President Trump spent his Sunday retweeting memes from his biggest supporters, causing an uproar when one of them showed him hitting a golf ball into Hillary Clinton.
That retweetcaused HuffPostand others to willfully believe that Trump was somehow endorsing violence against women.
While not exactly presidential behavior, the retweet was just an example of harmless humor at the expense of his vanquished foe, similar to the famous gif he tweeted of him bodyslamming the CNN logo.
Trump was promoting a certain message with his choice of retweets, but it wasn’t support for violence against women. A week after he appeared to have betrayed his supporters by tentatively agreeing to an amnesty for illegal immigrants and no wall, the president further reinforced his agenda as simply “not Hillary or the liberals.” (RELATED: Trump Is A Terrible Negotiator)
One of the accounts that the president retweeted goes by the name “Trumpism 9.0.” The account’s tweet featuring an all-red electoral map and a warning “keep it up libs, this will be 2020” earned a retweet from the president.
It was an acknowledgement from the president that his appeal is built on the ridiculousness of his opposition. His fixation on attacking Hillary — a broken woman whom he defeated nearly a year ago — confirms the suspicion that he knows his main pitch is who opposes him.
The “Trumpism 9.0” seems to think that’s enough of a reason to support the president, as that account’s definition of Trumpism isn’t what the man in the White House campaigned on. The Twitter userclaims Trumpism“epitomizes Conservatism, Capitalism, patriotism, & respect for the Constitution.” While certainly patriotic, Trump ran against the old conservative establishment bromides about capitalism and the Constitution in his campaign.
Trump’s trade protectionism and his declarations that the Constitution isnot a suicide pactbelie the Trumpism 9.0’s claims as to what the ideology represents.
But since Trump seems to be giving up on Trumpism, the ideology behind the man no longer matters if it’s just a personality cult anyway.
Fortunately for the president, plenty of people may be fine with Trump existing solely as liberals’ worst nightmare.
On the same day that Trump was retweeting his supporters’ memes, the Emmys took place. Surprising no one, the TV awards show turned into aResistance rallywith more than enough criticism of the president.
Another example of condescending Hollywood liberals forcing their politics on Americaprompted many commentatorsto state that this is why Trump won and why he will win again.
Middle Americans see Trump’s haters and enemies as having total contempt for people like themselves. As an act of defiance, they vote for the man that makes those liberals lose their minds.
By acting as a totem of opposition against people like Hillary Clinton and Hollywood celebrities, he maintains support among millions of Americans — or so the theory goes.
That’s why Trump and his surrogates still spend an inordinate amount of time attacking the Clintons several months after the election. The president needs these enemies in order to bolster his status as the guy standing against them.
What he is exactly standing for can remain a mystery, however.
On the political Right, there is a serious crisis as to what unites the disparate elements that make up the Republican Party and the conservative movement. It’s no longer anti-communism like it was in the Cold War and tax cuts aren’t enough to keep everyone happy, especially when Trumpists have expressed support for raising taxes.
National Review editor Rich Lowryhas said, with a sense of regret, that the media now serves as the common enemy that defines the Right of the Trump era.
There is certainly truth to that, but the media is only one facet of this common enemy, which happens to be the political Left.
Numerous liberals have mockingly pointed this development out as a sign that the Right is devoid of ideas and animated by a vindictive spirit. It’s not so much that the Right is out of ideas as that the conservatism of the past was discredited in the Republican primary by Trump himself.
Populist-nationalism represented a direct challenge to the conservatism of Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio, and it triumphed with Trump’s ascension to White House.
But the man responsible for that triumph appears to be disinterested in carrying that nationalist platform any further, leaving a major void on the Right that is filled only by opposition to the Left.
Being defined by what you oppose instead of what you stand for isn’t exactly a positive message, but it seems to be the only thing driving the Trump administration at the moment.
It is true that Trump as president has to maintain a broad coalition in order to advance his agenda, so it makes sense to highlight the one thing that keeps that coalition intact.
But if that agenda is little more than anti-CNN gifs and the 2016 electoral map, what does that matter? How is a funny meme of Hillary falling down making up for you not building the wall and granting amnesty to illegal aliens?
The country artist Aaron Tippinonce sang, “you have to stand for something or you’ll fall for anything.” Trump should keep those words in mind as he falls for the out-of-touch agenda of the Republicans he defeated in 2016.
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