First, he failed to fire everyone on Day 1. He believed too much in the integrity of the system and civil servants. I think he was just far too optimistic about federal government and the people that work in D.C.
Second, Sessions. Sessions hurt him on so many levels. Allowing the Russia hoax to continue gave the media ammo and it gave establishment Republicans ammo to use against him. If Trump wanted Republicans not to fuck him over within his first 6 months in office, he had to start playing by their rules. And then instead of spending his time campaigning to elect fresh new blood into Congress, he was campaigning just to prevent Democrats from taking everything over. The end result is that the Trump Admin never escaped from Sessions' inaction nor the Russia hoax, it hurt his ability to negotiate, focus, and campaign throughout his entire tenure.
Third, his team was far too reactionary to the media. They thought of the media as a funny little threat instead of the serious, sinister threat that it really is. They should have been proactive and on top of stories with their own narratives before the media had time to create a narrative.
Lastly, Republicans were too silent in general. I'm not just talking about bullshit establishment leadership that stood by as their media friends ran everything, but I mean the general voters. We accepted a "silent majority" label, when all that really means is you sit by as leftists become the de facto voice on everything. The right continued to lose ground in the culture war, WHILE Trump was in office. At no time was it safe to be an open Trump supporter for way too many people, and I'd argue that the majority of Trump voters felt like they had to hide their support from at least 1 person in their lives. Even besides that, as voters the right wing is far too complacent, and this goes further back than Trump. The same bullshit establishment Republicans have been reelected everywhere time and time again and all that's resulted in are leftist victories. And you can complain that thanks to electronic voting everything is rigged now anyways, but this problem started long before electronic voting was an issue. And you can make fun of those unemployed 25 year olds struggling under student debt with a degree in gender studies all you want, but the truth is they are far more active in real life than Republicans. They attend dumb shit like school board meetings and they push and push and push every single day until one day right wing voters wake up to read that the schools their kids go to are implementing mandatory gender studies and diversity training for all students. Or you have blue haired zombies that take over HR departments and suddenly mentally ill men are using women's restrooms. This type of small stuff could easily be stopped by local involvement. Trump isn't going to solve everything and it sure as hell isn't going to be solved overnight.
Online narrative control needs to be supplemented by irl involvement.
I think a couple of things hurt him
First, he failed to fire everyone on Day 1. He believed too much in the integrity of the system and civil servants. I think he was just far too optimistic about federal government and the people that work in D.C.
Second, Sessions. Sessions hurt him on so many levels. Allowing the Russia hoax to continue gave the media ammo and it gave establishment Republicans ammo to use against him. If Trump wanted Republicans not to fuck him over within his first 6 months in office, he had to start playing by their rules. And then instead of spending his time campaigning to elect fresh new blood into Congress, he was campaigning just to prevent Democrats from taking everything over. The end result is that the Trump Admin never escaped from Sessions' inaction nor the Russia hoax, it hurt his ability to negotiate, focus, and campaign throughout his entire tenure.
Third, his team was far too reactionary to the media. They thought of the media as a funny little threat instead of the serious, sinister threat that it really is. They should have been proactive and on top of stories with their own narratives before the media had time to create a narrative.
Lastly, Republicans were too silent in general. I'm not just talking about bullshit establishment leadership that stood by as their media friends ran everything, but I mean the general voters. We accepted a "silent majority" label, when all that really means is you sit by as leftists become the de facto voice on everything. The right continued to lose ground in the culture war, WHILE Trump was in office. At no time was it safe to be an open Trump supporter for way too many people, and I'd argue that the majority of Trump voters felt like they had to hide their support from at least 1 person in their lives. Even besides that, as voters the right wing is far too complacent, and this goes further back than Trump. The same bullshit establishment Republicans have been reelected everywhere time and time again and all that's resulted in are leftist victories. And you can complain that thanks to electronic voting everything is rigged now anyways, but this problem started long before electronic voting was an issue. And you can make fun of those unemployed 25 year olds struggling under student debt with a degree in gender studies all you want, but the truth is they are far more active in real life than Republicans. They attend dumb shit like school board meetings and they push and push and push every single day until one day right wing voters wake up to read that the schools their kids go to are implementing mandatory gender studies and diversity training for all students. Or you have blue haired zombies that take over HR departments and suddenly mentally ill men are using women's restrooms. This type of small stuff could easily be stopped by local involvement. Trump isn't going to solve everything and it sure as hell isn't going to be solved overnight.
Online narrative control needs to be supplemented by irl involvement.