How the 'right-wing media bubble' sets Trump up for failure: analysis

16 September 2024

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-South Carolina), Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Georgia) and other allies of former President Donald Trump have been urging him to distance himself from far-right conspiracy theorist and 9/11 truther Laura Loomer, who flew with him to Philadelphia for his September 10 debate with Vice President Kamala Harris.

Loomer has been bombarded with criticism following an overtly racist attack on Vice President Kamala Harris in a September 8 post on X, formerly Twitter. And the Florida-based MAGA activist, Graham and Greene have warned, could be harmful to Trump's presidential campaign.

But The New Republic's Michael Tomasky, in an article published on September 16, argues that Loomer is merely a symptom — not the cause — of dysfunction within the GOP and the MAGA movement.

Trump, Tomasky emphasizes, makes bad decisions — for example, promoting someone as extreme as Loomer — because his enablers in right-wing media and the Republican Party are afraid to openly disagree with him.

"It's incredible how much disqualifying stuff gets swept under the rug on the excuse that MAGA Land thrills to it," Tomasky observes. "But there are two more factors in play here that tell the full story. The first is that Trump lives mostly inside the bubble of a right-wing media that will never challenge him about things like this. If they did challenge him, I mean actually challenge him, and not just ask one pro forma question and move on, things would be different. But the right-wing media sees its job as not only electing Trump but protecting him, rebutting any and all criticism that comes from liberals or the mainstream media — two different things, it's worth remembering."

The New Republic editor continues, "The second is that elected Republicans won't challenge him. And that's the biggie — this takes us back to the famous Access Hollywood crossroads; the moment GOP elected officials weighed what they were signing up for and plunged ahead. This is their original sin. If elected Republicans had had the courage to say 'no,' this whole train would have been derailed at some point. But they are almost to a person moral cowards, beyond the known exceptions who've paid for their principles with excommunication from the Republican Party."

Tomasky notes that MSNBC's Chris Hayes "summed up the importance" of the Loomer controversy on his Friday, September 13 broadcast.

Hayes told viewers, "This is not just guilt by association, OK? She’s flying on his plane. He is using their rhetoric. He’s choosing to empower people like Laura Loomer. Those are the sorts of people who will enjoy greater power in a second term."

Michael Tomasky's full article for The New Republic is available at this link.

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