Fun and pretty useless fact about National Zero: The “MAGA Land” format of collecting comments from right wing sites for content is almost as old as the site itself, making its debut on June 26, 2020, just two days after the soft launch. The first was only the 23rd article out of now 36,997.
Even though more recent editions tend to be lengthier compendiums of top comments than one-shots like above, the format’s remained remarkably consistent and steady when so much else about this site has changed from those copypasta days… and of course the political situation along with it.
You know how easy it was in those days to find comments like that. The readers of PJ Media, Breitbart, Gateway Pundit, Town Hall, so on and so forth were letting their Orange God Emperor’s declining popularity get to them. Canonically “MAGA Land” was the vox populi of that tier of trashier right wing sites and it only was relatively recently that a lengthy roundup would incorporate tweets by right wing politicians, media figures, and influencers. It wasn’t a stretch since most of those people are as fucking dumb and deranged as the nameless trolls in the comment threads.
All that was is a roundabout way of saying, we have plenty of this kind of bullshit (we’ll circle back around to the question of whether this is borne purely of desperation)…
EXCLUSIVEKamala Harris's husband Doug Emhoff cheated on his first wife with daughter Ella's nanny Najen Naylor – and got her PREGNANThttps://t.co/mrawi2XKHO
— Jack Poso 🇺🇸 (@JackPosobiec) August 3, 2024
…but not a whole lot of “thinks the unthinkable” – at least from the gutter sites. The ones we understand to be more “sophisticated” in content and readership than “WeLoveTrump” and its ilk, well, it’s already over for some of these poor schmucks. “Trump is the only Republican candidate that Kamala Harris could beat. If and when she does, perhaps the GOP, the party I’ve supported for my entire adult life, will think more seriously about who it nominates in the future,” says the top comment on a Wall Street Journal op-ed by Peggy Noonan titled “The Fight of Trump’s Political Life.”
One part of Noonan’s lengthy jeremiad, on her list of advantages for Kamala Harris over Trump, brought us to tears. Not the sad ones, and really… fair warning. Put down your coffee.
She is beautiful. You can’t take a bad picture of her. Her beauty, plus the social warmth that all who have known her over the years speak of, combines to produce: radiance. It is foolish to make believe this doesn’t matter. Politicians themselves are certain it matters, which is why so many in that male-dominated profession have taken to Botox, fillers, dermabrasion, face lifts, all the cosmetic things. Because they’re in a cosmetic profession.
Alright assuming you’ve regained your composure, here’s “I’ve already resigned myself to the fact that we’re well and truly screwed,” the top comment on a National Review piece titled “It’s a ‘Vibes’ Election Now, and for Trump That’s Bad.” Uggghhhh… Just try to make it through this clip:
After Biden’s debate meltdown in late June, his already-poor polling bottomed out, and the media drumbeat to oust him began. I, myself, as a conservative political observer since 1994, had never seen anything like it in living memory: a panicked media furiously cannibalizing a Democratic candidate for president as his public image cratered and he stumbled from one public speaking disaster to the next.
Then Donald Trump nearly got assassinated on live television — and responded in a heroic way. The election seemed over. I remember telling a friend, “I really wish I could be enjoying this more than I am,” and the reason wasn’t just because I regarded the entire sequence of events as a series of national disgraces. It was also because anyone could see over the horizon and understand that Biden would have to go, the pick would have to default to Kamala Harris… and then? Trump was always going to be Trump – not even a bullet to the ear could cure that – and with a new candidate, even one as flawed as Harris, who knew what could unfold next?
We know now.
What’s even friggin funnier is that the assclown, National Review writer Jeff Blehar, links his piece from earlier in the week where he had warned readers that Trump’s NABJ interview was risky and hoped that it would be a wash politically. Meaning he was openly anxious to readers when shit was already going bad a few days ago but not when they were lighting victory cigars circa July 15th, even while privately he supposedly told a friend about a sinking feeling after the failed attempt.
Moving on… “Are ANY Republicans in high places reading this???? Please, please listen to Abigail and stick. to. the. issues. The reason I, as a woman, mother, and educator, am against Kamala isn’t because she’s the DEI candidate or because of her laugh or because of her ridiculous speaking style. It’s because of the far left positions she takes on issues that matter for my family and community and future generations. I plead with you to show some dignity by not always acting like the mean, immature kid on the playground!” says the top comment on “Republicans, You’re Going After Kamala All Wrong,” by the Free Press, the Substack founded by that edgelord Bari Weiss after she left the Times to much fanfare and right wing circlejerking a few years ago… Weiss is just the type of anti-anti-Trump douchebag who would hire Moms for Liberty-adjacent anti-trans psychopath Abigail Shrier to backseat drive for the GOP’s messaging on Harris, with Schrier writing:
The question Republicans ought to confront before leveling any attack is: “Will this energize my supporters more or hers?” For nearly every ad hominem salvo currently flung at Harris, the answer is: hers.
Moms from both political parties have had enough with inflation, with gender ideology in the schools, and with criminals on the streets. Many felt betrayed by the party that took its marching orders from the teachers unions during Covid—and kept kids out of school for years.
Randi Weingarten, president of American Federation of Teachers, just endorsed Harris: “She has a record of fighting for us,” Weingarten said. Harris in turn praised Weingarten as “an incredible friend and adviser to the president and me.” That ought to be enough to send many moms to the polls to vote Republican for the first time. It’s a mistake to make them uncomfortable or place them on the defensive.
TLDR: Randi Weingarten is Satan incarnate to Moms for Liberty types, and for dullard Republicans in Congress to be calling Harris a “DEI hire” and Trump to be questioning her racial background is suicidally stupid, per Schrier, a Yale Law grad who goes on Joe Rogan’s podcast regularly.
And that’s what we could slap together when our usual “MAGA Land” rotation of maybe about 20 different sites are all still filled with bluster, that Harris is no threat to Trump, he will destroy her (the above pretty fucking funny meme complaining about how the media have been treating her we found at PowerLine Blog though). The panic so unsubtle among the higher-brow conservative outlets writers and commenters has not percolated down to Breitbart, where the top comment on their main home page story “Kamala Harris Refuses Fox News Sept 4 Debate with Donald Trump in Pennsylvania,” says “Kamala needs the help of friendly moderators at ABC, to get through a debate with Trump. She’s a fraud, and after the debate, many more people will know it.”
A few days ago we were pondering the panic level and wrote “We know the mercury’s rising. The question is how fast and how hot it’s getting.” That the regular schmucks of MAGA Land are not where they were on June 26th, 2020 while their social and economic betters are is a good gauge.
Harris Adviser Under Investigation For Being Spy For Iran https://t.co/pzYj8pikda
— Larry Elder (@larryelder) August 2, 2024
What’s less clear is what these impotent attempts at Hunter Biden-ing the Veep (and her husband, like Posobiec posted above) tell us. Yes, like all things MAGA propaganda they’re fucking reprehensible, hypocritical, and predictable. But it’s also been curiously low-energy, so far.
Maybe the “sucker punch” hit even harder than we thought, that all the bandwidth that would normally be devoted to creating a narrative that Kamala Harris and Doug Emhoff and his kids and their accountant are all secretly corrupt crackheads just isn’t there right now with Trump flailing.
One more for the road on that, from National Review editor Noah Rothman in a piece titled “Can Republicans Beat Kamala Harris and the Media?” airing off a lengthy list of grievances about Hunter Biden, the border, Joe’s rapid aging that got “mainstreamed” after years of MAGA screams:
The problem for the GOP is that this process takes time — years, in some cases. The truncated political calendar and the determination displayed by journalists to polish Harris’s apple are working in Democrats’ favor. But the pace of events has quickened over the summer. Moreover, the Republican narrative has the same advantages that allowed the Hunter Biden scandal, the border crisis, and Biden’s disqualifying decrepitude to go mainstream. Kamala Harris is insincere. She is an awkward campaigner. She is vulnerable to being tagged as a champion of the Biden-administration policies that voters resent. The open question is whether the Trump-led GOP has the discipline to consistently and repeatedly insist on a shared set of facts to which a critical mass of voters are already amenable.
That’s a big “if.” It demands a level of discretion that is rare in Donald Trump’s approach to campaigning.
Signs that Trump is not going to demonstrate that level of discipline are already showing up as he and his childless cat-lady hating Mike Pence replacement take the stage in Atlanta this afternoon:
The fat fuck’s show is playing in the same arena that Harris brought down on Wednesday night.