The Fatal Flaw of Thinking Donald Trump and Sarah Palin Are Stupid

Analysis: These people want to steal your vote, your liberty, your most basic freedoms to achieve their goal of the autocratization of the United States.

It’s popular on the left to sneer at Donald Trump and Sarah Palin, his precursor to populist greed, as being stupid and therefore ill-suited to the jobs they seek.

But this assumption misses the much more dangerous and important point that these folks don’t care about governing. What the left sees as stupidity is actually laziness and a wily, singular focus on self-interest.

Some of these folks, members of the misnamed “House Freedom Caucus,” are set to play a major role in our political future, in the legislation and oversight roles that their jobs are supposed to enjoin.

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Neither Donald Trump nor Sarah Palin, nor for that matter Marjorie Taylor Greene or Lauren Boebert, want elected positions so they can govern. There is no interest in governing, therefore no need to know anything.

What they want is power. Sarah Palin started this most recent reboot of the charismatic con artist, which Donald Trump used to his own advantage and propelled himself to the White House on the movement Palin built, because Palin had burned her star out with her own greed, corruption, lies and refusal to actually work.

Palin was spotted by the MUCH repentant Steve Schmidt, but more importantly to the point of this column, the Vice Presidential vetting was managed by Rick Davis and greenlit by A.B. Culvahouse (it’s not just Schmidt saying this, this is a documented fact – you can imagine why he is sick of being saddled with the Palin albatross).

Schmidt told me the process went a bit like this:

“We should look at Palin”. My next sentence was “I don’t know anything about her.”

She was vetted by AB Culvahouse. I’m not sure why I am sentenced to be blamed for his incompetence.

The VP vetting was managed by Rick Davis who was Paul Manafort’s long time business partner. Together they worked for the Kremlin in Ukraine.

This was the person in charge of the VP selection process. I took over the campaign from him in July 2008 except for the VP responsibilities.

RICK DAVIS, Paul Manafort’s business partner. See the thread? This has nothing to do with Sarah Palin or Donald Trump – they are the mere figureheads behind the Oz threat to democracy.

When people blame underlings for the rise of these tyrannical self-dealers, they miss the point. There will always be someone to blame, someone who isn’t the actual power behind the throne. The largely hidden power, the Oz.

People are also prone to looking back and asking who would ever think this person was a good idea? But that is precisely the point. These folks put on a good show in the beginning. Sarah Palin appealed to a lot of Alaskans when she ran for governor, she had a populist take on politics, she seemed above party takes, she had a (we know now to be misunderstood) reputation for taking on the oil companies! It wasn’t until the national scrutiny of a presidential campaign that Palin’s craven entitlement to power without doing the work was revealed.

These folks appeal to the conservative base, now a decade into being primed for being conned.

Why does this history matter now? Because it’s always the same. It’s always a new candidate, a new campaign manager, a new person taking the heat when the truth comes out. That is how this cycle of dangerous politics survives. The new puppet gets pushed by the same interests.

Donald Trump has also burned his star out. Unlike mainstream media, I don’t come into a red area for a week to get the vibe – I actually live here, among Trump supporters, and the enthusiasm for him has gone way down – only the Q believers are left. Some who still have his signs up tell me they don’t want him to run again because they’re tired of the drama. An election can’t be won with only Q, just like Palin dragged McCain down into the ditch even though those who supported her were absolutely feverish with cultish love for her, down to fetishizing her shoes.

Thinking these dangerous people are stupid is a fatal flaw of the left. It feeds the “elite” narrative and ignores the appeal of these charismatic snake oil salespeople.

And the truth is, everyone wants a hero. Even people on the Left. It’s just that the left values government and the good work it is supposed to do for The People, while the Right has been conditioned by the co-option of churches and politicizing of abortion and guns to vote for a government that serves the interests of those who want the government to do little to nothing, save for our military. government that does little is a government that enables greed by bad actors, a government that takes us back to the Wild West where those with power won. A government without oversight.

The people being suckered by these charismatic abusers never realize that they are being used, or maybe some of them do as they face judges for their violent engagement against police on January 6th, when they acted on the lies Donald Trump told them. But most won’t ever get it.

They won’t get it because they live in a different world, cushioned by addicting conspiracies and media lies. Some of these people are good people.

The Left is just a prone to falling into that hole, but what saves them at this point in time is their belief in science and facts, as part of the ideology. But still we can see the movement as a whole seeing certain charismatic, appealing politicians as the answer, when the answer is actually always ideas over personality.

Charismatic puppets like Trump and Palin and Greene and Boebert distract people from the real danger. All of these people appear stupid (and actually one of them is ignorant and all of them play willfully ignorant on TV), but that is a deceptive haze over an authoritarian bent.

None of these people want to govern. They do not believe in basic freedoms, like elections, which this country was founded upon.

The irony is that being seen as “stupid” did more damage to Sarah Palin than the truth of her rage, abusive behavior, and sense of religious delusion that she was chosen by God to be president. The public at large can’t seem to handle nuance and complication, but this movement has become too dangerous to write off as stupid now.

The idea that Palin, Trump, or in the current election, Herschel Walker are stupid actually helps these people by lowering expectations for them. Since they are viewed by some as “stupid,” the bar is lowered, making it easier for them to become normalized and obtain power.

These people are lazy, not stupid. They know they don’t need to learn anything, because the goal has never been to do the job they seek or have. Sarah Palin showed that more effectively than most when she quit her position as governor half way through her term.

We need to finally accept that these folks don’t have the same goals as Independents, sane Republicans, and Democrats – that is, the goal of good governance – in order to fight them effectively. And fight them back at the ballot box we must, for their goal is to (to borrow a phrase from Palin) fundamentally change America.

They appeal to religious beliefs and nationalistic patriotism, like all autocrats. These two items are essential in the fascist takeover kit.

These people want to steal your vote, your liberty, your most basic freedoms to achieve their goal of the autocratization of the United States.

They aren’t stupid; they’re a threat to our national security and the very foundations of our country. They need to be kept out of power and exposed for their craven self-interest until their white supremacist, neo-Nazi movement finally fades.

Sarah Jones

Listen to Sarah on the PoliticusUSA Pod on The Daily newsletter podcast here.

Sarah has been credentialed to cover President Barack Obama, then VP Joe Biden, 2016 Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, and exclusively interviewed Speaker Nancy Pelosi multiple times and exclusively covered her first home appearance after the first impeachment of then President Donald Trump.

Sarah is two-time Telly award winning video producer and a member of the Society of Professional Journalists.

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