This week on KK&F, we’re talking to conservative journalist Sohrab Ahmari in order to figure out what’s missing from the Trump campaign’s political calculations for 2024. To cut to the quick of what made Trump 2016 so compelling for millions of Americans it seems necessary to assess Trump’s relationship with the media — which isn’t as antagonistic as Trump has successfully made it out to be. While mainstream liberal outlets of course downplayed Trump’s prospects and disregarded him as a serious candidate for a long time, it’s also true that those same outlets, as a result of their very outrage at Trump’s approach to the presidential race, gave him lots of free coverage, boosting his platform in ways that (for example) progressive candidates to the left of the Democrats never really benefited from.
If you look at Trump’s most recent debate performance (and we’ve discussed it at length in recent weeks), you’ll see baseless claims that appeal to emotion and paranoia, without any grounding in basic fact or reality. That’s always been a hallmark of Trump’s rhetorical style, but as the far right has only gone farther in the last few years, and new figures like RFK Jr. have risen to amplify Trump’s fearmongering claims or to add new ones to the litany, could it be that Trump is actually getting out of touch? What else is contributing to what feels like a less potent campaign and a less effective message to America’s disaffected political outsiders?
You can listen to this episode as a podcast on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Pandora, and more.
Episode 193 Audio: Sohrab Ahmari