You'll never guess who now sounds like Hillary Rodham Clinton.
It is Joe Rogan who, despite now channeling Hillary Clinton, still slams the left, endorsed Donald Trump in 2024, and doesn't suggest that he regrets opposing the Democrat in her unsuccessful race against Donald Trump in 2016. Speaking at an LGBT for Hillary fundraiser on September 9, 2016, Mrs. Clinton inelegantly remarked
You know, to just be grossly generalistic, you could put half of Trump's supporters into what I call the basket of deplorables. Right? The racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamophobic- you name it. And unfortunately there are people like that. And he has lifted them up.
Once you find yourself saying "to just be grossly generalistic," it's time to stop. Nonetheless, it would have been helpful to evaluate Clinton's reasons for considering them deplorable or suggest that she may have underestimated the number. (Also, "generalistic" is not a word.) Even more useful to voters would have been noting that the candidate added
... thankfully they are not America. But the other basket- and I know this because I see friends from all over America here- I see friends from Florida and Georgia and South Carolina and Texas- as well as, you know, New York and California- but that other basket of people are people who feel that the government has let them down, the economy has let them down, nobody cares about them, nobody worries about what happens to their lives and their futures, and they're just desperate for change. It doesn't really even matter where it comes from. They don't buy everything he says, but he seems to hold out hope that their lives will be different. they won't wake up and see their jobs disappear, lose a kid to heroine, feel like they're in a dead-end. Those are people we have to understand and empathize with as well.
Innumerable authors, talk show hosts, pundits, and others have since made a career, some a successful and lucrative career, from "discovering" that Donald Trump tapped into widespread sentiment that Americans in the "heartland" have lost hope in government which has worked for the affluent and left them behind. These individuals, we have been told incessantly the last several years, voted for a savior they believed would throw norms out the window, bust up tradition, and destroy the "deep state".
Hillary Clinton said the same thing. And now an ex-actor and extraordinarily successful podcaster to the dispossessed is saying roughly the same:
"Trump supporters are f---ing nuts, man," Rogan said on a new episode of his podcast, The Joe Rogan Experience. "They're rabid."
Rogan added that Trump "represents something other than just a person to them."
"He represents a leader that they wish they had, which is a real problem in our society in general with leaders," the host added. "We look to them as if there's something different than every other person that's ever been a leader before. Like, "This is the one. This is the one that's going to save us, right?"
Rogan did do a couple of things differently than did Clinton. The latter said "half," refusing to imply that all Trump supporters were identical, whereas Rogan referred to "Trump supporters," suggesting his comments applied to all. Additionally, he used a profanity, which has become obligatory for politicians, podcasters, and others to prove their authenticity.
It was ironic, then, that the remark of the then-Vice President had precisely the opposite moment. In a 2021 analysis, a Washington Post reporter noted that Jonathan Allen, author of the book "Shattered" about Clinton's 2016 campaign, said the remark
seemed to reveal a private thought that she had never dared state in public. In that way, it "ended up being symbolic of one of the things that her critics said they hated about her, which is that they believed that she's inauthentic. And oddly, I think that was a pretty authentic moment.
When Joe Rogan denounces Democrats for what he views as "open borders", "COVID mandates", "forcing people to get vaccinated", and of course, the existential issue of pronouns, he obviously does not sound like Hillary Clinton, whose insult became a rallying call for her GOP opponent.. Rogan's attack, accusing Trump supporters of being "nuts" and "rabid", also is more personal than was the candidate's assessment. Perhaps that was part of Clinton's problem- criticizing them thoughtfully and accurately and with an authenticity that could not go unpunished.
No comments:
Post a Comment