r/politics • u/Hrmbee • 5h ago
Paywall MAGA World Is So Close to Getting It | Gavin Newsom’s parodies are riling people up—and they don’t quite seem to understand why
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2025/08/gavin-newsom-social-media-trump/683968/•
u/Hrmbee 5h ago
Some interesting highlights:
Newsom has taken to trolling Trump on social media by imitating his bizarre rants, odd capitalizations, and affection for exclamation points. He has also posted several memes that are on-the-nose parodies of things Trump has fed to his followers for years.
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And the proof that Newsom is onto something is that his supporters are reacting with genuine rage. Perhaps Newsom has hit a nerve because satire is always more effective than name-calling. Mango Mussolini or Cheeto Jesus (both of which refer to the president’s unusual bronzed skin tone) appeal only to Trump’s opponents. But a post that perfectly mimics Trump’s antics is a mirror—one that prompts people to consider how Trump looks to everyone else in the world.
At the least, Newsom has scored a direct hit on the double standard both in the national press and among the public that excuses Trump’s deeply concerning behavior as merely part of Trump’s shtick, some facet of his personality that cannot be held to account. Too many reporters have resorted to sane-washing Trump, forcing his bizarre statements somehow to make sense by cherry-picking the occasional phrase or sentence related to policy while ignoring his kooky rants about sharks and his Stalinist threats against his political enemies. Newsom’s parodies sidestep all the hand-wringing criticism about how presidents should act: Instead they show, rather than explain, what it should feel like when anyone but Trump acts the way Trump acts.
Perino is just one of many who is in high dudgeon. And Newsom responded to Perino with a dead-on Trump-like response: “DANA ‘DING DONG’ PERINO (NEVER HEARD OF HER UNTIL TODAY!)” Vice President J. D. Vance has lashed out at Newsom, telling Fox that the Californian’s attacks aren’t landing, because his trolling “ignores the fundamental genius of President Trump’s political success, which is that he’s authentic”; in other words, everyone knows that Newsom’s crackpot hijinks are fake but Trump’s are real—a rather odd defense.
And of course, the MAGA posters on social media and Facebook have flown off the handle with rage. (Newsom is having a “mental breakdown,” said one MAGA influencer, without a trace of irony.) As it turns out, the people who pioneered the slogan “Fuck your feelings” are impossibly delicate souls.
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Trump’s majordomo at Fox, Sean Hannity, summed up this New Seriousness among the president’s supporters when he tut-tutted Newsom’s “performative confrontational style,” adding that “maybe it wins you points with the loony radical base in your party,” but it won’t win elections. How refreshing: Fox commentators and leading figures in the Trump administration all agreeing that a politician should not conduct himself in public like a dim, insufferable child.
They’re all so close to getting it.
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I suspect—as I have since the day Trump announced his first run for president a decade ago—that the MAGA faithful are hypersensitive to criticisms of Trump because, in their hearts, many of them know. They know that many of Trump’s statements are offensive and alarmingly detached from reality. They know that Trump has a disordered personality. They know that the president is a daily embarrassment to his party and to his nation.
For years, these MAGA partisans have employed various tactics to prevent the imminent pain of cognitive dissonance. They resort to “what about” arguments aimed at other politicians; they claim that Trump actually knows what he’s doing or that they understand the message underneath all the broken thoughts, garbled words, and dead-end sentences. Now Newsom is forcing them to see what Trump looks like without the distorting force field created by Trump’s showmanship and his aggressive delivery of incoherent statements.
Come to think of it, maybe MAGA world isn’t close to getting it; maybe they do get it, and maybe that’s why, this time, they’re especially angry.
The author, at the end, makes a point worth considering: maybe the MAGA faithful do understand the president's glaring weaknesses, and if they cannot explain it away or distract from this pain point, would much rather not be reminded of it by others.
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u/Elegant_Plate6640 5h ago
Guys like Hannity get that Trump is an idiot, but they’ve made “tough guy winner” their everything.
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u/wrosecrans 4h ago
Yeah, the Republicans jumping to get in the papers being outraged aren't confused. They are liars. And they are framing the discussion so that people are talking about whether or not Newsom's tone is bad, rather than talking about the substance of the attacks on Trump. The "confused" Republicans have been super consistent to stay on some narrow talking points and not accidentally bring the conversation back to anything substantial.
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u/oliversurpless Massachusetts 3h ago
And surely also not reminded on those longstanding canards like “personal responsibility!” or “fiscal responsibility!”.
Which have never been true of conservatives in any way, shape or form…
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u/barryvm Europe 2h ago edited 2h ago
The author, at the end, makes a point worth considering: maybe the MAGA faithful do understand the president's glaring weaknesses, and if they cannot explain it away or distract from this pain point, would much rather not be reminded of it by others.
Isn't it more that all of it is bad faith? They believe exactly what they need to believe to justify what they wanted to do anyway. Their ideologies and even religions are simply facades in front of the emotions that actually inform their behaviour, whose only function is to tell them that they are right and moral. Hence why the former can be dropped or swapped out at will. Hence also why their understanding of their own choices seems to vary. When it suits them to know that they are supporting a demented fascist, for example when they want to gloat about the damage he is doing and the frustration and anger he creates among their "enemies", they do so. When they gleefully wallow in their own hypocrisy because it gives them a feeling of power over their adversaries, then they have to "know" what they are doing.
But when they need to feel righteous, when they are on their high horse, moral actors on a crusade against the evil lefties, all that goes out of the window and their belief that their leader and his policies are good and clever becomes absolute. They will support the most heinous things, all the while insisting that what they are doing is good and proper, and they will believe it because to do otherwise is to doubt themselves and accept their guilt and moral responsibility for the damage their choices have done.
Both modes, though obviously incompatible, are believed and disbelieved as the situation required because their beliefs are ultimately all self serving. They are what they need them to be. On the one hand, they are driven by emotions to believe anything that suits them. On the other, they are nihilists without principles or morals whose every professed belief is there solely to tell them that they are always right. That is probably the core of it IMHO: they worship themselves. Trump (like their god) is simply a reflection of their own ego and desires, who tells them they are right and what they do is moral and who hates what they hate.
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u/Tobimacoss 4h ago
Such a well written article.
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u/DwHouse7516 4h ago
It's a very good analysis, but haven't we known all of this for years? I don't understand why this is a revolutionary observation, and I'm not trying to be obtuse. The MAGAts have always known it's a sham on some level, and they've always made the choice to pretend that it's not
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u/Tobimacoss 4h ago
Everyone has known, but they excused it. They are not able to excuse it as easily now, with the mirror. The press is being forced to cover it, thus pay attention.
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u/solidstatepr8 3h ago
This part is the real mission here. Force the media to stop sane washing this utter nonsense.
Newsom created a paradox for them in that they can't, as he stated himself, criticize his behavior without dragging Trump under a microscope too.
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u/Mittendeathfinger 44m ago
Pride, ego, vanity, strike at all three and they suddenly become whiny cry babies. Bullies cant take their own medicine.
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u/outwardmotion 2h ago
If conservative opinions weren’t automatically downvoted to hell, we could just ask them about this, instead of reading another liberals take on them from the NYT. Crazy thought for a sub about US politics, I know.
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u/contextual_somebody Tennessee 40m ago
The article is from The Atlantic, not the NYT.
If a pro-Trump “conservative” showed up with a reasoned explanation, they would not get downvoted.
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u/outwardmotion 14m ago
- Touche.
- This simply isn’t true. If you can find an example, I’d love to see it.
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u/Pockydo 36m ago
Why are such masculine manly conservatives so upset by a downvote?
They can come comment and respond if they want but that requires leaving their safe space and we all know they won't
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16m ago
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/outwardmotion 12m ago
And I just got an automod response that my above comment is under review, and cannot be viewed. Unreal.
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u/mishma2005 5h ago
They can’t stand it when we finally turn it back around on them. It confuses them. That’s their playbook
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u/Straight-Range-3566 1h ago
Fox news: Why would Newson talk like this?
Meanwhile, trump touts...the exact....same stuff.
If Newson became president I would love to see him do a mockery of the same things trump is doing now. Deploy troops to X, sign Y into law. Is it legal? Bitch, the last guy did and he got cheers.
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u/twostar01 2h ago
The author gets so many things right but then veers off into typical democratic hand wringing. "Newsom has made his point and should move on."
Fuck you, hold this mirror up until the light of day burns Trumps followers into dust. Democrats have found a weakness in their defense and they're supposed to just move on? What? We don't want to hurt their feelings?!
Or is it we don't want to call out the sane washing that's occurred in the media by forcing them to treat Newsom the same way? Shit, the author even talked about the sane washing in the article. So why does Newsom's self obvious parady make him feel uncomfortable enough to say Newsom "should move on"?
Can you imagine this in 1944? "Well, the allied commanders found a weakness in the German defenses and exploited it for a week but we feel like they have made their point and should move on. Better to just dig in now and stop pressing the attack into the German manufacturing base."
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u/JB-Wentworth 5h ago
Newsome is definitely getting under Trump’s skin. He is the most delicate snowflake of them all.
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u/Orwells_Roses 4h ago
"...the MAGA faithful are hypersensitive to criticisms of Trump because, in their hearts, many of them know. They know that many of Trump’s statements are offensive and alarmingly detached from reality. They know that Trump has a disordered personality. They know that the president is a daily embarrassment to his party and to his nation..."
This really sums it up in a way I haven't seen expressed before.
Good article.
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u/NinjaLanternShark 4h ago
The best thing about this article is it alerted me to something that slipped past me for some reason: Newsom getting prayed over by Tucker Carlson, Kid Rock, and an angelic Hulk Hogan
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u/oliversurpless Massachusetts 3h ago
He says it’s A.I., but it looks exactly like Jon McNaughton’s typical work…
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u/Ugh02025 Virginia 4h ago
Keep Newsom's press office account open on my phone all day long: https://xcancel.com/govpressoffice?lang=en
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u/dogfoodhoarder 5h ago
Of course the idiot columnist wants him to move on. He needs to keep doing this till the MAGA morons figure it out, could take many years. THANK YOU FOR YOUR CONSIDERATION.
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u/Chickabeeinthewind 5h ago
I have a schizophrenic cousin who I have been following online since 2013 and he signs off all his posts like this. I feel like this a new thing for Trump, because I only made the connection this year. That dimensia is dimensiaing.
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u/sircastor 3h ago
I’m sort of wondering: If the president continues to decline, is here going to be a large contingent of prime who reject this sort of mocking because of sympathy? Will the presidents approval go up because people feel bad for him?
We’re in an odd space right this moment where the Epstein files controversy and mocking by Governor Newsom seems to be pushing “true believers” over the edge. They’re losing their faith. Will it last though?
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u/GretchenTames United Kingdom 2h ago
If the president continues to decline, is here going to be a large contingent of prime who reject this sort of mocking because of sympathy?
Their aptitude for hypocrisy is unlimited, so yeah, probably
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u/InfinityComplexxx 2h ago
Great article. A good chunk truly don't get it, much of how they didn't understand Colbert Report was a parody of O'Reiley/Fox types. But the vast majority do know. And they know they've hitched their entire souls to stumbling, bumbling moroj, because he's the type of racist and bigot they've always wanted. And Newsome's satire shows that no one can seriously think Trump is anything but awful and dumb as fuck. But it exposes that he's an outlet for their hate.
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u/KnightDuty 1h ago
What he's doing is exposing the real "Trump Derangement Syndrome" was forgiving Trump for everything and anything, just because he's Trump, while attacking anybody who accurately states the truth.
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u/slowsundaycoffeeclub Canada 2h ago
Can we stop pretending that this is anything more than an amusing trolling story and that it has zero impact on voters and will never get MAGA supporters to “wake up to the hypocrisy.”
We can’t meme our way out of this.
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u/HunterOk8487 4h ago
Trump is busy ending wars
Trump isn’t bothered by newscum
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u/oliversurpless Massachusetts 3h ago
Sure, why not?
Can you perhaps tell us what a “pre-war” is?
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u/HunterOk8487 3h ago
Look at the Middle East
Nato Ukraine and Russia
North Korea is always at bay with firepower along with china against Japan or South Korea
India is also getting heat from other superpowers especially from Pakistan
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u/oliversurpless Massachusetts 3h ago
And these decade old realities (some highly tenuous) have something to do with Trump to you?
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u/HunterOk8487 3h ago
Trump gathered European world leaders looking for peace with the Ukraine NATO Russian war
Other world leaders bend the knee for trump
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u/DaveChild 1h ago
Trump is busy ending wars
What war has Trump ended, and what did he do to make it happen?
Trump isn’t bothered by newscum
So why has he stopped posting in all caps? Do you think that's just a coincidence?
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