The Axis of Buzz Alerts – Politico Playbook, Punchbowl, and Axios – appear to have collectively decided to curry favor with ascendant Dems Thursday and Friday, directing their “disarray” narrative onto the bloated old corpse their house accountants abso-fucking-lutely wanted to win in 2024.
First up is Axios, who printed “A year into Trump’s term, voters say Biden was better,” firing off three bullet points supporting their thesis, starting by citing abject Trump ballsucker Mark Penn’s polling firm finding that 51 percent of respondents saying Biden did a better job than Trump is doing. Then it was an even uglier finding from hardcore MAGA pollster Rasmussen Reports finding Biden 48 to Trump 40 percent on a similar question, and lastly the Economist/YouGov at Biden 46 to Trump 40 percent, then another 7 percent saying “about the same.” That could actually kinda sting the most.
On Friday Axios printed “Behind the Curtain: Resistance rising” because “Resistance” drives clicks and “the law of political gravity is starting to apply to Trump.” AXIOS IS SO INSIGHTFUL.
Thursday morning’s Punchbowl AM was about as blunt as possible, writing “Trump is wasting his energy. He can veto any tariff termination resolution and the vast majority of Republicans would absolutely uphold his veto. These resolutions are nothing more than a bad headline for the president. But Trump doesn’t like the optics of any Republicans voting against him. Ever,” accurately portraying him as a mental child and warning if his “approval ratings stay where they are, Republicans may continue to buck him, betting that opposing an unpopular president is smart for the midterms.” What happened to the shining virtuoso at the center of the political solar system?
Then Playbook. Yes, Playbook. “We’re watching Trump slowly lose his iron grip over his party. Last night’s stark Truth Social threat of Trump-powered primaries for rebel Republicans failed, for obvious reasons,” they wrote Thursday morning to welcome themselves to the Resistance 2.0 because it’s popular now. “Republican concerns about the cost-of-living issue raise another question – what has happened to Trump’s 2026 affordability tour? It’s been more than three weeks since chief of staff Susie Wiles told reporters on the plane to Davos that the president would be doing weekly campaign trips around the country, starting with Iowa the following Tuesday. And since then… crickets,” and slow fucking clap. Sooooooo BOLD, PLAYBOOK. MUCH NEWFOUND WELLSPRING OF COURAGE.
BONUS: On Wednesday Politico also wrote “In many ways, Bondi played directly into Democrats’ hands, and not only by trash-talking lawmakers whose questions she didn’t want to answer – similar to the maneuver she deployed when testifying before Senate Judiciary back in October.”
THAT WAS SUBJECTIVE! YOU CAN’T BE SUBJECTIVE! IT’S NOT BALANCED OR FAIR!
Ahem… In a vacuum one could read the above citations as a right wing complaint about the coverage from the three outlets. That was almost sort of intentional because, caveats about their often valuable reporting as an upstream source, editorially their fair-weather fandom is just as insufferable as it was two years ago when it was all “Yeah, Trump is a criminal rapist who tried to destroy democracy the last time he was president but Joe Biden’s really old and his son is an irresponsible crack addict who used his last name to make a few hundred grand that he pissed away,” all the time. Their access makes them indispensable and there’s plenty of decent individuals in the triad, but they’re still led by malefactors who would print that Polish Jews weren’t doing enough to appeal to key moderate Nazi voter demographics ahead of a major campaign season.
Just because they’re printing what you want to read now does not in any way redeem them.