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A protester shouted “Trump is treason!” as he threw Russian flags at Donald Trump and Mitch McConnell at a press event at the Capitol exactly nine years ago this week. That incident, captured on video, was one of the iconic moments of the early Trump Resistance. Another epic event happened that same week when a US government contractor flipped the bird from her bicycle to Trump’s enormous motorcade, and a star was born.
These moments are seared into my memory, because in 2017, there was so much pressure to conform, to just shut up and wait out Trump’s first term, that the defiance of these protesters was absolutely heroic.
Those of us in the media who had investigated Donald Trump prior to 2016 and knew of his corrupt and criminal background and chose to warn people publicly were often shunned and stalked – the goal was to silence us into submission.
It was so depressing to watch former media colleagues split into two camps — the cheerleaders and the normalizers. Some jumped on the MAGA train, others cowered under cover of neutrality, which in a time of rising fascism, always benefits the oppressor.
It was my lost decade.
And now, two years into the hellscape of the second Trump administration, no amount of media cowardice, normalizing, and cheerleading can obfuscate the growing repudiation of the man.
Trump can no longer control the optics.
Protest Panto
In recent weeks, at political rallies, Americans loudly ridicule Trump in Panto-like style, shouting things like, “Shove that ballroom up your fat ass!” “Trump went on Epstein’s plane!” “Pumpkin Spice Pedo!”
Protestors getting ejected while flipping the bird through the crowd are now de rigueur, with multiple incidents occurring at eight rallies in October. And as one is removed, another fires up the middle finger, and the protest-Panto continues. As each is removed, the cameras often pan to the audience, revealing empty seats, even up close to the stage. The notoriously thin-skinned Trump just canceled two rallies in Kansas and Iowa, and is now phoning it in, literally. He plans to campaign by phone just three days ahead of the US midterm elections, where polls are showing Democratic candidates leading across the nation. (As we went to press, reports now indicate the public rallies may be back on.)
In addition to the rally rebellions, reports that online Trump merchandise shops are shuttering throughout the country from lack of interest offer another data point of his downward spiral.
And an erstwhile press secretary who didn’t survive a full week reveals the former beauty pageant impresario may be having trouble casting another cross-bedecked blonde to lie for him at the White House podium.
For someone who built his image on TV showmanship, the curtain is now looking flimsy and torn, revealing decay and rot in stark relief.
But does it even matter? Investigating the actions of Trump and his loyalist band of 2020 election deniers, we find a country and a world that needs to brace for impact. The potential for black swan events is ominous, and in direct correlation to the thumping his party would receive if the election on Tuesday is free and fair.
Governing for Control
Miles Taylor, who worked in both the George W Bush and Trump administrations, told Byline Times: “You’re right — he’s lost the optics — the empty seats, the protesters mocking him to his face, the merch stores going dark — all of it. For a man who has spent his life measuring himself by crowd size, that’s a real wound. But I’d caution against reading it as weakness in the way it would be for a normal politician. Trump stopped governing for popularity a long time ago. I really think he’s governing for control, and the two are now largely decoupled.”
Taylor, who just released the film, CORRUPTIONLAND, a 35-minute documentary film identifying $377 billion dollars in corruption allegations in Trump’s Washington, said to “look at what he’s doing instead of actually courting voters.”
“His henchmen are subpoenaing election officials, trying to pull tens of thousands of mail ballots, seizing the Fed, threatening broadcast licenses, and so on. Those are the moves of someone who assumes he’ll be unpopular anyway and is attempting to expand his control, popularity be damned. That’s the thing to glean before Tuesday.”
Taylor worked in the US Department of Homeland Security as a senior advisor from 2017 to 2019 and famously wrote the anonymous op-ed in the New York Times in 2018 titled: “I Am Part of the Resistance Inside the Trump Administration“ before resigning to publicly campainst against Trump in 2020.
“His thin skin is very real,” said Taylor. “And it makes him erratic… and it makes him crave more control through more means of cracking down. That said, his actions are so politically self-defeating that he is all but guaranteeing NEW checks on his power by effectively electing a new Congress opposed to him.”
Keir Giles, author of the new book American Overthrow, told Byline Times that “Trump is an unusual combination of extreme sensitivity to perceived slights and extreme lack of self-awareness. If his popularity is waning, this may present a serious preoccupation for him, but I’m not entirely clear to what extent he would perceive it accurately.”
Giles said the key question “is rather the point at which the strategist in the Trump group determines that popularity is no longer important because sufficient levers of power are now already in their hands and they can act without it.”
Philosophy professor and author of books on dehumanization, David Livingstone Smith, offers this blunt and ominous assessment: “My best guess is Trump doesn’t care. With regard to the midterms, I think that there is a widespread, quasi-delusional belief that Democratic wins will go a long way towards curing our political malaise. This vastly underestimates the severity of the MAGA problem. Democratic success will be a huge narcissistic injury to Trump, and will make him even more dangerous.”
A Man in ‘Violent Conflict’
Political philosopher Dr Michael MacKay sees Trump as a very dangerous man in “violent conflict” with himself.
“Trump is a malignant narcissist. He is obsessed with his popularity,” MacKay told Byline Times. “He convinces himself he has the biggest crowd sizes and the highest TV ratings. Trump is obsessed with being a winner. He has to be seen to be making ‘deals’ where he forces an opponent to capitulate and asserts his male dominance.
“But Trump is also a Russian operative and a slave to Putin. He is obedient to the Kremlin dictator and submissive to the demands of Russian imperialism. These key characteristics of Trump’s personality are in violent conflict. Ultimately it is Russia that wins out and Trump’s preening vanity that takes a beating.”
MacKay said that if Trump were to support Ukraine to victory against Russia he could clearly be seen as a winner, a point I made two years ago.
“He would be enormously popular as the ‘genius’ leader who helped David defeat Goliath,” said MacKay. “Trump would be seen to be the strong man who was better than Biden, better than Obama. But Trump can’t do that because he must obey Putin. Trump is compelled to ally the United States with the Russian terrorist state, destroy every US trade and military tie, and initiate conflict with peaceful and friendly countries like Canada and Denmark.”
MacKay said the hold that Russia has over Trump “is so great that it overwhelms his psychopathic instincts.”
As Trump gets jeered at rallies, intellectual historian Dr Marci Shore says she “keeps thinking about Romania in December 1989, that last rally for Ceausescu. I keep hoping that at some point it will all crash. It’s not impossible, it could happen fast, contra spem spero.”
Against all hope, I hope.
Shore then sent me a short video clip from Fox News, which was live-streaming an interview from a Trump rally in Rock Hill, South Carolina, with a presumed supporter, only to realize they’d been duped.
Reporter: Tom, why are you here this morning?
Tom: Well, in the late ‘70s I was a little too young to get involved and go to South America for the Jonestown massacre, and this is as close as I’m gonna get so that’s why I’m here.
Reporter: The Jonestown massacre?
Tom: That’s right. There’s nothing like seeing a cult right up front, man.
Reporter (turns to camera): Maybe this is not a Trump supporter.
Another data point: Fox News is seeing a dramatic decline in viewership.
MacKay said all of this feels good, and we take the wins where we find them, but without intervention, Trump “is on a path to destroy himself, the Republican Party and – if he can – the United States.”
“Trump truly believes that Putin is a magical being – some angel from hell – who will ultimately rescue him from the disaster of his own making and the stygian abyss of nihilism. In short, Trump is insane.”
Emmy award-winning investigative reporter, Heidi Siegmund Cuda is an American correspondent for Byline Times and her Hot Type column runs bimonthly. She is a #1 Amazon bestselling author, and her Bette Dangerous substack is read in 102 countries.
Join Heidi Siegmund Cuda, Hardeep Matharu, Peter Jukes and guests to discuss the fallout from the midterms, live at the Cockpit Theatre in London on 9 November.
