He is mocking Trump.
Donald Trump wants to be feared. He wants liberal tears and stories of impending doom. Those validate his power. That persona -- that brand -- is undermined when a taller, better looking, younger California governor sneers at Trump and points out Trump's foolishness. The trouble with satire is that some people don't "get it." And some people get it. but pretend they don't. But Newsom's message is clear: He is not intimidated by Trump. And he is not "going low." He is holding Trump up to ridicule.
Donald Trump's communication has worked for him. He says outrageous, hyperbolic things, both verbally and in text messages to social media, often in ALL CAPS. They make news because they are so extreme in content and tone. Trump supporters consider them Trump "truths," written on his own social media site "Truth Social." Trump critics think he looks mentally ill -- manic -- and generally unhinged.
Gavin Newsom's mimicking Trump does the work that good parody does. It points out the ridiculousness of the target. Newsom's press office and his allies are putting up images like these, mocking Trump's grandiosity and proud use of images of himself as a heroic Rambo-figure anointed by God:
Newsom duplicates Trump's ALL CAP pronouncements, and Trump's new signature line, "Thank you for your attention to this matter."
Social media trolls are adding their voices. Exaggeration become hyper-exaggeration becomes ridiculous, at which point even the most gullible person understands that Trump is being mocked.
And this:
The Fox media universe is unhappy with it, complaining that Newsom is undignified and unkind, complaints that spread the reach of the mockery.
I hope it’s a wake-up call for the president of the United States. I’m sort of following his example. If you’ve got issues with what I’m putting out, you sure as hell should have concerns about what he’s putting out as president. . . . I think the deeper question is how have we allowed the normalization of his tweets, Truth Social posts over the course of the last many years, to go without similar scrutiny and notice.
The real intent is to show that Democrats have a voice willing to stand up to Trump. Someone strong. Someone clear-headed and reasonable. Someone worthy of being America's next president.
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7 comments:
YA KNOW, AT FIRST I THOUGHT IT WASN'T "DIGNIFIED" TO SATIRIZE THESE MORONS BUT NOW "GET IT". IT'S KINDA FUN!! JEFFRY EPSTEIN WAS AN EVIL PIMP AND IT'S TIME TO KNOW WHO THE JOHNS ARE EVEN IF "THE LIST" INCLUDES SO CALLED "DEMOCRATS" . THE WAY PAMELA "LAW AND ORDER" BONDI IS HIDING THE TRUTH IS DISGRACEFUL AND WILL HAUNT HER TO THE END OF HER DAYS AND IT MUST MEAN IT'S WAY WORSE THAN THE HEAT THEY ARE TAKING FOR THE COVERUP. "THANK YOU FOR YOUR ATTENTION TO THIS MATTER" IS A PARTICULARLY STUPID WAY TO END A POST. NEWSOM 2028!!
Make conservatives cry NEWSOM!!!
I particularly enjoyed his response to criticism from one of the Fox Noise talking heads:
DANA ‘DING DONG’ PERINO (NEVER HEARD OF HER UNTIL TODAY!) IS MELTING DOWN BECAUSE OF ME, GAVIN C. NEWSOM! FOX HATES THAT I AM AMERICA’S MOST FAVORITE GOVERNOR ("RATINGS KING") SAVING AMERICA — WHILE TRUMP CAN’T EVEN CONQUER THE ‘BIG’ STAIRS ON AIR FORCE ONE ANYMORE!!! TRUMP HAS ‘LOST HIS STEP’ AND FOX IS LOSING IT BECAUSE WHEN I TYPE, AMERICA NOW WINS!!! THANK YOU FOR YOUR ATTENTION TO THIS MATTER.
Up until now, those who tried to use mockery against Trump failed because he always parried. But Trump and his followers have now created the kind of parody-sized target that makes this kind of ridicule effective.
Treating Trump like a victim makes him look weak. I passed a giant yard sign the other day that said “Stop picking on our President Trump. The People Have Spoken”. Made me smile.
Most of these pictures are amusing. However, Gavin Newsom wants to be President. His mocking of the attempted assassination of Donald Trump is not funny, and is an example of why Gavin Newsom should not be the Democrats' nominee.
Very interesting and useful comment. My sense of reading Doe the unknown over the years is that she is not stupid, not gullible, not a MAGA sycophant. But she interpreted the mockery to be "of the attempted assassination of Donald Trump" and not mockery of Trump's effort to profit of it, to make it the subject of merchandise, to claim it is proof of God's hand, and to make himself a subject of pity/adoration by putting a giant bandage on his ear, a bandage copied by others attempting to show they were on Trump's team. Trump did everything possible -- and still does -- to "merchandise" the assassination attempt, both politically and commercially. It is obvious to me that Newsom is mocking that. It is the problem with parodying Trump. It is impossible to exaggerate him enough so that is clearly mockery. The Trump Fight Fight Fight flag and the big ear bandage are real. To do a good mockery Newsom would have had to put a diaper-size bandage on his ear. Trump already says that the pump-fist image is the proof that God Himself protected him. Hard to top God. Hard to be more crass than selling images of the assassination attempt, with the money going straight to Trump. So, I assume this is an ongoing risk. A lot of people don't "get" the parody.
Doe the unknown's comment might be a good basis for a followup post by me. The subject of the risk of parody is interesting to me. Trump has set the bar at a very high mark. A novelist creating a manic, narcissistic, unreliable con-man character could hardly do better than to show the character's mental instability by writing and sounding like Trump. The novelist might contrast manic-character with the character "on his meds." Trump is wilder than Hunter Thompson in his Fear and Loathing in Los Vegas. And that was over-the-top wild-man gonzo.
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