Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
On today's show, a weekend of contrasts, two realities collide, no Kings protests on the one side, CPAC on the other side, and one side came out looking very weak, quite frankly.
Chapter 2: What contrasts emerged between the CPAC event and No Kings protests?
At the same time, Fox News is trying to spin rising gas prices using statistical tricks that I know you would never fall for. And we will look at it. Meanwhile, Trump is panicking and back with vague health care promises, the same vague promises that put us two weeks away from a new health care system in July of 2020. We know that didn't happen.
And at the same time, Trump is off the rails asking to be asked questions about sex at a bizarre speech, plus something super interesting.
Chapter 3: How does Fox News address the rising gas prices and Trump's health care promises?
Joe Rogan takes a shot. at MAGA, at Trump voters saying they are dorks. And we will look at their response from inside the movement. Meanwhile, Megyn Kelly tries to shift blame away from Trump over the Iran war in something that is kind of surprising to some Megyn Kelly observers. All of that and more today. It's almost April, if you can believe it. Where were you this weekend?
On the same day, same country, the United States, two completely different political realities played out. The MAGA reality was completely humiliating. On the same day, we had CPAC, one of the days of CPAC, and we had the third no kings protests.
Chapter 4: What were the highlights of Trump's recent speech regarding foreign policy?
More than thirty three hundred rallies across all 50 states, estimated eight million total protesters. If you're being honest about what you're seeing, one of these looks like momentum and enthusiasm and the other very much does not, especially given that they cheered for impeaching Trump at CPAC, if you can believe it. So let's start with CPAC. CPAC is not a small event.
It is arguably the event that shows where the right wing movement is. Does the right still have energy?
Chapter 5: How do politicians shape their messaging around public opinion?
Does it have direction? Is it unified? Who is in control of the movement and the Republican Party? And what did it look like? Well, it looked quite small. It was thin. It was less charged up than we've come to expect. It wasn't a collapse.
Chapter 6: What strategies are emerging among Republican leaders after Trump?
They had the event and, you know, people went, they had speakers and whatever. But this is not what we have come to expect for CPAC. It's not what we've come to expect CPAC to represent. from a sociocultural standpoint in American politics. And incredibly, the idea of Trump being impeached was cheered at CPAC, humiliating organizer Matt Schlapp, who said, no, no, no, that's the wrong answer.
Attendees, how many of you would like to see impeachment hearings? No, that was the wrong answer.
Chapter 7: What insights does Mayor Karen Bass provide on homelessness and crime in Los Angeles?
How many of you would like to see impeachment hearings?
No. They're still cheering. And you can see this guy in the back sort of like, oh, dear God, we are about to get eaten alive by the monster we helped build. Now, for comparison, here's one hundred thousand people at the Boston Common in Boston, Massachusetts. Here is the crowd in this is in Dallas, Texas.
of all places, just the massive, massive crowd, not a crowd of donors, not a crowd of insiders, not people with conference badges and VIP meet and greets. And it's just regular people who decided to show up. And it was all over the country. So this kind of leads us to ask Maybe the obvious question, what actually represents political energy right now?
Because for years the narrative has been the right shows up and the left doesn't. The enthusiasm is on the right. The left is apathetic. And anecdotally, there is a bunch of apathy on the left. And in fact, one of the I don't want to make this a downer. If people want, we could just do a whole downer.
Chapter 8: How does Megyn Kelly shift blame regarding the Iran war?
I'm not ignoring the fact that there are. Contingents, I would call them fringes of the left. In fact, I don't even really think at this point they represent anything that I recognize as left. They represent sort of something something different. But there are fringes of people who have historically considered themselves part of the left.
that are just kind of pooping on everything that's going on right now. All the potential candidates are bad and everything that's been being done is bad. And Trump is outflanking the left and Trump is somehow more left than the. I don't even think those people are part of the movement anymore. And in fact, they seem much more comfortable with losing to Republicans time and again.
But I don't want to make this negative. OK, we have anecdotally some of that stuff. But overall, The left is reclaiming the enthusiasm. The left is reclaiming the narrative and the narrative is getting tougher and tougher to defend for the right. What we are seeing, I believe, on one side is with CPAC, a centralized top down hierarchical event with controlled messaging and predictable speakers.
It sort of went off the rails when they cheered for impeachment. But for the most part, it's an entire event based around a very familiar script. On the other hand, with the no kings protests, even if the protests themselves didn't achieve something, as some of you wrote to me, we saw successful, decentralized, bottom up mobilization, eight million showing up, filling public spaces.
That's a very important difference. CPAC is trying to do maintenance on a dying vehicle. The No Kings protests are building something new. Now, it doesn't mean Republicans are finished. It doesn't mean this is Trump's last political breath. It doesn't mean the protests automatically turn into people voting.
It doesn't mean that like a single event decides anything, but it does mean that something is shifting here. And there is visible, undeniable energy outside of the MAGA ecosystem. And the part that I don't think MAGA is willing to admit is that they see it. They see the dwindling enthusiasm at CPAC as eight million took to the streets over the weekend. They see the split screens.
They see the comparisons, empty chairs at CPAC. and 100000 at the Boston Common, tens of thousands marching in Dallas, Texas. This is more than policy. And if you're a concern as well, there wasn't much policy at either. If we're trying to build a movement here and get people enthused and passionate, you've got to start by creating a story. CPAC is supposed to be the showcase story.
Look at this shiny movement we have. They were they were lame. They were boring. And March 28th ended up being really an exhibit of contrasts. And it's a contrast MAGA is terrified by. Meanwhile, Fox News is trying to figure out how do we spin the gas prices that have gone nuclear? Let's talk about that.
One of the things that starts to happen when you can't defend reality is you start creating an alternate reality. One of the ways that you can spin these massively spiked gas prices up 45 percent since mid-January because of Donald Trump's optional war with Iran. One of the ways that Fox News is trying to spin it is by talking about the average price of a barrel of oil.
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