\n<\/p>\n
On this last, slow, hot week in August, we are trapped in a Vivek Ramaswamy<\/strong> news cycle. Ramaswamy has figured out the path to free media is lined with saying extreme things like how \u201cthe climate change agenda is a hoax\u201d at last week\u2019s first Republican debate, or more recently, doubling down on calling Rep. Ayanna Pressley<\/strong> a member of the \u201cmodern KKK<\/a>\u201d (CNN\u2019s State of the Union<\/em>) or suggesting<\/a> Mike Pence<\/strong> should\u2019ve implemented new voting reforms before certifying the 2020 election (NBC\u2019s Meet the Press<\/em>). He was still pushing that bizarre January 6 scenario days later<\/a> on MSNBC.<\/p>\n What\u2019s important about Ramaswamy is not his ideology\u2014he has no coherent<\/a> one<\/a>\u2014but how susceptible our political and media ecosystem is to a charismatic phony. He\u2019s become a recurring character on cable news, recently claiming<\/a> on CNN that he was misquoted in The Atlantic<\/em><\/a> when raising questions about the 9\/11 attacks. But The Atlantic<\/em>\u2019s John Hendrickson<\/strong> had the tape<\/a>, which of course included Ramaswamy asking<\/a>, \u201cHow many police, how many federal agents were on the planes that hit the Twin Towers?\u201d Denying something that is actually on tape, how very Trumpy.<\/p>\n Two days later, at the Fox News\u2013hosted GOP debate, Ramaswamy claimed to be \u201cthe only candidate onstage who isn\u2019t bought and paid for\u201d when decrying the climate \u201choax.\u201d But it turns out that Ramaswamy is \u201cbought and paid\u201d or at least \u201cpaid for\u201d because his investment firm,<\/a> Strive, has a fund called DRLL<\/a>, which, as Semafor reports<\/a>, \u201cinvests in US energy companies and urges them to keep drilling for oil so long as it\u2019s profitable.\u201d As Heated\u2019s Emily Atkin<\/strong> put it<\/a>, \u201cRamaswamy makes money from climate denial.\u201d<\/p>\n And yet, in the past, Ramaswamy has acknowledged that climate change is \u201creal,\u201d<\/a> just one of his campaign flip-flops<\/a>. On recognizing Juneteenth, for instance, he went from supportive<\/a>\u2014\u201cLet it be a celebration of the American Dream itself,\u201d he said on video\u2014to against the holiday just two months later, telling\u200b\u200b Iowa voters<\/a>,\u201cCancel Juneteenth or one of the other useless ones we made up.\u201d<\/p>\n Obviously, the outrage-to-free-media pipeline was something Donald Trump<\/strong> took advantage of in 2016 to the tune of $2 billion<\/a>. Ramaswamy has managed to once again exploit this media weakness, making incendiary or contradictory claims on one show or stage, only to be asked about them on another. But worse than that, it seems clear from his polling that Republican voters are way more fixated on personality over policy and seem to long for another smooth-talking showman.<\/p>\n Perhaps we shouldn\u2019t find this surprising, as Fantasyland<\/em> author Kurt Andersen<\/strong> put it in an email, \u201cAmericans historically have a special weakness for charismatic charlatans especially in religion\u2014from Joseph Smith two centuries ago to the past half century of televangelists. Now that we have a political party dominated by quasi-religious and actually religious charlatanism, voil\u00e0<\/em>.\u201d<\/p>\n In Vivekmentum we see that Trumpism (or the con that is Trumpism) can in fact scale. Stuart Stevens<\/strong>, a former GOP operative who is firmly in<\/a> the Never Trump camp, told me on the phone, \u201cThe party has become less educated and with that comes a higher susceptibility to conspiracy, fraud, and snake oil salesman.\u201d<\/p>\n It\u2019s easy to see Ramaswamy as an heir to Trumpism\u2014at least according to Trump. \u201cHe\u2019s a very, very, very intelligent person,\u201d Trump told<\/a> Glenn Beck<\/strong>, when asked about the idea of becoming his VP. \u201cHe\u2019s got good energy,\u201d he said, adding: \u201cI tell you, I think he\u2019d be very good.\u201d<\/p>\n I always believed that Trump was appealing because he was not bound by the truth and could promise things that were completely undeliverable. This is my answer to the very annoying discourse of \u201cWhy people voted for Trump.\u201d In a speech in North Carolina, in 2020, Trump told the audience<\/a>, \u201cUnder the America First Healthcare Plan, we will ensure the highest standard of care anywhere in the world, cutting-edge treatments, state-of-the-art medicine, groundbreaking cures, and true health security for you and your loved ones. And we will do it rapidly, and it\u2019s in very good order, and some of it has already been implemented.\u201d Trump was paradoxically promising something that he said he\u2019d already delivered.\u00a0<\/p>\n Of course, promising<\/a> a health care overhaul<\/a> that never materializes is a Trump mainstay, just like declaring<\/a> over and over that Mexico is paying for a border wall. Yet, as John Harwood<\/strong> wrote<\/a> in 2019, \u201cTrump\u2019s \u2018great wall\u2019 is a fantasy that even he knows will never be real.\u201d<\/p>\n I remember watching one of those painful debates between Trump and Hillary Clinton<\/strong> in 2016 and realizing that a conventional politician with normal political embellishments couldn\u2019t compete with pure unadulterated fabulism, a kind of brazen lying that Trump seemingly patented. We know politicians lie; we\u2019ve grown to expect it. But Trump lied on the kind of scale that the American people couldn\u2019t process. He\u2019d lie about serious matters down to nonsensical, provably untrue things, from the weather during<\/a> his inauguration to how the noise from windmills causes cancer<\/a>. The Washington Post<\/em> tallied more than 30,000<\/a> false and misleading claims over his presidency, reaching new heights of dishonesty that has helped tip his party, and its supporters, into unreality.<\/p>\n Since 2015, we\u2019ve gone through a pandemic, cultural reckonings, a supply chain crunch, a tight labor market, inflation, and other destabilizing events. During this time, Trump\u2019s base has gotten smaller but it\u2019s also hardened into something of which there is no historical precedence. This Republican base now occupies a kind of Earth-Two space, in which they still believe Trump won the 2020 election. \u201cAmong registered voters who say they cast a ballot for Trump in 2020, 75% say they have doubts about [Joe<\/strong>] Biden<\/strong>\u2019s legitimacy,\u201d CNN found in a recent poll<\/a>. Other polling this month found<\/a> that \u201cmore Trump voters trust him than trust their own friends and family, conservative media, or even religious leaders.\u201d<\/p>\n If Trump does somehow win the electoral college, we could see him completely dismantle the federal government<\/a>\u2014the Heritage Foundation is already workshopping the idea\u2014or even end democracy as we know it. But perhaps even scarier than another Trump term\u2014and that\u2019s already terrifying<\/a>\u2014is the possibility that someone theoretically worse, like a competent Trump or a charismatic Ron DeSantis,<\/strong><\/a> comes along and claims this MAGA base, already tipped into unreality and primed for a prophet. Such a person could do more damage than we can imagine.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n