Who’s
going to tell the GOP base that they’re being scammed?
Opinion by
Columnist
Dec. 8, 2020 at 12:00 p.m. CST
President Trump has,
thoroughly and completely, lost the 2020 election. Now who’s going to tell the
Republican base?
Or more to the point,
who’s going to tell them they’re being scammed?
The message of the
scam is this: Trump can still win — but only if you stay angry enough, keep
tuning in to our network and keep sending those donations. He’s counting on
you!
All the people making
this pitch — Trump himself, his White House staff, his campaign, Republican
elected officials, party leaders and conservative media figures — know that
it’s a lie. But it’s also the basis of their business model.
And every once in a
while, the mask slips, which is what produced an utterly fascinating exchange
Monday night between Fox Business host Lou Dobbs and White House policy adviser
Stephen Miller. Give these two minutes a watch:
Video here: https://twitter.com/i/status/1336115345812238338
The background here
is that Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) offered to argue the Trump campaign’s case
before the Supreme Court; this is an obvious play for attention on Cruz’s part,
but for some reason Dobbs seems to think it’s a stunning development that will
transform the entire conflict and give Trump an excellent chance of being
declared the winner of the election.
When Miller goes into
his little “Where’s the outrage?” riff, you can tell that he’s just playacting,
and a little tired of it at that. He probably figured he’d go on Dobbs’s show
to do some rhetorical fist-shaking for a few minutes, do his part to keep the
base riled up, and that would be that. What he didn’t count on was that
somebody forgot to tell Dobbs it’s just an act.
In case you don’t
know (which you probably don’t, unless you’re one of the few dozen people who
watches his show), Dobbs’s program has attained a level of sycophancy toward
Trump that would put North Korean state television to shame. He makes Sean
Hannity look like Edward R. Murrow.
And Dobbs is so
committed to Trump that he forgot that it’s all just a con. You don’t challenge
the White House on why they aren’t doing more to keep up the fight, because
that might show that the White House knows perfectly well that the fight is lost.
Here’s what the
landscape on the right looks like at the moment. First, you have tens of
millions of Trump supporters who are convinced not only that the election was
stolen from Trump (one
recent poll found
52 percent of Republicans said Trump “rightfully won”) but also that there are
still means by which the conspiracy can be exposed and Trump returned to
office.
Then you have the
activists, officials and media figures who have committed themselves to
promoting these lies, knowing that when it comes to the currency that sustains
them — money or ratings — the story of the stolen election is absolute gold.
Finally, you have the
slightly more responsible elected officials who have reached the limit of what
they’re willing or able to do to help Trump, such as the Georgia secretary of
state who refuses to say he presided over a fraudulent election or the Michigan
legislators turning back Trump’s demand that they hand him the state’s
electoral votes. And in state after state, the second group is attacking the third group
for insufficient commitment to keeping the fiction of a stolen election alive.
When you watch
someone like Dobbs or Rudy Giuliani get so worked up about the stolen election
myth that their hair dye starts streaming down their face, you might ask, “Do
they really believe this?” It’s hard to know for sure, but the truth is that
all the farcical lawsuits are essentially a fundraising expense.
According to the
most recent FEC report, Trump has spent $8.8 million on legal efforts to overturn
the election but has used that effort to raise more than $200 million,
sending hundreds of email pitches to donors begging them to contribute to his
quest to save the election from being stolen by dastardly Democrats.
Much of that money
will go to a leadership PAC that Trump can use for all kinds of other purposes,
including steps that would help him mount a 2024 campaign. He could also easily
funnel the money into his own pocket, by having the PAC spend it at his
properties.
Meanwhile, as Trump’s
loss becomes harder and harder to deny, those committed to the myth of the
stolen election grow increasingly desperate — a desperation that threatens to
turn to violence. We saw how a group of angry and well-armed Trump
supporters surrounded
the home of
Michigan’s secretary of state. Here’s the Arizona Republican Party telling
people they should literally be willing to die to keep Trump
in office:
He’s
not the only one fantasizing
about giving his life in the battle to secure Trump’s reelection. But how
exactly do they imagine their martyrdom will be accomplished?
As long as those
millions of suckers keep sending in their contributions and tuning in to their
favorite shows, the people perpetrating the con will keep winding them up to
greater heights of outrage. But what happens when President-elect Joe Biden
actually takes office? Will they finally realize they got scammed? That their
leaders knew all along that Trump lost but kept milking them for money anyway?
Don’t bet on it. The
GOP base’s eagerness to fall for every new iteration of this con is limitless,
and nobody knows that better than the party’s leaders.