The Grievance Party

Republicans won it all. Why are they so whiny?

For paid subscribers: Check out my video response to reader Ralph Rosenberg’s excellent questions at the end of this newsletter. Keep sending in questions and I will keep the conversation going!

This Tuesday, I was on CNN NewsNight when the conversation turned to the media’s treatment of Trump. My sparring partner, Scott Jennings, complained about how the press consistently mistreats poor conservatives.

Give me a break.

As I have written before, the number one cable news network is Rupert Murdoch’s Fox News. (CNN’s and MSNBC’s ratings are so poor that, combined, Fox often exceeds their viewership.) The number one newspaper by circulation is Murdoch’s Wall Street Journal. The number one talk radio show is Hannity and most, if not all, of the top 30 talk radio shows skew right-wing. The number one podcast is the Joe Rogan Experience. Elon Musk owns Twitter. Donald Trump owns Truth Social. Most importantly, pro-Trump content dominates TikTok, which one-third of all American adults use. More than 40% of those users say they get their news from the social media site.

News alert: right-wing media is mainstream media now. Its reach is broader and deeper than the nightly news shows on the broadcast networks, which, in any event, are only 30 minutes long and reach fewer than 20 million viewers combined. CNN and MSNBC have fewer viewers most days combined than Fox News. In any event, conservatives consider anything that doesn’t bend its knee to Dear Leader “fake news,” even though many of these outlets play things straight down the middle. (News Alert #2: pressing Trump on his lies during an interview is not a liberal plot. It’s called journalism.)

You can watch below for more but the larger point is this: why are Republicans so whiny? They will soon control everything — from the White House to Congress to the majority of statehouses and courthouses, including the United States Supreme Court.

And yet, the entire party runs on grievance. It’s as though Republicans are more interested in airing every perceived petty little slight than in actually governing. Actually, it is because Republicans are more interested in airing every perceived petty slight than in actually governing.