Thread by @JeanetteKStone1

"Donald Trump’s clumsy attempt to distance himself from Jeffrey Epstein has driven a wedge through his base. But his flailing is a symptom of a deeper problem: the cult leader has begun to lose control of the flock."
1/

https://twitter.com/atrupar/status/1953071876793651484

"America’s would-be dictator won’t fall because he’s acting like the mastermind of the 'deep state' conspiracy he’s coached his fervid followers to believe. But the cracks in the Trump regime — which have been growing — are all but certain to widen into dangerous crevasses."
2/

"Trump has never been a broadly popular politician.... His political resilience derives from his power within the Republican Party — strength grounded in his singular grip on MAGA, which finds its only parallel in charismatic dictatorships like those of Putin and Mussolini."
3/

"A decade out from Trump’s hostile takeover of the GOP, today’s Republican 'leaders' know nothing other than surrender. But his bungled, increasingly desperate Epstein coverup indicates that his skills as a cult leader are declining."
4/

"In January 2016, Trump infamously 'joked' that he 'could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody, and I wouldn't lose any voters.'

But the implication of Trump’s braggadocio — that his complete hold on 'his' supporters is baked in, no matter what — is false."
5/

"Like all cult leaders, Trump’s 'control' of his people has always been grounded on an assiduous and even obsessive attention to their psychic needs, wants, and proclivities."
6/

"While Trump is no genius, he’s a gifted performer, and he’s devoted huge amounts of mental energy to understanding the desires of those who worship him."
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"It is a measure of how good Trump was at pandering to his cult that his work has often been all but invisible to the vast majority of 'savvy' observers, who are wont to declare that his enduring connection with MAGA amounts to something akin to magic."
8/

"Nothing could be further from the truth.

A cursory review of Trump’s now lengthy career as a national politician demonstrates two things."
9/

"First, that his personal obsessions with power, money, misogyny, and self-aggrandizement of a cartoonish nature is a constant, but lurks as a potential vulnerability, not the source of his appeal."
10/

"And second, that his violence-tinged promises to his followers are constantly evolving in accordance with their wishes.

Trump is rarely the source of his conspiratorial notions. He instead draws and then popularizes them from the always active bowels of his raging cult."
11/

"This is true of his persistent pandering to performatively sadistic xenophobia, his amplification of antivax paranoia and other forms of 'health' quackery, and his abiding focus on culture war issues like transphobia and demonizing diversity."
12/

"All of these reprehensible ideas — including the challenges to President Obama’s citizenship that 'launched' Trump’s political career as his TV star was fading — came from what is now Trump’s base."
13/

"But Trump was the assiduous curator of the paranoid theories, hatreds, and obsessions of others. His attention to the fringes of popular culture, and his recognition of just what tidbits appeal most to resentful white baby boomers like himself, has long been second to none."
14/

"It’s a measure of Trump’s abilities that he has rarely come close to losing the appearance of control over his herd, but there have been previous moments where his status as leader of his extremist movement has been open to question."
15/

"Perhaps the most notable example came in 2021—and it had nothing to do with Jan. 6, when feckless Republicans wrongly assumed the failed putsch would dethrone Trump. It came months later, in the summer of that year, as antivax conspiracism moved to the center of MAGA world."
16/

"Trump, the braggart, had long touted the false claim that he 'invented' the covid vaccine. But by mid-2021, he had stopped touting his purported role in creating the lifesaving vaccine—and instead promoted the 'freedom' of his supporters to risk their lives by refusing it."
17/

"It was a measure of Trump’s brilliance as cult leader that he managed to seamlessly transform himself from the father of the new vaccine into a fully paranoid opponent of even long-accepted ones like the polio jab."
18/

"Trump’s chameleon-like ability to remake his political appearance was always at risk of reaching its limit where the right-wing conspiracies focused on Jeffrey Epstein and his vile criminal exploitation of young girls are concerned."
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"After all, in reality, Trump was not only among Epstein’s closest friends at the time his sex trafficking ring was at its height, he himself has a history of sexual abuse allegations (including an adjudicated case)."
20/

"So Trump trying to become the 'truth teller' on Epstein inevitably risked confronting his cult members with the deeply repugnant reality of their leader, including his association with the very evils they attribute to their enemies."
21/

"Trump must have concluded that he had little choice but to pander to his base and their QAnon-ish mythology about Democrats engaging in industrial scale child abuse. But the Trump of just a few years ago would have recognized the danger of this particular conspiracy theory."
22/

"Not only did Trump bring into his administration right-wing extremist media figures who/ made massive sums amplifying Epstein-centered conspiracy theories, but he placed two of them (Kash Patel and Dan Bongino) at the top of the FBI."
23/

"Trump [knew] that those files contained references to him. How could they not?... But it was not until the blowback threatened him that Trump recognized his problem, and his response over the past several weeks has only confirmed that his magic touch isn’t what it once was."
24/

"Now Trump has bizarrely turned to serially confessing to [a dispute w/Epstein over a "stolen" girl].

But Trump has not explained why he thought Epstein & Maxwell were trolling Trump’s club looking for underage girls to 'steal,' given that Epstein had no club of his own.
25/End.