Truth Social – Memphis Flyer

“Good morning, folks, and welcome. We’ll begin today’s service with a passage from the scriptures.”

The pastor opens a thick red book and begins to read:

“A very important deadline is approaching at the end of the month,” he intones. “Republicans in Congress can and must defund all aspects of Crooked Joe Biden’s weaponized Government that refuses to close the Border, and treats half the Country as Enemies of the State. This is also the last chance to defund these political prosecutions against me and other Patriots. They failed on the debt limit, but they must not fail now. Use the power of the purse and defend the Country!”

“Amen,” says the pastor. “Thus endeth the reading from the Book of Truth Social according to President Trump. And thus sayeth our Lord.”

“AMEN!!” shouts the assembled multitude, resplendent in their go-to-meeting best: T-shirts with slogans like “Let’s Go Brandon,” “Never Surrender,” and “F—k Joe Biden,” and red MAGA hats and American flag halter tops.

“Now, please turn to page 13 in your hymnals,” says the pastor. As the organist begins the familiar opening strains, the congregation joyously breaks into song:

“Young man, there’s no need to feel down

I said, young man, pick yourself off the ground

I said, young man, ’cause you’re in a new town

There’s no need to be unhappy …”

You’ve probably seen the slogan that’s making the rounds in Democratic circles: “He Lost! And You’re in a Cult.” I saw it on a T-Shirt at Kroger the other day and hoped the wearer was ready for a possible confrontation from a true believer.

Because that’s legitimately where we are: Anyone who is still carrying water for Donald Trump is either in a cult and blindly devoted to an authoritarian wannabe, or is a cynical hypocrite who knows Trump is a lying dirtbag but thinks backing the former president will somehow accrue to their benefit. This would include most GOP members of Congress and the Senate.

In a group email chain that I’m on, a Trumper wrote the following: “Liberals fear Donald Trump because he is a real man, not a ‘woke’ liberal wuss.”

Yes, we fear a “real man” who wears more makeup and hair spray than a Miami drag queen and lives in a fading golf club that looks like it was designed by Carmen Miranda on ’shrooms. Nobody fears Donald Trump, except Republicans. He’s a clown-show, a grammatically impaired, narcissistic man-child who recently said in a speech that President Obama was going to start World War II. This is not a man to fear.

What is to be feared is what would happen if this lunatic got back in the White House. That’s a truly terrifying prospect. Imagine having this deeply flawed individual and his unbridled ego in charge of our military, our judiciary, the CDC, and/or anything else that catches his goldfish-level attention span. We’d have, in the highest office in the land, a man with virtually unlimited power, a man who wants to be president for life, a man who would surround himself with the kind of pandering con-men and yes-men who are currently facing indictments of several varieties — along with their former boss. They would no doubt be pardoned. Attorney General Rudy Giuliani, anyone? Secretary of Defense Michael Flynn? Secretary of State Paul Manafort? A Secret Service made up of Proud Boys? Sure.

Yes, that’s where the true fear lies — in the nagging possibility that there are somehow enough idiots in this country to allow this guy to pull off another Electoral College miracle, à la 2016.

Trump never goes to church, but he has disciples, a floating congregation of dead-head sycophants who see him — almost literally — as the second coming. Even the evangelicals, of all people, see this adulterous, lying, cheating layabout as reflective of their faith — faith, in this case, apparently being the ability to totally ignore reality.

In the Truth Social post cited above, for example, The Donald implores Republicans in Congress to “defund these political prosecutions,” ignoring the fact that the Democratically controlled Senate and presidency would render moot any such bill passed by Congress. But such real-world details don’t matter in the Church of Trump. All that matters is that you click your heels together and believe he won — and that you’re not in a cult.

On Sunday, former President Donald Trump attacked American Jews on his Truth Social platform. His message: Jews in the United States need to “get their act together” and show more appreciation for the state of Israel and Donald Trump “before it is too late.”

That concluding sentence caused a lot of blowback from Jewish groups, who saw Trump’s post as a veiled threat and a thinly disguised message to his MAGA and white supremacist base that Jews were a problem. It was remarks like these that got Trump banned from Twitter and led to his forming Truth Social, where his audience is relatively minuscule but where he can post whatever lies and racist tropes that arise in his addled brain without constraint.

Speaking of addled brains: Earlier in the week, wealthy rapper and confirmed lunatic, Kanye West, offered his own anti-Semitic post on Twitter, stating he was going to “go death con 3 [sic] on JEWISH PEOPLE.” He later posted that George Floyd was not murdered but died of a Fentanyl overdose (a racist trope that was disproved at trial). West was banned from Twitter and restricted on Instagram for his remarks, but he immediately announced that he was going to buy the troubled wanna-be-Twitter social medium, Parler.

Meanwhile, the world’s richest man, Tesla CEO Elon Musk, was nearing a final deal to take over Twitter, the most influential social medium for news and opinion in the world. Musk’s recent remarks on the war in Ukraine make it clear he is a Putin enabler, which could be a problem. Musk has also stated that when he takes over Twitter he will “reduce content moderation” and will allow “all speech that stops short of violating the law,” meaning Trump, Kanye, Marjorie Taylor Greene, and other racists currently banned from Twitter would be reinstated and allowed to spew whatever garbage they want, as long as it’s “legal.” And meaning that Truth Social, Parler, and Twitter would all be owned by egocentric billionaires. Good times.

This is nothing new, of course. American mass media has long been dominated by wealthy men who used their influential mass-media platforms to further their own ambitions and political views. In the early 20th century, William Randolph Hearst owned 30 influential newspapers that featured lurid stories on crime, corruption, politics, and sex. Hearst controlled the editorial positions and political news in his papers and is considered to have almost single-handedly influenced the United States to declare war on Spain and invade Cuba in 1898.

Little has changed. Consider Rupert Murdoch (Fox News, Wall Street Journal), Michael Bloomberg (Forbes, Business Week), Jeff Bezos (Washington Post, Amazon), and Mark Zuckerberg (Meta, Facebook, Instagram). Throw in Musk and Twitter, and that’s a lot of influence and power in the hands of five* self-interested billionaires.

Republicans, the majority of whom are now election deniers and Trump enablers, are naturally quite happy about the possibility of these three social mediums being owned by their kind of people. The official GOP House Judiciary Committee tweeted last week: “Kanye. Elon. Trump.” Not subtle, and even more disturbing when you consider that the anti-Semitic garbage Trump and Kanye posted garnered no criticism from any Republican of note.

We are three weeks out from a midterm election that no one seems to have a handle on. The polls are all over the place, with most indicating the Democrats will hold the Senate and lose the House. Still, no one knows, and accurate polling has never been more difficult. When was the last time you answered a call from an unknown number to take a poll? Democrats can take hope from this summer’s landslide pro-choice vote in deep-red Kansas, which the polls missed by double-digit percentage points. Republicans can take hope from the fact that a hypocritical, prevaricating moron like Herschel Walker is polling competitively in the Georgia Senate race, a staggering indictment of the electorate.

In addition to the election drama, Trump is facing multiple indictments in state and federal courts, with the DOJ hovering, waiting for the election to be over before making any moves in the Mar-a-Lago documents case. What we’ve learned after six years of Trump-induced chaos is that democracy is a fragile thing, and that rough water is likely still ahead. Buckle up.

*Editor’s note: In an earlier version of this story, Warren Buffett was listed as one of the billionaire newspaper owners. Buffett divested his newspaper holdings in 2020.