The System Made the Story

It was not just the media but the legal system that built this year’s grand narrative

Prior to Tuesday’s election, the pundit ecosystem was reading all of the early vote and vote by mail numbers for clues to who would win the election. I called this an exercise in tea leaves reading. The great unknown was which way independent voters would break. The important signal was that there was an enthusiasm gap. If trump won independents, he won the election. This was the case. Back to the enthusiasm gap, what was the cause for this? It is easy to understand if you do not wear progressive blinders.

After nine years of hysteria, the media still has not learned to not engage with Trump. Do not cover every little sentence, every little slight or insult and starve the charismatic beast of oxygen. They could not resist though and allowed Trump a friendly comeback town hall that set all of the cogs into motion. Someone made the first move and the rest followed. They hate him and do not understand his appeal so the very things they considered boorish and awful appealed to many voters. They are the least self-aware class of people in recent history. They will never understand that criticizing unaccountable public figures who push harmful or idiotic policies is red meat for people who feel helpless.

We know this game and it is old hat by now. It became a negative for them when this thinking spread to every other piece of the progressive system. The J6 lamentations wore out their welcome and public coverage fell flat. It dragged on, and what more people saw was that it was a protest that became a riot and had a few agent provocateurs involved. Jailing people for walking around the Capitol rubbed people the wrong way after a summer of Floyd riots.

While that fell flat, garland’s investigations into J6 yielded nothing substantial and Jack Smith had a rough hand. Play the cards and hope for a partisan jury in DC was his best bet. Why even go for it? Combined with a Mar-A-Lago raid that was excessive and let Trump play the persecuted martyr, it tilted support on the right in Trump’s direction. The polling on GOP support is undeniable as it shifted with that raid. The documents case looked like a set up the more that came out, and fed, once again, into Trump’s persecution meme. As the kamala campaign messaged late in ’24, “turn the page” does have a resonating message with many people for putting something behind them, and letting Trump live in a media staved exile in Florida would have been turning a page.

It did not end there, with the state prosecutions in New York and Georgia. It’s easy to go back to August of ’23 and think of the iconic mugshot. New York prosecutors were not dumb enough to offer Trump the free press opportunity to send a statement. Fani Willis wanted the Resistance win of seeing the mugshot and sharing it. Trump nailed it. Punished Trump story arc commenced. The kangaroo NYC trial gave Trump the opportunity to play prodigal son returned home. He was in his element. It was free media. All for what? A possible conviction that withstands appeal. This fed his persecution narrative. Look back to polls and check how his slight edge on Biden started to grow at that point. The Georgia case was battered in hearings, and likely will die, but what was the goal except to feed Trump’s messaging and maybe send him to jail before November 5^th? The strategy does not make sense except from paranoid, neurotic and sadistic chekists.

Trump had the narrative he wanted. He was the persecuted man fighting in a win or go to jail situation for you, the true American. This fed into the frenzy after the assassination attempt that missed by a hair. As comedian Bill Burr said on SNL, an assassin misses me by that much and I am curling in the fetal position. Trump got up and shouted fight. Burr also added, you miss and that’s it. It’s over. That’s the king.

That really is the subtext. The tribune of the plebeians survived the lawfare. He survived the assassination attempt. This is not supposed to happen. This is the king. The entire run after that fateful day was the story of the return of the king. There was no way for the Democrats to counter. In a re-election situation, a party pushes achievements and promotes stability and staying the course. The narrative that Biden declined as the nation faced instability and immigration fueled chaos was the exact opposite. There was no good Biden narrative. There was no good Kamala narrative. The additional flub of Hurricane Helene only added to their chaotic environment. Who showed up first? Trump. The king was among his people. They never learned from East Palestine.

This is why some counties in Georgia had greater total returns by the time early voting was done than all of 2020. The king could return, but he needed the little people to march to the polls and call him forth. The king who promises to comes down to the common man’s level, promises to listen and to send aid and help the countryside needed just one thing from the peasants. Putting on an apron to work a shift at McDonald’s and wearing a safety vest to ride in a garbage truck was just the ceremonial recreation of kings of yore showing humility to say that he is one of you even if he is above you.

This is why there was an enthusiasm gap. Look at returns for big cities, and it is easy to see the missing voters in each municipality. Illinois was within 8% virtually because of the decline in Chicago alone. There was no joy. This enthusiasm gap was real and persisted throughout the year all because of the very actions the system did to possibly jail President Trump instead of having a fair fight. The media and bureaucracies do not see this because they are accustomed to being the machine that crafts these narrative to create the Boy from Hope in 1992 or the 21^st century Messiah in 2008. They did not understand that their actions could create a hero’s journey for a population they have forgotten. Just as they created a monster in 2016 by breathlessly covering Trump’s every move, they have created a king for the forgotten, discarded Americans.