” to kill their babies. Democrats thought they could use race and sex as a “carrot” to draw people to a history-making campaign as well as a “stick” to knock sense into wayward voters they believe they own.

They failed to see what will go down as the most multiracial, multigenerational working-class coalition in recent Republican history.

While Harris surrogates were busy lecturing black men who thought about sitting out the election or — God forbid — voting for Trump, Latino men were causing a “red wave” to the right. In 2016, Trump received 28% of the Latino vote. In 2020, he earned 32%. According to 2024 exit polls, he won support from 46% of Latino voters, including 55% of men.

Maybe the progressives who tried to shove “Latinx” down the throats of Dominicans in the Bronx, Cubans in South Florida, and Mexicans in Texas don’t really understand those Americans and still assume all “brown” people feel “oppressed” in 2024.

Trump also earned 20% of the black male vote. In Pennsylvania, 26% of black men voted for Trump. The feminists and henpecked men who do their bidding clearly overestimated their ability to use their coordinated shame campaign to control “disobedient” black men.

It’s possible suburban soccer moms realized that people who can’t define “woman” don’t really have women’s best interests in mind. The white women progressives targeted in the final days of the campaign with ads meant to divide husbands and wives put their families over the Democratic Party. Nationally, Trump took 53% of the white female vote, including 69% in Georgia and 60% in Texas.

If this election taught us anything, it’s that the pundit class is too arrogant, smug, condescending, emotional, neurotic, narcissistic, and incurious to understand the average American. The people who make a living hurling “-ism” and “-phobia” accusations at people they don’t know have been exposed for the mediocre thinkers they are.

They don’t understand the world outside their superficial identity and oppressed-oppressor power dynamics. I recently had a conversation with a progressive woman in education who said social conservatives are only pro-life because they’re afraid of the declining white birth rate, even though roughly 40% of aborted babies in America are black. The pundit class lives in a bubble so thick that neither data nor an electoral beatdown will penetrate it.

I am cautiously optimistic about what Trump’s victory means for the social issues I care about most. A party big enough to accommodate both Caitlyn Jenner and Franklin Graham could take policy positions that scare off the disaffected liberals who voted for Trump this election and rankle the president-elect’s social conservative base.

We’ll have plenty of time to talk about the MAGA governing strategy. This election, however, was about the Teflon Don and the voters who didn’t care what craven politicians, Hollywood perverts, low-information entertainers, and media shills had to say about him. Americans sent a loud message to the elites that power belongs to the people, not the self-appointed god-kings in the culture who think they rule us.

‘Not a Winning Strategy’: Bernie-Founded Group Blasts Harris for ‘Wasting Precious Time’ Touting Cheney Endorsement, Says 'Progressives are Concerned'

Our Revolution, the liberal activist group born out of Vermont senator Bernie Sanders's 2016 presidential campaign, is publicly feuding with Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris over her decision to tout "endorsements from figures like Liz Cheney and other Republicans." 

The post ‘Not a Winning Strategy’: Bernie-Founded Group Blasts Harris for ‘Wasting Precious Time’ Touting Cheney Endorsement, Says 'Progressives are Concerned' appeared first on .

Iowa House Candidate, Running as Moderate Democrat, Touted His Progressive 'Ideals' During Conference With Liz Warren

Iowa congressional candidate Lanon Baccam has run his campaign as a moderate Democrat, but the former Obama administration bureaucrat touted his progressive ideals at a far-left conference in 2018.

Baccam that year sat on a panel, "Rural ≠ White," at the Netroots Nation convention, which bills itself as the "largest annual conference for progressives." That year, the event featured Democratic Sens. Elizabeth Warren (Mass.) and Cory Booker (N.J.), as well as then-Sen. Kamala Harris (Calif.). Vox described the convention as "Warrenmania."

The post Iowa House Candidate, Running as Moderate Democrat, Touted His Progressive 'Ideals' During Conference With Liz Warren appeared first on .

GamerGate at 10: What did it mean, and why do we still care?



Eron Gjoni just wanted to expose his ex-girlfriend, game developer Zoë Quinn, as a serial cheater.

The Zoe Post, the gossipy condemnation he posted on August 16, 2014, did just that. It also hinted that Quinn had used her sexual relationships with gaming journalists to advance her career. This lurid speculation quickly metastasized into a widespread consumer revolt/online harassment campaign that soon had its own hashtag: #GamerGate.

GamerGate's refutation of the leftist agenda may have amounted to little more than 'I don't care,' but to many on the left, that was enough to signal fascist insurgency.

A decade later, long after the original controversy has faded away, GamerGate continues to shape the internet in ways nobody could have expected.

'Ethics in video game journalism'

The series of events that played out between August and November 2014 is convoluted, multifaceted, and difficult to plot. There have been dozens of retrospectives, documentaries, books, and even a "Law and Order: SVU" episode tackling the issue, most blatantly biased to one side or the other.

"Ethics in video game journalism" was the rallying cry of the movement. It targeted the perceived progressive ideological capture of industry publications, which supposedly manifested itself in the preferential treatment journalists gave some of the game developers they covered. Within two months, #GamerGate had been tweeted 2 million times on Twitter.

Game developers, journalists, and commentators immediately split into two camps. One side scoffed at Gjoni's allegations as insubstantial due to timeline discrepancies. The woman involved may have cheated, but they argued that her personal relationships with journalists happened after they reported on her and didn’t qualify as journalistic malpractice.

Those who disagreed, many of them gamers, organized massive online campaigns accusing their opponents of corruption. In some cases this devolved into harassment; several major anti-GamerGate figures were doxxed, and one journalist was visited by the Canadian feds after being falsely accused of distributing child pornography.

'Gamers Are Dead'

Within two weeks, the gossipy bedroom drama escalated to a point where dozens of publications allegedly collaborated to release a series of posts known as the “Gamers Are Dead” articles. These argued that the gaming industry should stop appeasing the demographic leading the revolt: bitter white men angry at losing power and attention.

As Gamasutra’s Leigh Alexander wrote, “Gamer isn’t just a dated demographic label that most people increasingly prefer not to use. Gamers are over. That’s why they’re so mad. These obtuse sh**slingers, these wailing hyper-consumers, these childish internet arguers — they are not my audience. They don’t have to be yours.”

While some self-styled leaders of GamerGate abandoned it after a few months, others kept the controversy going, continuing to incorporate fresh accusations of corruption and collusion well into 2015.

Lasting impact?

A decade later, the major figures who gained from GamerGate have all moved on to new projects or focused on different culture war battles. However, the incident is still cited regularly to this day by culture warriors who see it as some sort of watershed moment. Merely searching “GamerGate” on Twitter is enough to find dozens of hours- or days-old posts from progressives continually complaining about its lasting impact. People refuse to stop talking about it.

GamerGate's surface-level impacts are fairly easy to list. It’s done serious damage to the video game industry’s reputation and fed into the decline of online journalism. Several online publications adjusted their ethics policies. It contributed to a schism in the online atheist community that resulted in a significant portion of the community shifting from anti-creationist advocacy to anti-feminist advocacy. It destroyed dozens of careers while launching conservative activists like Milo Yiannopoulos, Vox Day, Mike Cernovich, Ian Miles Chong, and hundreds of pseudonymous YouTubers.

Beyond that, GamerGate is widely viewed as a model for the past decade of online right-wing political activism. Edgy memes, irreverent trolling, and culture jamming — along with support from dissident sections of the internet like Brietbart, Wikileaks, and Infowars — took GamerGate to heights that hadn’t been seen before. Online conservatives have since tried (with varying effectiveness) to conjure up that GamerGate magic in later movements like ComicsGate, the Fandom Menace, the Manosphere, the Alt-Right, the Bud Light boycott, and GamerGate 2.

GamerGate's initial success was met with aggressive pushback from the mainstream media, including CNN, MSNBC, the Washington Post, the New York Times, the New Yorker, the Guardian, BuzzFeed, the Daily Beast, ABC's "Nightline," "The Colbert Report," and Gawker. The Southern Poverty Law Center declared GamerGate a hate group. Former President Jimmy Carter even mentioned GamerGate as an example of violence against women.

The blame game

As a result, progressives have come to see GamerGate as the source of every subsequent decentralized anti-progressive reaction. It has been blamed for everything from Donald Trump’s election, the so-called "Battle of Charlottesville," and the the rise of the QAnon, incel, and men’s rights movements to COVID skepticism, the January 6 "insurrection," anti-transgender backlash, the assault of Nancy Pelosi’s husband, Elon Musk’s Twitter buyout, the Russian invasion of Ukraine, and even Johnny Depp's successful defamation suit against Amber Heard.

To quote a 2022 Axios report,

The far right learned from GamerGate and other online movements how to use social media attacks to achieve real-world political gains in ways that many key institutions — from journalism to government to tech — are still struggling to understand. … Steve Bannon saw firsthand the power of GamerGate while running Breitbart News. Bannon took notes from the gaming controversy as well as from movements on the left, like Occupy, to develop strategies to apply in mainstream politics in Trump's 2016 campaign and from the White House.

Wiredrang in the 10th anniversary of the Zoe Post by arguing that its spirit lives on in contemporary Republican politics. “This same kind of anger and resistance can be seen now in figures like J.D. Vance and Elon Musk, who both decry 'woke-ism' in politics and culture broadly. In interviews, Musk has said that he was motivated to purchase X, formerly Twitter, to fight the 'woke mind virus' that he says is destroying civilization.”

'Kernels of hate'

One day following the January 6 riots, Vox traced the unrest at the Capitol building directly to GamerGate, then indirectly advocated for pre-emptive crackdowns on free speech.

It’s tempting to wonder if we could have stopped GamerGate before it happened, in the years before it coalesced into a systematized movement. Perhaps we could have quashed these kernels of hate with better forum moderation, more serious attention to the problem of misogynistic harassment, and less reliance on the longstanding twin internet wisdoms of "prioritizing free speech" and "starving a troll" until they go away.

Even as the specific events of 2014 fade from memory, GamerGate continues to live rent-free in many people's heads. As the pseudonymous Youtuber ShortFatOtaku argues, GamerGate marked the first time that the predominantly progressive online culture faced a serious culture war battle and partially lost. It traumatized a generation of online progressives, who compensated by spending the last decade spinning conspiracy yarns about how this event was the start of a violent reactionary insurgency that continues to spread to this day. This trauma response continues to haunt the progressive left, which can’t let it go.

Realistically, GamerGate was just the end stage of a decade of internal problems and ideological disagreements bursting in a relatively small online gaming community of tens of thousands of people. It is debatable how much of a real-life impact GamerGate had, given the limited cultural bleed-over between terminally online Millennial gamers and the Boomers who drove Trump’s success. Speaking for myself, a sophomore in college at the time, I was all but totally unaware of the event until years later.

'I don't care'

Key GamerGate figure Carl Benjamin, known online as Sargon of Akkad, reflected on the movement earlier this year. Revisiting the conflict after spending the decade starting a media company, building a family, losing weight, and earning a philosophy degree, he revealed that in hindsight he considers GamerGate to have been largely ineffective. Its attack on a malignant form of identity politics may have been well intended, but its disorganization, dearth of ideas, and overall lack of vision doomed it to failure — just as any movement modeling itself after GamerGate is doomed to fail.

Still, the demonstration that progressives could be pushed back against was enough to traumatize a significant portion of the left. GamerGate's refutation of the leftist agenda may have amounted to little more than "I don’t care," but to many on the left, that was enough to signal fascist insurgency. Moreover, newer post-liberal movements seemed to have learned from GamerGate's failings, whether they acknowledge its influence or not.

Those were the days

Ultimately, GamerGate may just have been the right scandal at the right time; the economic and demographic forces that propelled Donald Trump to victory over Hillary Clinton had been building long before the Zoe Post went viral.

Perhaps the attachment to this ancient contretemps is just nostalgia for a simpler time, both online and off. A visitor to our world from 2014 would confront an utterly disorienting political scene: warmongering Democrats and a Kennedy-endorsed Republican, with neither side able to come to agreement on basic matters of reality.

The hotly contested issues of GamerGate seem quaintly low-stakes now. "Ethics in game journalism"? What divides us in 2024 is far more consequential — and far more intractable.

America held hostage: Progressives fear losing control



In the United States, the ultimate check on the growth of power was the realization that, through elections, one side would eventually hand over whatever it had built to its political opponents. This seemed like a reasonable way to prevent tyrannical abuse. Trouble is, America’s founders did not anticipate the emergence of a distinct ruling class capable of maintaining power by capturing institutions.

Elections come and go, but institutions remain. Progressives realized that by controlling the expert class staffing the permanent bureaucracies, they could vest significant power within them without worrying about the fluctuations of democratic politics. A weak and complacent Republican Party, content just to be included, also became invested in the perpetuation of these institutions. This allowed progressives to sprinkle a few “bipartisan” appointments into the mix while ensuring these institutions stayed under progressive control.

Progressives, perhaps unconsciously, know they’ve crossed a line they can’t walk back from and fear that conservatives would be just as ruthless if given the chance.

The state could continue to grow, and Democrats could grant nearly unlimited power to these institutions without fear of reprisal — until Donald Trump arrived.

Trump, though deeply flawed and unable to deliver many of his promised changes, was treated as a mortal threat by the system for good reason. As an outsider, he was not heavily invested in the machinery of governance or the authority of the institutions that progressives rely on to maintain control. At times, particularly during moments of crisis like the pandemic, Trump defaulted to the authority of these institutions, leading to some of his failures. But the mere fact that he was willing to question the system shook the ruling elite to its core.

Figures like Mitt Romney will dutifully maintain the status quo until the left regains official power. But a leader like Trump was never supposed to get anywhere near the levers of that machine. An incredible amount of authority has been placed in the administrative state, and that power was never intended to be handed over to a true political opponent.

When Trump entered office, the institutions declared all-out war on his administration, breaking rules and disregarding norms to limit the billionaire’s ability to affect the system. The media, already hostile to Republicans, unleashed unprecedented vitriol toward Trump. A perfect storm of pandemic lockdowns, riots, and election-related changes forced the real estate tycoon out of office, and the establishment vowed to never let a populist candidate like Trump gain power again.

With Democrats back in the White House, the institutions took swift revenge. January 6 protesters faced extreme prosecution from the federal government. Anti-abortion activists encountered similarly politically motivated charges and sentencing. Those who served in Trump’s administration had to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars defending themselves in court, while even Trump’s lawyers feared facing jail time.

Trump faced numerous legal challenges, aiming first to bankrupt him, then to remove him from the ballot, and finally to imprison him. When those efforts failed, some Democrats resorted to assassination attempts. The FBI increasingly acted like a Praetorian Guard serving the interests of the Democratic Party, and the weaponization of the Justice Department escalated. Under the Biden administration, opposing the institutional power of the left has become increasingly illegal.

Progressives, terrified at the idea that social media might break the hegemonic control on information that the left had previously enjoyed, launched a giant censorship industry under the banner of fighting “misinformation and disinformation.” Democratic politicians, worried that they may no longer be able to convince the existing American population, accelerated their ongoing project of replacement migration. The number of immigrants was so outrageous and the process so indiscriminate that even the leaders of major blue cities started to complain.

Trump probably did not deserve to strike that level of terror into the heart of the system, but he did, and the immune response almost killed the system itself.

Journalists now regularly draft breathless screeds warning that Trump might weaponize the Justice Department and prosecute his political enemies if he is allowed to return to office. This seems like rank hypocrisy to conservatives who have watched the Democrats treat the rule of law like a battered housewife.

But the left is doing more than just projecting its own behavior. Democrats have created an incredibly powerful leviathan and unleashed it against their political opponents. Intelligence agencies spy on regime critics, secret police harass and arrest them, and the media incites its audience to violence, sometimes even encouraging the killing of political opponents. Progressives, perhaps unconsciously, know they’ve crossed a line they can’t walk back from and fear that conservatives would be just as ruthless if given the chance.

Unfortunately, many conservatives still don’t grasp the current reality. They continue to act as if American politics follows a strict set of rules where the most convincing argument prevails and power is peacefully transferred. Their calls for civility and compromise fall on the deaf ears of a political movement that knows it has passed the point of no return.

The Democratic Party has taken the American people hostage. It has built a leviathan of immense power and recklessly aimed it at its enemies, shattering norms and undermining the rule of law. Progressives know they’ve broken the rules and fear that if they ever lose control, they will face consequences for their actions. This fear may be misplaced — many on the right lack the appetite for revenge, and Trump alternates between calls for retribution and offering the FBI a shiny new building.

Nevertheless, the possibility of a right-wing willing to stand firm still haunts the nightmares of Democrats. Like any hostage-taker, the regime’s paranoia grows by the day, and its desperation to maintain control is pushing the nation ever closer to disaster.

Instead Of Whining About The Woke Emmys, The Right Should Get Behind Better Films

Another Emmy season has come and gone. This year’s winners and nominees are once again a sweeping validation of the left-leaning Ford Foundation’s strategy to sponsor and cultivate progressive films and filmmakers. The Ford Foundation’s biggest winner this season, “Going to Mars: The Nikki Giovanni Project,” an artsy biopic about a poet and activist, won […]