Trump Brags About How He "Saved Hillary From Going To Jail" On JRE
blueapples on X
As Donald Trump has taken to podcast after podcast to conquer alternative media as he's been exiled from the mainstream, I've been rather critical of the podcasts that have hosted him. To me, these podcasts have become no different than watching Kamala Harris go on The View. Everything seems sanitized and clearly scripted like clearly pre-selected stories that the hosts would never be able to know if they hadn't been handed them as talking points.
The erosion of alternative media as the savior of media establishment is a fitting parallel to align with the decline of Trump as an anti-establishment candidate. His 2024 campaign has been marked be rhetoric that is anything but aimed at ending the Deep State. Instead, Trump has come to sound like a cog of the Washingtom political machine more than its greatest threat.
From increasing bellicosity in behalf of his unconditional support of Israel to entertaining the idea of pardoning Hunter Biden while going on record saying that he won't pardon all of those imprisoned for January 6th, the Trump from 2016 seems like a relic of the past. No where is this more apparent than his appearance on the Joe Rogan Experience. At the 02:14:45 mark, Trump starts to brag about how he saved Hillary Clinton from going to jail. Rogan responds with his respect for the decision, echoing the Trump-sanctioned talking point about how it would have "been bad for the country."
Trump's quick-witted reply to Hillary during a 2016 presidential debate about how she'd be in jail if he was in power after she remarked that it was good Trump wasn't in charge of the rule of law become the moment he was catapulted into the status of anti-establishment icon. Within moments of being elected,Trump would go on to detail how he would never put Clinton in jail because he didn't want to hurt her. Now, Trump has framed the failure to deliver on locking her up into an act of valor.
To illustrate my point about alternative media and it's MSM-level lack of integrity, Rogan offers no inquiry into that astonishing contradiction of Trump's. He foals to ask anything beyond surface level like asking what is good for the country about not locking her up? That the political elite are above the law? Instead his response reads like it came off of a teleprompter as if it were written for Joe Biden.
Trump has used alternative media very effectively to cultivate his cult of personality. Memes, podcasts, and antagonism with the mainstream press have endeared him to his supporters so devoutly they have adopted a hero complex about him. That simping has been so insane that it let's remarks like these of Trump's to go entirely without consideration.
That cognitive dissonance does demonstrate how adeptly Trump has used the alternative media to create his dominating cult of personality which does speak to his acumen as a politician. However, it shows a lot more than that. It shows howcmuch of dissident media has become little more than a brand than anything of substance.
It's a 3 hour interview so I know most won't watch it in it's entirety and this moment during it won't get a lot of circulation so I wanted to offer it to everyone here.
This is anti-establishment?