Hitler At The Drive-Thru
Trump is less toxic than ever before while the media revives the "brown scare"
Donald Trump took over a McDonald’s last weekend, learning how to make fries and handing out orders to happy customers. This scene highlighted Trump’s lovable and hilarious aspects. Trump made what would be an awkward situation for any other politician into a class on meme politics.
It’s hard to be horrified by a man in a Mickey D’s apron, happily serving nuggets and fries to ordinary Americans. But the media still took this benign appearance as a sign of Trump’s dangerous nature. An MSNBC panel was flabbergasted over the McDonald’s event. They couldn’t believe that Trump would do such a thing, painting the campaign stunt as a sign of how bizarre and unwell the former president is. One person on the panel insisted that the appearance shows how much Democrats need to emphasize Trump is a “threat to democracy.”
A regular voter would’ve been more befuddled by the MSNBC segment. How could people be so outraged by Trump working a deep fryer? This illustrates Trump’s detoxification among the general public while the media still rages at him as the next Hitler. The shrill accusations from liberals no longer have the same effect.
Trump has been a pariah ever since came down the escalator in 2015. Celebrities that once liked him quickly disavowed him. Politicians and pundits worked themselves into a frenzy to excoriate him–even if they belonged to the same party as Trump. Those in politics who supported him were met with the same level of opprobrium, which made many afraid of endorsing him in 2016. This level of scorn carried on into when he was president. Many in the media openly endorsed violence against Trump supporters. Being a Trump supporter was grounds for dismissal at your job, and it certainly was grounds for relatives and friends to cut you off. Mainstream media outlets would call Trump a fascist in straight news articles.
Trump was impeached twice, indicted four times, convicted of a felony, and was unpersoned on social media.
You would think this would make him the most despised man in America. People would be even afraid to get an order of fries from him.
In spite of all this, Trump has the highest net favorability rating he’s ever had as a politician. His public appearances show that many Americans don’t care about what the media says about him and genuinely admire him. Any time he shows up at a UFC match, it becomes a Trump rally. The crowd roars when Trump enters as if he’s a conquering general riding through a victory procession. He received a similar response from Alabama fans at the Bama-Georgia game last month. He even elicited a glowing response from Pittsburgh Steelers fans last Sunday. Pittsburgh is a blue city, yet its fans still want to chant “U! S! A!” when they see him.
This is strikingly different from how Trump was greeted at sporting events a few years ago. Washington Nationals fans booed his presence at a game in 2019. Iowa State fans flipped him off when he appeared at a football game last year. While Trump may still get booed in the Swamp, it’s unlikely Iowans would be so rude to him if showed up to a game this year. His reputation has greatly improved in that brief period of time.
This is further proved by the number of celebrities who praise him and pal around with him. Far more entertainers–from pro athletes to big-name rappers–are coming out to endorse Trump. In years past, only washed-up Z-list celebs would publicly back Trump and the top podcasts would be afraid to have him on. That’s no longer the case. It’s not a career ruiner to announce you’re voting for Trump. It’s why some of the biggest streamers have Trump on to do friendly interviews. They don’t see him as the next Hitler; they see him as an interesting and funny guy who could be the next president. These top-tier influencers clearly like the former president more than the current one and Kamala Harris.
To the public, Trump is no longer the American Fȕhrer on the verge of imposing the Fourth Reich. He’s a brash former president that seems to understand ordinary people better than other politicians. It’s no longer unthinkable to have him as president after experiencing four years of Trump in the White House and the country not falling apart. In fact, it was much better when he was commander-in-chief. The diabolic image of Trump only survives among the MSNBC faithful.
Trump’s “friendlier” image isn’t the result of a change in rhetoric. His speeches are arguably the most right-wing they’ve ever been. He rails against the “enemy within,” promises mass deportations, argues many illegal immigrants have bad genes and are poisoning the blood of the country, claims Haitian migrants are eating dogs and cats, and promises to “liberate” migrant-occupied parts of America. This is staunch material that would’ve caused weeks of public hysteria back in the 2010s. Now the public either agrees with Trump or they shrug off his excess–much to the chagrin of journalists.
The media class still maintains the same hyperbolic attitude towards Trump. The standard opinion was expressed by The Atlantic’s Anne Applebaum in a dead-serious article entitled: “Trump Is Speaking Like Hitler, Stalin, and Mussolini.” The article lives up to its ridiculous title:
In using this language, Trump knows exactly what he is doing. He understands which era and what kind of politics this language evokes. “I haven’t read Mein Kampf,” he declared, unprovoked, during one rally—an admission that he knows what Hitler’s manifesto contains, whether or not he has actually read it. “If you don’t use certain rhetoric,” he told an interviewer, “if you don’t use certain words, and maybe they’re not very nice words, nothing will happen.”
The headline and the article resemble a bad Babylon Bee parody more than serious analysis. There was once a time where essays and arguments like this would register with the general public and make normies think Trump is a fascist dictator-in-waiting.
That time has passed. Now the public sees him as the guy handing out Big Macs at the McDonald’s drive-thru. Who can envision the next Hitler doing that?