How did he fool the hogs so good or did boater kulaks just never watch the apprentice or see E! News before?

  • JoeByeThen [he/him, they/them]
    ·
    4 months ago

    In addition to the other reasons mentioned, the media platformed him every chance they got. He was great for ratings and a good excuse for ignoring Bernie. He got an obscene amount of free coverage.

    • Tachanka [comrade/them]
      ·
      4 months ago

      that was explicitly the strategy of the Clinton campaign. pied piper. email leaks confirmed that later. they figured if they could get a clown as the republican nomination it would be easy for Hillary to win.

      Show

      • JoeByeThen [he/him, they/them]
        ·
        edit-2
        4 months ago

        Yup. Fun fact: Nixon did something similar with George Wallace.

        Show

        Oh, and reminder, Donald Trump didn't announce his run until June 16, 2015.

        • Redcuban1959 [any]
          ·
          4 months ago

          If iirc the Republicans messed with the Democrats primaries and tricked them into choosing Mcgovern because he was the weakest Democrat candidate. Wallace was a huge POS who ended up getting shot in the neck later on.

  • AssaultRifle15 [he/him]
    ·
    4 months ago

    I think Hildawg was so incredibly unappealing that people decided to vote for Anyone But Hillary. It made absolutely no sense for her to be the candidate right after the Obama admin. People who loved Obama would hate her for the racism and the weird death threat that her campaign put out when she was running against him, and people who hated Obama saw her more or less as an Obama clone without any of his charisma. She was a candidate made for people who write opinion articles and nobody else.

    • SpiderFarmer [he/him]
      ·
      4 months ago

      Hell, I was a total lib back then and even I knew Hillary was fucking evil. Not cause "scary politician lady", but for pretty clear cases of her political actions getting people killed in Eastern Europe and the Middle East.

      • M68040 [they/them]
        ·
        4 months ago

        Mostly just kind of came off as too drab to be a viable follow-up to Obama, too. You've got to escalate in some way.

    • Frogmanfromlake [none/use name]
      ·
      4 months ago

      Idk in New York the same suburban white women that loved Obama also adored Hillary. Most of the hate came from men, some for legitimate reasons and most for stupid reasons.

    • M68040 [they/them]
      ·
      edit-2
      4 months ago

      With the 2020 and coming 2024 cycles coming off as referendums on 2016, it gets hard at times to recall that 2016 itself had some referendum tendencies (referendencies); resentment from the 2008 primaries was a factor in the animus between the Clinton crowd and everyone else.

  • axont [she/her, comrade/them]
    ·
    4 months ago

    He ran for president in 2000 actually and there's an alternate universe where he won the Reform Party nomination instead of Pat Buchanan. Then liberals would have blamed Trump for Gore losing Miami-Dade county, because the ballots were weird and a bunch of Gore voters marked in Buchanan by accident apparently. Also Trump's main platform back then was universal healthcare, and he apparently wanted Oprah as his running mate. Times were weird.

    I was dimly aware of Trump in the 90s because he was on an episode of Fresh Prince. He had a reputation as a smug weird New York rich guy and that's really it. He'd go on talk shows to fight with Larry Flynt or say unhinged things. He started getting political clout after he became the face of the whole birther movement, the one claiming Obama was born in Kenya. In my head the brirthers have always been the first maga movement. Conservatives before Trump and social media were different and more pearl-clutchy, like how liberals are now. It's like liberals and conservatives traded aesthics and rhetoric over the past 20 years.

    • M68040 [they/them]
      ·
      edit-2
      4 months ago

      The Anita Bryant "somehow totally innocent, faints at the sight of sin, doesn't know what a blowjob is" pearl clutcher crowd are still around, depending exactly who you're talking to and where.

    • SSJ2Marx
      ·
      4 months ago

      because the ballots were weird

      Please indicate which candidate you don't want to vote for.

      • axont [she/her, comrade/them]
        ·
        4 months ago

        They looked like this

        Pat Buchanan got a disproportionately high number of votes in that one single county, so it was probably people trying to vote for Gore and not understanding which bubble to fill in. Also it's a little surreal seeing Gloria la Riva's name on a ballot from 2000.

        • keepcarrot [she/her]
          ·
          4 months ago

          Damn, look at those other parties.

          (also, that is wildly terrible design wtf)

  • rootsbreadandmakka [he/him]
    ·
    4 months ago

    I think Donald Trump's heyday was the 80s. I knew him in my childhood and adolescence in the 2000s and early 2010s, but he didn't mean that much to me.I think the general cultural perception of him was just as a rich guy. Occasionally you'll hear a line in a rap song and just chuckle a little, like hah that was a different time. The lines are usually about getting money, or calling oneself the "Black Trump" because you have a lot of money. Idk, tbh I can't think of any off the top of my head except for Mac Miller releasing "Donald Trump" in 2011 and Kreayshawn mentioning Ivana Trump in Gucci Gucci also in 2011, but they're definitely out there.

    I think he got the hogs on his side by just repeating the shit they had been saying for years, whether in their Tea Party circles during the Obama years, or on messageboards like 4chan. Or you could go back to the talk radio of the 90s and stuff and hear the same stuff being said. He was just speaking the hogs' language, and so of course they ate it up. Plus, he was able to ride the American assumption that wealth=competency. All those kulaks with their car dealerships look up to a guy like Trump just because they want to be him. When he says he makes the best deals, they say of course he does, if you have that much money you must be doing something right.

  • dead [he/him]
    ·
    4 months ago

    I think this video answers your question pretty well. During the summer of 2015, liberal media spent a lot of time glazing Donald. This is a montage of MSNBC praising Trump while the Republican party rejected him.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cF9WE395KYo

    In April 2015, you had the Hillary Clinton campaign sending out an email for the "pied piper strategy". The email said that the candidates Ted Cruz, Donald Trump, and Ben Carson should be elevated. The email says that the Democratic Party has previously used this same strategy. The email says that the Democrats believed that promoting candidates with extremist views would hurt the Republican party.

    https://www.salon.com/2016/11/09/the-hillary-clinton-campaign-intentionally-created-donald-trump-with-its-pied-piper-strategy/

  • FloridaBoi [he/him]
    ·
    4 months ago

    Yooo all the business majors would religiously watch The Apprentice as if they could actually learn anything from it. I assume their brainwormed professors recommended it as edutainment

  • ToxicDivinity [comrade/them]
    ·
    4 months ago

    Conservatives and older people loved the apprentice and they believe that everything accomplished on that show was real so they were very impressed by his abilities. A LOT of people don't know that reality shows are staged they just see guy on tv being successful and think "that guy must be a genius"

  • FnordPrefect [comrade/them, he/him]
    ·
    4 months ago

    I think some of it is the Bizzaro American brand of "anti-elitism". Despite inheriting millions of dollars and never facing consequences, to chuds he's "one of us". All the mockery for his lack of diction, irrational hate, ignorance, failure, lowbrow diet, etc. is perceived as attacks on "us (chuds)". So the more he's attacked the more they feel the need to support him.

    Or not, I'm just talking out my ass

    • SkingradGuard [he/him, comrade/them]
      ·
      edit-2
      4 months ago

      I mean lib politics is 100% vibes based and on upholding capitalism by any means necessary. So what you said makes some sense.

  • Chapo_is_Red [he/him]
    ·
    4 months ago

    I remember in either 2014 or 2015 googling "trump" and the hearthstone twitch streamer being the top result lol

  • BurgerPunk [he/him, comrade/them]
    ·
    edit-2
    4 months ago

    I remember thinking he was a clown in 80's and 90's when i was a kid. He was this rich guy in the tabloids and then he went bankrupt and that was funny. I thought he was done then

    Then, somehow Trump returned

  • Frogmanfromlake [none/use name]
    ·
    4 months ago

    It’s because the media backlash came after he made that comment about Mexicans and he didn’t back down. I remember a lot of people saying, “that’s what I love about Trump. He doesn’t take shit from anybody.”

    This was during a right-wing backlash to perceived political correctness and people being forced into apologies for “wrong think.” Same reason someone severely lacking charisma like Jordan Peterson gained a following.

    Then the media kept going and Trump continued telling them to fuck off. Nothing riles up chuds more than a guy who tells the MSM to fuck off.

  • Rojo27 [he/him]
    ·
    4 months ago

    Honestly one of the funniest, and personally kinda sad, things is that one of my mentors in HS was fascinated by The Apprentice. He's always been a liberal (very much into public-private partnerships, the idea of opportunity) Not sure if it was sincere or not, but it always felt like he thought it was great that Trump was giving these people an "opportunity".

    Of course now he absolutely hates Trump. He's honestly a great person in a vacuum, but completely sold on neoliberalism and a huge Hillary supporter.

  • homhom9000 [she/her]
    ·
    4 months ago

    I remember the birth certificate stunt he pulled during Obama, then people started questioning if his presidency counts cause Hawaii wasn't a state yet or something. That started giving him a political following.