Share this page!

b-boy bouiebaisse Profile picture
Twitter logo
14 Jan, 9 tweets, 2 min read
Yes. Think of it this way: How many people voted for Donald Trump the Republican politician, and how many voted for Donald Trump, star of The Apprentice, who plays the most successful businessman in America?
One reason I am a little skeptical that anyone currently within the GOP can rebuild the Trump coalition is that no one else has a lifelong celebrity brand that valorizes entrepreneurship and business success.
Yes! I was just about to make a similar point, which is if you break down the constituent parts of Trump's pre-political celebrity, it's not just "successful businessman" but "charming rogue" and "affable vulgarian."
From the aforementioned HOME ALONE 2 to his appearances on WWE, much of Trump's celebrity persona is this "winking artifice," which makes him especially well-suited to a political culture that is as concerned with entertainment as it is the duties of citizenship.
There are figures that have elements of Trump's persona — & can credibly claim to be political outsiders, which is an important part of the formula — but I can't think of anyone who marries them all into a single act and who also has the performance chops of a lifelong celebrity.
This is not to discount the fact that the Trump coalition consists of a lot of people who very much believe that Trump is serious about what he's selling (as well as ordinary partisan Republicans).
But I think his political magic, such that it is, is that he brought in a not-insignificant group of voters for who saw him as entertainment, and believed that whatever terrible thing he said, he didn't really mean it.
Anyway, if I'm reevaluating my takes about Trump from four years ago, the thing I absolutely discounted and got wrong was the power of his celebrity, which is why I'm thinking about it right now.
yep! for many people politics is a show he was the heel.

• • •

Missing some Tweet in this thread? You can try to force a refresh
　

Keep Current with b-boy bouiebaisse

b-boy bouiebaisse Profile picture

Stay in touch and get notified when new unrolls are available from this author!

Read all threads

This Thread may be Removed Anytime!

PDF

Twitter may remove this content at anytime! Save it as PDF for later use!

Try unrolling a thread yourself!

how to unroll video
  1. Follow @ThreadReaderApp to mention us!

  2. From a Twitter thread mention us with a keyword "unroll"
@threadreaderapp unroll

Practice here first or read more on our help page!

More from @jbouie

b-boy bouiebaisse Profile picture
14 Jan
my favorite part of this is how shapiro speaks as if this is simply something happening in the air and not a sense of siege that he’s dedicated his life to stoking and cultivating
ben shapiro is DIRECTLY RESPONSIBLE FOR THIS and he’s using politico to launder his reputation as if he isn’t one of the most toxic figures in the conservative media landscape
also you just moved to the south dude chill out
Read 4 tweets
b-boy bouiebaisse Profile picture
14 Jan
fun to look back a decade or so and see the exact same voter fraud accusations from "respectable" republican politicians huffpost.com/entry/mccain-c…
or here's McCain during the Oct. 15th debate
hOw DId wE gET HeRE?!?
Read 5 tweets
b-boy bouiebaisse Profile picture
12 Jan
“detroit’s outsized influence”
can’t totally disenfranchise black voters so the next best thing is to nullify their influence by gerrymandering them into a few districts and then distributing electoral votes on the basis of that gerrymander
the obvious complaint isn’t that candidates aren’t campaigning throughout the state, it’s that this guy doesn’t think his vote should count the same as a black person in a city he hates. it’s just outright opposition to political equality.
Read 5 tweets
b-boy bouiebaisse Profile picture
9 Jan
Have been thinking about the reasons *why* right-wing protesters get so much leeway from law enforcement and other authorities and came back to this piece I wrote last January, about the big gun rights demonstration in Richmond. nytimes.com/2020/01/22/opi…
the crucial insight of “some of those who work forces are the same who burn crosses” is that “working forces” and “burning crosses” are understood by “some” as existing on the same continuum of action.
Read 4 tweets
b-boy bouiebaisse Profile picture
9 Jan
rewatching THE DEAD ZONE and one thing to say about this movie is that everyone is wearing the most comfortable looking sweaters
that shit looks cozy as hell!
a movie where a corrupt, power-hungry politician gets his comeuppance before he can plunge the world into chaos? now that’s a fantasy
Read 4 tweets
b-boy bouiebaisse Profile picture
8 Jan
This is so smart. Our political leaders are absolutely terrified by the prospect of backlash — the chance that someone, somewhere, will get mad about the "undeserving" — and reverse-engineer everything they do to avoid it. newrepublic.com/article/160810…
The result, of course, are byzantine, incomprehensible rules and policies that fail and an angry public that then, yes, doesn't trust that the government can do anything.
and at the end of the day, everyone is undeserving to someone, and a government that is preoccupied with rooting out aid to the undeserving eventually becomes a government that abandons aid altogether, and only has the capacity to deal out death and exposure to death
Read 4 tweets

Did Thread Reader help you today?

Support us! We are indie developers!

This site is made by just two indie developers on a laptop doing marketing, support and development! Read more about the story.

Become a Premium Member ($3/month or $30/year) and get exclusive features!

Become Premium

Too expensive? Make a small donation by buying us coffee ($5) or help with server cost ($10)

Donate via Paypal Become our Patreon

Thank you for your support!

Follow Us on Twitter!

Like this author's thread?

Get emails when @jbouie has new unrolls!

Check out other threads from @jbouie!

Read all threads by @jbouie