If Trump Wins, the Media Might Want to Buy the World a Coke AGAIN
Trump May Be (Neo)liberalism's Last Hope
from the infamous Coca-Cola Hilltop ad, 1971
NAMEDROP ALERT: As
and I left Harlem Shake last Friday, he asked whether I thought wokeness would get greater or lesser under Trump. I absentmindedly said greater and, being a recovering addict, decided to steer the conversation to gambling: I bet him a dinner that Trump would win the election.I have lately tried to steer clear of bold predictions on this Substack, but I am confident that Trump will win the election. Not just because the people want him. The liberal media —heck, the whole goshdarn liberal establishment — wants him to win.
It is easier to follow this logic when you read this Vanity Fair thinkpiece that does an admirable job tracking how Trump’s court cases helped his reelection chances. Now nowhere in the piece, or nowhere on the web, will you see Trump actually say he hopes for more court cases, or that they help his narrative. Nope; he points to all this as evidence that they are out to get him. The cable news networks salivating over all the sordid details of the Stormy Daniels trial, the talk show hosts mocking him — they only add fuel to his campaign.
Meanwhile, this is by far the worst year in the American liberal establishment’s history. Since its painful, reluctant birth in 1968, the liberal establishment has not been this unpopular. The liberal media is clearly not on the side of the campus protesters, but they are also obviously pro-Biden, who…turns out many American Jews and Muslims are turning against because he is not for either side enough. That Biden is one of the few things uniting the American Muslim and and Jewish vote is cold comfort when it’s against their party. The media is clearly in a bind: how can they, for example, say Trump is going to be even more pro-Israel? You say that like it’s a bad thing, Jake Tapper! As the center-left media likes to condescendingly remind us, this is a “complicated issue.” But they won’t tell you that for them — as well as for academia, liberal think tanks, etc — this is SNAFU FUBAR country.
The reelection of Donald Trump would seem to be a necessary scapegoat for them then, no? They are already using him now, but it reads as desperate now that he is not in charge. Once he is back, it will go beyond Trump Derangement Syndrome. They will have to cover him. He’s the President. And pinning Gaza on him is so much easier than reevaluating our complicity.
Right now, the media is trying to pin Gaza solely on Netanyahu.
From Haaretz:
From The Hill:
This is not to say the media has always loved a right-winger like Netanyahu. But certainly not as much as they hate Trump, their ultimate bete noire.
This longpost was originally going to be called 2020 vs. 2025 and was inspired by Freddie DeBoer’s recent stack; specifically this:
Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer humiliated themselves in their effort to show deference to a street protest movement. That seems like a big deal! Almost all of America’s elite institutions went out of their way to demonstrate at least symbolic support for BlackLivesMatter, from academia and media and nonprofit land but also the corporate world and government, to an unprecedented degree.
This is not the case now.
attributes it to the decline of Millennial-era wokeness.I think that this is simply due to the fact that we don’t live in 2020 anymore, and the American people being tired of acting like a career criminal and drug addict is the second coming of Christ.
I attribute it to three things:
The George Floyd video was more widespread and was not actively suppressed. TikTok is being banned because of the Gaza footage it allowed. You can also see Gaza footage on Instagram, for now, while TikTok is still competitive. As soon as TikTok gets the plug pulled, the videos and streams on other sites will dwindle.
The mainstream, center left media stood ten toes down behind BLM. Brands supported BLM. Why? It didn't threaten the military industrial complex. Gaza does raise questions that are many things, but they cannot be written of as idpol millennial cringe. If anything, the conservatives rushing to call the protests antisemitic is their version of pulling the identity card , especially with the focus on language ("from the river to the sea").
In the ‘60s, the civil rights protests were initially more popular than the Vietnam protests, which also primarily began on campuses. A simple reason: Vietnam and Gaza by necessity require critiquing American empire. The other two have/had pockets that are critical of America, but were more easily co-opted by those who wanted to improve America, or hold on the post -WWII ideal of America as a melting pot.
No matter whether I get the point or the point goes to Mr. Tubs, one thing is certain: the mainstream media’s jarringly different messaging on the validity of protests is making them look brazenly hypocritical right now.
Just look at Jimmy Dore and Kurt Metzger rip apart Anderson Cooper:
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TLDW: in the CNN segment they play, which shows footage of the cops rounding up protesters, CNN reporter Miguel Marquez says “I’ve covered lots of this stuff around the world, and I’ve never seen this much police move into one area.” Before he can get another word out, Anderson Cooper nervously says “OK Miguel let’s talk about the shot we’re seeing now.” Two things: either Cooper is a terrible reporter who is not interested in following up such an interesting, superlative statement or he is a lapdog for the MIC and Biden. Imagine him trying that during the 2020 BLM protests? He would have at least had to apologize.
Now imagine all this happening with Trump in office. Trump already has a reputation as a law and order candidate. When Colin Kaepernick protested the national anthem, Trump said “Get that son of a bitch off the field.” Wouldn’t Trump’s “love it or leave it” messaging make a much easier foil for Cooper to go against? Trump’s last victory led to the Great Awokening. All that 2020 BLM messaging rained down on the masses when Trump was President.
Admittedly, it isn’t the easiest thing to imagine such a drastic pivot as the mainstream media being more critical of Israel through Trump, so let’s look back at how hard the media pivoted after Nixon won back in ‘68. Now it is true that, after Cronkite expressed a lack of faith in a Vietnam War victory, celebrities flaunted their liberal beliefs more. But Nixon’s win united boomers with older establishment Democrats, leading to….the modern neoliberal media.
From an earlier post:
As cola and campus resistance began their torrid love affair, the broader anti-war movement got weakened from a strong, unified front against capitalist imperialism to a mushy, quasi-Christian bowdlerization emphasizing peace and harmony.
When Bonnie and Clyde was released during the Democrat LBJ years, it got mixed reviews. Midnight Cowboy, a lesser New Hollywood film, won Best Picture in 1970, when Nixon was President. Did they try pinning Vietnam on Nixon? They still are. By them, I mean even today’s chatbots.
LBJ might have accepted a settlement Nixon scuppered? Maybe, if you believe that he didn’t have Kennedy killed to appease the CIA and move up to the Oval Office he was really pro-peace.
How was the media doing during the Nixon presidency? How united was the liberal establishment? If you don’t want to read the book Rock Me on the Water: 1974-The Year Los Angeles Transformed Movies, Music, Television, and Politics, look at the blurb:
In this exceptional cultural history, Atlantic Senior Editor Ronald Brownstein—“one of America's best political journalists” (The Economist)—tells the kaleidoscopic story of one monumental year that marked the city of Los Angeles’ creative peak, a glittering moment when popular culture was ahead of politics in predicting what America would become.
Los Angeles in 1974 exerted more influence over popular culture than any other city in America. Los Angeles that year, in fact, dominated popular culture more than it ever had before, or would again. Working in film, recording, and television studios around Sunset Boulevard, living in Brentwood and Beverly Hills or amid the flickering lights of the Hollywood Hills, a cluster of transformative talents produced an explosion in popular culture which reflected the demographic, social, and cultural realities of a changing America. At a time when Richard Nixon won two presidential elections with a message of backlash against the social changes unleashed by the sixties, popular culture was ahead of politics in predicting what America would become. The early 1970s in Los Angeles was the time and the place where conservatives definitively lost the battle to control popular culture.
Rock Me on the Water traces the confluence of movies, music, television, and politics in Los Angeles month by month through that transformative, magical year. Ronald Brownstein reveals how 1974 represented a confrontation between a massive younger generation intent on change, and a political order rooted in the status quo. Today, we are again witnessing a generational cultural divide. Brownstein shows how the voices resistant to change may win the political battle for a time, but they cannot hold back the future.
But they cannot hold back the future? Y’ALL held back the future, mmmkay. Feminism and racial equality? Show biz rubber-stamped that in 1974. A closer look at imperialism, or, say, who shot JFK?1 Right, show biz is tough to break into.
The most obvious three-card monte trick against Nixon was of course Watergate. From the indispensable Hidden History by Donald Jeffries:
While Nixon was a typically ambitious, corruptible politician, there seems little doubt that someone powerful wanted him removed from office. On the surface, Watergate was child’s play compared to dozens of more serious scandals that had been ignored and covered up by the same kept press. After Watergate, the journalists who had seemed so diligent and civic minded returned to their previous dull and disinterested state. If they thought a rather pointless break-in was a matter serious enough to warrant the first impeachment of a president in over a hundred years, why did these same folks sneer and snicker at notions of conspiracy in the Kennedy assassinations?
Let’s be real: wouldn’t this whole Stormy Daniels thing be a lot juicier if a sitting president is forced to resign or is even arrested?
With Biden reelected, the Democrats will not have the “lesser of two evils” play anymore. There is a risk of growing division within the left and a general sort of embarrassment over a doddering old president or a babbling veep, who will be worse when (not if — when) she takes over. Biden will be pressured into unpopular decisions. More unpopular than the relatively tame one to pause arms supplies to Israel. With Trump winning in November, the Democrats can regroup and get, say, a humble Southern guy who plays well with the aging rebels, much like Jimmy Carter did in 1976, with his Allman Brothers concerts/presidential rallies.
But we’re looking too far ahead and bookies don’t take bets for 2028. Trump winning helps the neoliberal establishment regain control of the narrative. And now, like then, their regain of the narrative is the military’s control of the narrative. Via Caitlin Johnstone:
https://twitter.com/PalantirTech/status/1788316740847276358
If Trump is President and the whole media establishment, with maybe a few protesters, frames him as the bad cop to Biden’s good cop, hooray! Narrative restored. Just like we are expected to believe Vietnam would have been better with Humphries in office in 1969, just like we are expected to believe Al Gore would not have gotten us into Iraq in 2003, we will be sold that if only Biden had won, what happened in Gaza in 2025 would have been, to paraphrase Sarah Silverman, forgivable.
Still, even with such a blatant grab at the narrative realignment ball, I think the campus kids will be alright. Unlike 2003 or 1969, the kids have receipts now. Hippies did not have the media apparatus to stitch anti-Nixon news stories with footage proving LBJ was just as much of a sunovabitch. And neither of them were our sunovabitch.
Another flaw, if this is indeed the liberal establishment’s plan: what little concessions they give the alt-left will not be enough. Much like the media played catch-up with the lingo and messages of the hashtag hippies during the Trump admin in the late 2010s, they will be expected to play catch-up to their list of demands. Which will probably not happen, proving that the messaging of the mainstream media will only go so far. Not to say that the mainstream media capitulated to all the hippies’ messaging either. But the hippies did not have access to media like they do now. They had to go to J-School and model themselves on the new liberal establishment heroes Woodward and Bernstein.
Most important of all, unlike the hippies of the ‘60s, today’s hippies aren’t rich. Yes they go to Ivy League schools, but it’s not just those schools that are joining the fight. It’s not just schools either. More and more labor unions are joining the fight, which is different. Unions were hardly known for their support against the Vietnam War.
As
eloquently said:Maybe most significant of all, there’s no going back for millions and millions of people because we’re increasingly being prevented from going back to any sort of business as usual. The rent is too high, the summers are too hot, it’s just too expensive to pretend that everything is okay – or to have a life where everything appears okay
Boomers moved from handcuffs to golden handcuffs, which were much harder to escape. There is hope that we won’t get fooled again this time.
Though I think the campus kids will be alright, I am not betting as hard on them staying the course as I am on Trump winning. There is a danger that, if Trump wins, the kids will be tired of fighting. They might miss the cozy relationship they had with the mainstream media that tirelessly played fetch with all the pronouns coming at them. Their favorite pop stars speaking out against Gaza now that Trump is in office might be enough to get them unblocked. All the anger at empire might be boiled down to quasi-Christian peace drivel again and we might just be under the spell of another Don Draper mountaintop experience.
JFK was released in 1992, one year after the Cold War was over. At this point, communist metal bands like Rage Against the Machine were on the radio, why not a JFK movie?
Bet on lunacy and you won’t go wrong 😎