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The Potemkin Presidency and the Visceral Election

Anyone who consumes any form of right-leaning alternative media, including that found on mainstream social media from Instagram to TikTok, is well aware that no public appearance goes by without Joe Biden doing or saying something cringey, or dangerous, or just nursing home-worthy. Everyday it’s another embarrassment.

It is obvious Biden has not been calling the shots since his 2020 basement campaign, but now he cannot get through a teleprompter reading without an ignominious screw up—including reading cues out loud and not even recognizing it. He doesn’t know where he is at times or how to exit the stage. And when speaking off the cuff, it’s just mortifying.

If Republicans and associated PACs will not just hit the easy button and run collages of Biden flubs and blunders—imagine the fun Trump could have with that!—half of the electorate will never know they exist.

This trove of damning evidence is largely only available within the confines of the right-leaning alternative media, as the corporate media has gone to jaw-dropping lengths pretending everything with this presidency is totally normal. In fact, the establishment would have us believe that a “return to normalcy” has been achieved. Well sure, if your idea of normal is the final stages of the Woodrow Wilson presidency.

I’ll let Left-biased ChatGPT speak for the Left-partisan media on the concealment point. When asked to list Biden’s gaffes, it responded:

Like any public figure, President Biden has had some verbal gaffes during his time in office. Some of these gaffes have received media attention, while others may have gone unnoticed. It’s worth noting that verbal gaffes are not unique to any particular individual and can happen to anyone.

(By the way, the AI was happy to list George W. Bush’s gaffes in response to the same prompt. It may be artificial intelligence, but it has real bias.)

This coming presidential election, as much as the last two, will be visceral. Because we have an increasingly ignorant electorate—there is no more ignorant voter than one wholly devoted to reading the New York Times every day—a good chunk of the swingy middle electorate will be moved by the visceral, the emotional, the easily understood and consumed. And that can be achieved most readily by dismantling the Potemkin Village that the corporate leftist media has erected to pretend we have a normal White House situation.

And let’s not forget our esteemed vice president. As much as Biden can’t get the words out, Kamala Harris can’t stop them from coming out. From her comments in Poland to those on community banking, it’s another target-rich environment. The steady theme is that both Biden and Harris in their own ways are incoherent. And again it’s obvious. No deep fake needed.

My fear is that too many Republicans will not take this route. To which I say: Get in it to win it, and play all the hardball necessary. The Left will most certainly spend millions promoting Donald Trump as a dangerous crazy with selective video from January 6, or Ron DeSantis as a friendless, robotic book burner.

Now, there are certainly plenty of issues that will need airing—an overrun southern border, the continuation of endless wars by proxy, stratospheric debt levels, inflation, and an economic recession will all be in the mix. But those require a bit more work to break through the psyche—except maybe inflation and a crappy economy. I recently wrote about Republicans’ wide open door in 2024 if they will hit the basic kitchen table issues of inflation, the economy, and wars and let PACs hit the woke insanities.

But visceral is easy and for better or worse (it’s worse) the emotional moves some of the votes easiest to move—those paying the least attention. Combos may be the most effective. Ads running compilations of Biden’s flubs followed by (cue the eerie music) text that outlines 6 or 7 million illegals, inflation, debt, Ukraine spending, and a tagline of: We can’t survive four more years. 

I’ll keep saying it. Republicans have to be out-of-character aggressive. We are facing an opposition that wants to destroy us in every way. It is existential. No more Mr. Collegial Nice Guy. The only way out is through.

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About Rod Thomson

Rod Thomson is a former daily newspaper reporter and columnist, former Salem radio host and ABC TV commentator, and current Founder of The Thomson Group, a Florida-based political consulting firm. He has eight children and seven grandchildren and a rapacious hunger to fight for America for them. Follow him on Twitter at @Rod_Thomson or Truth Social at @rodthomson. Email him at rod@thomsonpr.com.

Photo: iStock/Getty Images

Notable Replies

  1. Once again Mr. Thomson, I am in full agreement. Of course, whether the quisling Republicans will drop the Marquess de Queensberry Rules and go full terminator remains to be seen.

    I am not optimistic.

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