The press is fueling fascism by fixating on Biden’s age
It makes sense why MAGA needs to cover up Trump’s weaknesses.
So why is the press so interested in helping Republicans?
No one has made a closer study of the ways Donald Trump turns words into weapons than Dr. Jennifer Mercieca.
The author of “Demagogue for President: The Rhetorical Genius of Donald Trump,” she has extensively described and classified the dark arts the perennial GOP nominee for president deployed at his rallies in 2016 and 2020.
Now she has a new warning for 2024: Trump is running as a dictator. She discussed what that means when she joined me on our new earlyworm podcast “How are you feeling about democracy?” Listen above⬆.
And she also revealed why the right is so obsessed with Joe Biden’s age when I asked her why she’s kind of obsessed with the slogan “Fascism is for losers.”
Jennifer Mercieca: Yeah. I think it's really important for people to understand how fascism works and how a fascist appeal, like Donald Trump saying that he'll be a dictator to effect the MAGA agenda in 2024, works.
It works because fascist leaders pretend to be an Übermensch. They pretend to be a strong man. And the reason why they do that is because. Right wing authoritarian voters have a high need to follow a strong leader. They are very interested in hierarchy, defending group norms. They have a low tolerance for cognitive complexity.
And so they are looking for someone to say, this is really simple. Everything is black and white. You're with us or you're against us. Be with me: I will protect you. Right? And so for Donald Trump, he probably recognizes either intuitively or consciously, that he is a loser.
Donald Trump lost the popular vote in 2016. Donald Trump lost the election in 2020, though he won't admit it. Donald Trump, as the head of his party, has lost in 2018, 2020, 2022, and again here in 2024. He has a history of losing elections.
His approval rating was never over 46, 47 percent while in office. Political scientists who study the executive branch have ranked him as America's worst president, the very worst. So he looks like a loser. He looks like a weak loser. And that's the last person that his right-wing authoritarian voters would put in power.
And so if you wonder why they're always running down Biden for being old, for being, you know, mentally incompetent and not as physically strong as Donald Trump or mentally strong. All of those comparisons are made because they want to say that Biden is a beta, and that Trump is an alpha... That he's a strongman Übermensch and he, as the strongman, will become dictator in order to effect the MAGA agenda.
That's the story.
So it makes perfect sense why MAGA would want to make Biden’s age the “Her emails!!!” of this election, even though the president clearly has more command of facts and truth now than Trump has had at any age.
But why is the “legitimate” press so interested in helping Republicans?
Mercieca also noted that power has never been a big fan of democracy. But I think there may be something more banal going on. I think the “legitimate” press thinks it’s their job to keep Donald Trump close, functioning like an electoral college-bias for him.
We probably can’t stop them from aiding fascism in this way. But we can at least let them know that we see what they’re up to.