Top O' the Briefing

Happy Tuesday, dear Kruiser Morning Briefing friends. Bermunczy felt that his time as a guest tambourinist for Kylie Minogue taught him more than his 12 years of undergrad.

When the 2016 presidential campaign was heating up, I was doing a weekly (maybe bi-weekly?) political panel show on PJTV (#RIP) with my old pals John Phillips and Scott Ott. We frequently discussed Donald Trump's personal use of Twitter to get his message out to the public. It was brilliant. Both the Dem-friendly hacks in the mainstream media and the Republican establishment were trying to stonewall him at every turn. 

He had figured out a way to cut through the noise and speak directly to the voters, and the usual suspects were not amused.

Back then, I repeatedly said that Trump's use of social media in the 2016 campaign would one day in the future be talked about in university political science programs. 

One day.

After Elon Musk purchased Twitter and rebranded it with the gentlemen's club name X, I was hoping that Trump would make a quick return. Alas, he decided to stick with his desert wasteland social media platform, Truth Social. The only time anyone has been aware of Truth Social is when one of Trump's posts was shared on X. 

On Monday, Trump finally returned to the social media platform where it all began. He took a different approach on his first day back. There was no stream-of-consciousness mean tweeting. Trump opted for posting campaign videos which, as my HotAir colleague David Strom wrote, is a "gold mine." 

Trump capped off his return with a rollicking, two-hour interview conducted by Elon Musk on X Spaces (which just adds to the gentlemen's club vibe, IMO). I listened to most of it because I knew it would be one of the few interviews with him between now and the election that didn't start with "Mr. Trump, why are you Satan, Hitler, and a puppy killer?" 

The aforementioned usual suspects were summarily triggered by the mere announcement of the interview, and it was glorious. 

The European Union sent Musk a sternly-worded letter, telling him that he should adopt its Eurotrash censorship ways. Because Musk is Musk, he ignored the letter. My colleague Bryan Jung has more on that here. 

The caterwauling from the propaganda pimps immediately picked up when the interview wrapped up, and Musk wasn't sweating that either:

Almost all of legacy media will trash the Trump conversation, thus driving total listeners probably past 200+ million 😂 https://t.co/44Mhr2hkAu

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) August 13, 2024

Catherine wrote up a detailed recap of the conversation between Musk and Trump. It was just the kind of forum that Trump needed after all of the noise that the flying monkeys in the mainstream media have been giving Kamala Harris and her doughboy babysitter running mate lately. 

My RedState colleague Jennifer Oliver O'Connell wrote this about who Trump could be reaching with this strategy:

The "edgelord influencers," make up a young and MALE segment of voters who have huge online followings, eschew TikTok, and promote alpha males. Trump and his VP running mate JD Vance have been speaking to these influencers and appearing on their podcasts and shows, so who knows how many have tuned in Monday night? So far, over 30 million people (and counting) have already plugged into Trump's X conversation with Musk. 

While many are writers, the political class, and the MAGA base, among that number are probably undecided voters or people who pay little attention to the legacy media. The Kamala coronation is either passing over their heads or viewed like a person with three heads. But the iconic former president who survived an assassination attempt? 

It's a draw that should not be discounted.

I suspect that the audience was broader than that. 

Trump and his supporters were due a breath of fresh air after a couple of weeks of choking on the noxious fumes created by the horse manure produced by the media rebranding of Kamala Harris. 

That would be the same Kamala Harris the media lapdogs had to stop hyperventilating about for a while last night because Trump had them all in a tizzy. 

Well played, 45, well played. 

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