Trump Didn't Win the Election — The Three Headed Media Monster Did

Is the Anti-Trump cottage industry also becoming a monster?

History has frequently proven that propaganda can pacify almost any nation into falling into the authoritarian trap and remaining there. In the United States today, the right-wing propaganda machine is a three-headed hydra.

Hydra image licensed from Adobe Stock; image smashup by author

There is almost no room at all for other voices within this environment.

The hydra convinced more than 77 million people to vote for an impossibly crazy felon whose only real accomplishment in life was establishing himself as the world’s most successful, and crooked, carnival barker. Looking at the hydra, I’m amazed it wasn’t an even bigger rout.

After the excitement and euphoria of Kamala, the November election changed the political divide from a left/right thing into a sane/not sane thing. On social media, the new divide works like this:

“Did you vote for the insane guy?”

“Yes.”

“Bye.”

The mass media portrays this situation as a continuation of a political divide. But that’s not what it is. The divide has nothing to do with politics.

It’s all about, “Did you vote for the insane guy? And if you did, why? Never mind, there are no logical reasons. Goodbye.”

Image by felinebird on Flickr , Creative Commons license

If you are one of those who was excited about Kamala and are now walking around stunned like a movie set zombie, I think it’s important to understand the role media had to play in this election. The right-wing propaganda machine that got behind a criminal for the presidency attacked on three major fronts:

1. Social Media, where Elon Musk, a South African immigrant, joined a right-wing army that unleashed a massive attack of tweets on 300 million users, many of whom were young men eager to be converted to the cause. Even Snoop Dogg has fallen prey.¹
   
   Since then, it’s only gotten worse. Zuckerberg Zucked, and hired a Project 2025 bro to manage his company’s governance over outrageous posts.² Not long after that, he more fully Zucked, and announced that Meta was simply giving up on trying to contain the right-wing frenzy. Then he more overtly joined the MAGA stormtroopers. He’s considered a successful businessman, but for me, his most impressive attribute is finding new ways to make a mockery of the hair styling industry.

2. Fox News and mainstream media: Fox News is a 24/7 cable news channel that spews falsehoods so regularly that it lost a defamation lawsuit to Dominion Voting Systems by agreeing to a $787 million settlement.³ Fox, which is owned and run by an Australian immigrant, can be seen in almost every small town café and barbershop in America during the day. People in small towns keep it on almost every night while they’re making dinner.
   
   Its headlines become entrenched in mainstream media to the point where most Americans want to deport most immigrants.
   
   Mainstream media accommodates Fox by frequently reporting on some guy with a name like Robert Garcia, who always lives in South Texas and is pissed about new immigrants because it took poor Robert 45 years to get legal. Some of us say, fuck you, Robert, but it all bounces around the walls of a tiny echo chamber that will never, ever have any impact on the hydra.

3. Finally, there’s talk radio, which blasts away in every car on America’s rural roads. It still has an enormous impact on voters, even though Rush Limbaugh graced us with a final exit some time ago.

Meanwhile, we who used to be considered resisters, but are now mostly just a pissed-off opposition, are left with our echo chambers, where we make varying, but always small, amounts of money yelling about Trump.

The screeds are everywhere. Including here at Ruminato. Substacks I enjoy, like Bulwark, are openly dedicated to anti-Trumpian essays. They regularly say things like, “Become a paid subscriber, and let us guide you through the horrors of the next four years.”

Anti-Trump screeds and the subscriptions they generate have become a cottage industry. Entire publications are devoted to his ruin, even though the opposite seems to be happening.

I know from experience because I’ve become part of it. It’s easy, for one thing. I’ve done it many times. It works like this:

Write an anti-Trump post. It helps if you can come up with a few disparaging nicknames. A popular one that I’ve come up with is “Orange Puffalo.” I don’t know why that resonates, but I don’t blame anyone. I like it, too. It’s got the “it” factor that a disparaging nickname needs.

If the post goes slightly viral, subscriptions pile up. I get excited, and then motivated to write more anti-Trump essays. The urge to drop a million F-bombs just to help drive home a point becomes almost impossible to resist.

And although I’m thrilled with every new subscription I receive, I’m wondering if we’re not just helping Trump magnify his various demonstrations of malfeasance and, worse, hate.

We keep repeating his name, and the stories go viral, and now, once again, he becomes the center of the universe. So does his hate. Today is Martin Luther King Jr’s birthday, a federal holiday, for fucks’s sake.⁴ And here we are, here **I** am, talking about a serial predator and con man.

I don’t know what the answer is. We need to call him out on his shit. But are we doing it all wrong? Can we find a way to do it without giving the brainless coward daily publicity?

On this day, from this point forward, I choose to ignore his inauguration entirely.

This is Martin Luther King’s day, not his. The Maestro of Mendacity gets no more part of it. This week, even though there will be a torrent of Trump news items, I’m going to completely ignore him. I’m gonna read a good book about American slavery instead.

Martin Luther King Jr. addressing a crowd from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial (public domain).

Meanwhile, let’s all think about this question: What is the best way to resist him, but give him less of the publicity he craves? Is that an impossible ask?

Eventually, the daily posts and complaints will tire us all, even his most ardent foes. We’ll all become numb to it.

There must be a better way.

We must find a way to defeat the hydra without adding a fourth head.

Thanks for reading!

Notes

1. Mostly because he probably wants to keep earning mountains of cash. Morrow, Brendan. 2025. “Snoop Dogg under Fire for Performance at Crypto Event Celebrating Trump Inauguration.” USA TODAY. January 19, 2025. https://www.usatoday.com/story/entertainment/music/2025/01/19/snoop-dogg-trump-inauguration-crypto-ball/77825804007/.

2. Bastille, Charles. 2024. “Most Project 2025 Authors Were Directly Associated with Trump.” Medium. Project 2025. October 7, 2024. https://medium.com/project-2025/most-project-2025-authors-were-directly-associated-with-trump-cbb1389502be#677a. (free friend link to Medium)

3. BAUDER, DAVID, Randall Chase, and Geoff Mulvihill. 2023. “Fox, Dominion Reach $787.5M Settlement over False Election Claims.” AP News. April 19, 2023. https://apnews.com/article/fox-news-dominion-lawsuit-trial-trump-2020-0ac71f75acfacc52ea80b3e747fb0afe.

4. Obligatory F-bomb.