Trump's Media Play is a Joke
Biden’s woke comintern for “democracy” making dictatorships great again
The Trump Media & Technology Group (TMTG) and the investment vehicle that is acquiring it, DWAC, made news recently for two reasons. DWAC disclosed in an 8-K filing that it was under investigation by both the SEC and the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority for what could amount to insider trading. There is no publicly available evidence. TMTG also announced that Rep. Devin Nunes will become the CEO of the company. The filings and a press release reveal what Trump’s post-presidency inner circle—mostly grifters—is planning with the new company, which may guzzle hundreds of millions and never turn a profit or be saleable to a real media company.
Nunes has been a brilliant member of Congress, using his litigator’s mind to pull apart the liberal fairytale that the Trump Campaign colluded with the Russian government. He exposed Deep State corruption and political perfidy, captured masterfully in Amanda Milius’s The Plot Against the President (which became so popular so fast that it didn’t occur to Amazon to censor it until it was too late). However, Nunes has no experience running a media organization, building what is laughably being called a technology company, or mentoring talent for shows and other media.
The back story is that Nunes faced a competitive situation in midterm elections with California’s redistricting. Like most of those who were in Trump’s near orbit, traditional and lucrative exits from government like lobbying firms, corporate boards, and Wall Street remain mostly closed. Nunes can go to TMTG, bank maybe half a million bucks or more annually for a few years, and then figure out what’s next when it goes kaput.
SEC filings and a preview page in Apple’s app store indicate that TMTG’s “Truth Social” will start with a straight-up knockoff of Twitter. The ability of anyone to do this without infringing a copyright is telling: what matters isn’t the decade-old technology of Twitter, but the network it has assembled, loathsome as it is. (I contend that Twitter is more unhealthy than smoking, but unlike smoking, doesn’t make you look really cool.) Parler has failed to rival Twitter because it lacks a critical mass as network: a small pond of fellow conservatives ranting just isn’t as appealing to conservatives as the ocean of crazy on Twitter. Like Parler, TMTG will fail as well.
Trump should be focusing on what conservatism needs most—and something for which there would be an enormous market. That is conservative content farther up the cultural stream than political commentary, which we already have covered. What is lacking are movies, series, documentaries, novels, music, art, and other media that either convey a conservative message, or just a message that is neutral but pro-American and not progressive and woke. Even no message at all would be a welcome and lucrative alternative to the progressive, PC drivel that Hollywood’s dwarfs produce today. I’d much rather hear about a young conservative who wants to make documentaries, write novels, or paint portraits of General Washington killing foreigners on Christmas morning than go work for a pointless think tank like the Heritage Foundation. Unfortunately, Trump thinks he can create the network or meeting place for conservative content rather than the content itself, beginning with sloppy social media that many people consume but hate.
Footnote: TMTG is amusingly represented by EF Hutton. You can be forgiven if you have not thought about that brand since the 1980s, when it used cheesy ads (“When EF Hutton talks, people listen”) to promote its retail business, which was pretty much its only business. The Grey Poupon people did it better with their ads, which were actually meant to be fatuous. After guilty verdicts for mail and wire fraud, and an allegation of money laundering for a New England mob family, EF Hutton sailed into history one step ahead of liquidation when it was acquired by Shearson Lehman in 1987. Its resurrection came earlier this year when Kingswood Capital Markets, a “global investment bank” no one has heard of, bought the old name. This is a bit of a tradition with mickey mouse companies with ties to New York and Florida: companies that previously bought long-dead brands like Pan Am and Eastern Air Lines operated briefly before dying again.
DWAC stock was up on the news of Nunes joining TMTG. I was again tempted to short the stock, but E*Trade said it was too hard to borrow, implying I wasn’t the only one with the idea. In our new episode of Simon & Whiton, Mark questions whether anyone should short the stock, but explains why both it and CNN have business models that need radical change. We discuss what the TMTG grift tells us about a possible Trump candidacy in 2024. Take a look on YouTube (below) or listen to us on Apple, Spotify, or other podcast catalogs. Subscribe for free or follow us, and we’d love it if you leave a comment on Apple (no death threats).
Biden’s Woke Comintern
The Biden administration convened a Summit for Democracy in Washington—virtually of course since shutdownism is now a key part of the neoliberal schoolmarm creed. Secretary of State Tony Blinken addressed a group of young activists who were participating, summing up the “democracy” topics of interest:
Last year, tens of thousands of young people led marches against systemic racism around the world. Last month, over 100,000 young people took to the streets of Glasgow and demanded climate action. Others are leading by – their communities by welcoming refugees, monitoring electoral processes, shining a light on corruption. Along the way and across movements, they’re building solidarity and learning lessons from each other – lessons that will be crucial for the work ahead.
There you have it: like overall Biden foreign policy, this gathering is not about supporting the governments that are accountable to their people and political forces that advance U.S. interests. Rather, it is about propagating woke and neoliberal nonsense.
Will we support the Arab Gulf monarchies, most of which have a stronger rule of law than corrupt American allies in the Cold War, in their struggle against the Muslim Brotherhood and other instruments of political Islam? Nope, we’ll ignore political Islam but decry “systemic racism,” which is make-believe racism to cover up the real reasons behind different economic and law-enforcement outcomes and a way to undermine meritocracy and capitalism.
Will we protect and champion the cultures and societies that gave rise to Western Civilization and Hamiltonian democracy? Nope, we’ll criticize governments that protect their borders and don’t want their cultures changed without the consent of their people.
Will we work on behalf of our middle classes—the bedrock of any real democracy—including by keeping energy cheap and secure, and promoting manufacturing jobs that depend on that cheap and secure energy? Nope, we will indulge the elite religion of climate change alarmism, inventing a “crisis” and using it to create a centrally planned economy in the biggest misallocation of capital and attention span in modern history.
Not only were important monarchies left out of the gathering, so too were democracies like Singapore and Hungary. Singapore’s ruling party has governed since independence, but few would argue it is not highly accountable to its people, and highly successful. Contrast this with Old Europe and Great Britain, where elections and changes in ruling parties result in the exact same failing policies. Singapore is also important diplomatically, culturally, economically, and militarily in our struggle against the Chinese Communist Party, which after all is the biggest foreign threat to America and the focus of evil. Hungary is even more democratic: its leader, Viktor Orban, won office in competitive elections and faces serious competition in elections this spring. Neoliberals hate that he opposes open borders, involuntary cultural subversion, and a foreign-funded media. They also fault him for skepticism of the European Union, itself an unaccountable, undemocratic, neoliberal organization that is increasingly a tool for wokistas.
What Biden and his lieutenants are attempting is the replacement of Ronald Reagan’s variety of democracy promotion with that of Jimmy Carter. Essentially they want the woke equivalent of the Soviet Union’s Communist International (Comintern), which was in charge of exporting Marxist revolution. Carter’s professor-grade variety of democracy promotion meant distancing America from important allies like the undemocratic Shah of Iran, which contributed to his downfall in the 1979 Islamic Revolution, the consequences of which we are still dealing with today. Reagan’s variety meant standing with undemocratic but generally capitalist allies—they included then-authoritarian states like South Korea, the Philippines, Taiwan, Thailand, and South Africa—while pressuring them mostly in private to reform.
The reform push was for genuine accountability to their people, the rule of law, and capitalism—not flavor-of-the-month woke causes that actually undermine America and other rich democracies. Reagan’s efforts shied from weakening governments that were standing up against the biggest threat to democracy then, which was the Soviet Union. Ultimately, Reagan’s biggest contribution to democracy promotion was restoring the USA as a model to which others aspired. That is a world apart from the arrogant, neo-Marxist cultural imperialists who are running around Washington (virtually) this week. They want to turn every city in the world into San Francisco—something the vast majority of people find repugnant.
We attribute Theodore Roosevelt’s admonition “Speak softly and carry a big stick; you will go far” to his military policies, but he actually applied it to other provinces of policy and politics. We ought to bring it back today. America’s best role is setting an example and conducting itself with quiet reserve, not preaching repulsive and failed policies to a disbelieving world.
Into the Abyss
Speaking of being repulsive, the Democrats have really outdone themselves. A recent poll revealed a trend that isn’t just alarming for them, it’s apocalyptic:
…the Journal survey found that Hispanic voters are evenly split in their choice for Congress. Asked which party they would back if the election were today, 37% of Hispanic voters said they would support the Republican congressional candidate and 37% said they would favor the Democrat, with 22% undecided.
If this poll is indicative of reality, it sweeps away the entire foundation of the Democrat Party. That foundation was demolished and replaced beginning in the 1990s from a patriotic, blue-collar view that America was good and should be prosperous but that everyone should share in that prosperity into something very different. Democrats began shedding their opposition to illegal immigration and globalism, which harm the poor and blue-collar workers most, because they believed a Hispanic influx would inevitably vote Democrat. The transition of California from a slightly Republican-leaning swing state to a Democratic bastion that took place under Bubba Clinton was traced to Hispanic immigration and would inevitably be replicated in Republican states like Arizona, Florida, and even Texas. While the Democrats have always dabbled in racist politics, their faith in Marxist-like inevitability based on racial composition trends caused them to go deep into what we now see as wokism. And they got sloppy on the issues most voters really care about regardless of their race.
Will inevitability now go the other way? The Democrats can’t win nationally or in the fastest-growing states if they don’t chalk up huge margins among Hispanics and other minorities. This poll is the latest hint that a still-improbable but not impossible 1932-style shift in American politics is forming.
Russia Russia Russia
Joe Biden was good enough to say that the USA would not unilaterally commit its military to defend Ukraine. That is a rare nod to sanity. Biden has failed to explain to the American people what vital U.S. national interests exist in Ukraine, probably because none do. That hasn’t stopped the administration and a number of Republican senators from talking up a confrontation with Russia over Ukraine. Warmonger Tom Cotton (R-Arkansas) got in an amusing spat with Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D-New Hampshire) when Cotton said:
Suddenly the Democrats have reverted back to their old conciliatory ways. The simplest way to deter an invasion of Ukraine, the simplest way to deter Russian aggression is to draw clear red lines and enforce them… something that Joe Biden will not do, something that apparently the Democratic senators will not force him to do.
Shaheen retorted:
I just have to take real umbrage at your suggestion Senator Cotton. I’m the one who Vladimir Putin refused a visa to get into Russia because of my opposition to Russia and to what Putin was doing. He didn’t deny you a visa to get into the country. So don’t talk to me about how I’ve not been tough enough on Russia, because that dog won’t hunt.
These are profoundly unserious people. Cotton’s “simplest way” is only simple to the simplistic. Russia isn’t Libya, Syria, Grenada, or Panama. It has a massive nuclear arsenal, a capable military, better hypersonic missiles than us, cyber and satellite capabilities that rival China’s, and an acumen at political warfare. If our military goofs with Russia enforcing one of Field Marshal Cotton’s red lines, we cannot just go kill seven children in a PR-driven attack ordered by the White House and call it quits. We could find ourselves in a very serious war that escalates as quickly and unpredictably as World War I and drags on for years.
Someone should tell both sides of Pennsylvania Avenue that corrupt Ukraine, which has a divided population, some of which looks west while other parts look east, is not France or Britain in 1939. If Europe were at risk—and it isn’t—then the Europeans and their economy that is fourteen times the size of Russia’s could handle their own defense. Even Ukraine’s military is larger than the forces Russia reportedly has massed on its border, and the defender usually has the advantage.
Furthermore, fiascos in Iraq, Libya, Syria, and Afghanistan should be a clue to super hawks that America’s unipolar moment is over; we actually need a smart and thrifty foreign policy if we ever want to prevail against the actual threats to our vital interests (e.g., China trying to chuck us out of the economically crucial Western Pacific).
To his credit, and missed by most of the media, Biden did open the door a crack to real diplomacy in which we talk to Russia instead of at Russia. Biden offered Moscow a meeting with key NATO members, the agenda of which is unclear, but which presumably could be a venue to discuss Russia’s opposition to NATO admitting Ukraine to the obsolete alliance. The young woman who runs Estonia, a nation of 1.3 million bordering Russia, immediately attempted to sabotage the effort: “Russia should under no circumstances be given a say in who may or may not be a member of NATO.” Actually we would have been much better off listening to Russian objections to admitting Estonia and the other Baltic states to NATO. Retreating Nazis learned the hard way in 1944 that the Baltics are geographically indefensible from a determined force from the east and the Baltic Sea itself becomes a turkey shoot in such a situation. America and the rest of NATO can no more defend the Baltics than we could the nation of Georgia (which the super hawks also want in NATO) against a determined Russian effort. All we could do is find ourselves in World War III. Pointlessly.
Let’s hope Biden proceeds with real diplomacy. George Beebe at the Center for the National Interest lays out a possible solution in a persuasive article this week: “But more acceptable outcomes are, in principle, achievable, such as Ukraine’s formal neutrality along the lines of the Austrian State Treaty that President Eisenhower negotiated in 1955 to rid that country of the Soviet army.”
Go Woke, Go Broke
Last year woke CVS lectured its hourly workers about their “privilege” and forced them into “antiracist” sessions that included progressive fetishes like intersectionality, white privilege, and unconscious bias. Other training included “Say This, Not That” political reeducation for unlucky employees.
Now CVS is doing yeoman’s work at not criticizing the obvious reasons behind the crime wave that has led to mass shoplifting and looting of CVS stores and similar businesses. The company’s CEO, conveniently named Karen, alleged the crime spree had a minimal impact but then reversed herself, telling CNBC:
They’re criminals, and it is impacting our stores. What they’re doing is they’re taking our products off the shelf and they’re putting them online and we need to go after that.
That’s right: instead of criticizing the Democrat mayors, city councils, and prosecuting attorneys for encouraging crime and urging that they instead prosecute criminals using existing laws, let’s regulate something else. Give the shoplifters themselves a pass because of racism or whatever. Good luck with that Karen, and as CVS proceeds with its plans to close 900 locations, don’t wait too long to board up the rest of your stores in San Francisco!