On the post-election edition of PBS’s Friday political roundtable, Washington Week with The Atlantic, Susan Glasser of The New Yorker delivered the bitter highlights, covering the same ground as she did in her New Yorker article, “Donald Trump’s Revenge -- The former President will return to the White House older, less inhibited, and far more dangerous than ever before.”

 

 

Having started this meltdown on election night, she took to the airwaves and made sure to sound like the sort of journalist who needs a regular spot in the rotation on a tax-funded political broadcast (click "expand"):

GLASSER: But [the Trump campaign] also had a strategy of telling monumental amounts of untruths and lies. And I do think it's very important if we're going to talk about immigration to talk about the Trump campaign's campaign of lies around immigration. Do you believe that we are under an invasion? Do you believe that they're eating the dogs in Springfield? You know, this is also, I think, a story about propaganda and its enormous effectiveness.

JEFFREY GOLDBERG: So, what lesson do you derive from that, about the media or about --

GLASSER: Propaganda is very effective, Jeff --

GOLDBERG: -- well.

GLASSER: -- unfortunately. That's one of the important lessons for I think all Americans of the last eight years and watching Trump's persistent hold over millions of people. Donald Trump lied, as we all know, about the results of the last election in 2020. And he wasn't just isolated and made a pariah for doing that. In fact, millions of people chose to believe his untruth over truth.

Glasser even got a little heated in an exchange with fellow journalist Asma Khalid or NPR, who noted that Trump shockingly won the Arab-dominated city of Dearborn, Michigan and explained how he did it:

[D]uring the first few days of his administration, issued a ban on Muslim-majority countries, but you look at a number of Muslim, Arab-American voters, they moved away from Kamala Harris this election cycle. You look at a city like in Dearborn, Michigan and Trump, according the results, it looks like won Dearborn, Michigan. I mean, that is astounding, but he showed up, and I heard this from voters this cycle. He would take pictures. He promised to end the war in the Middle East. And there'd be like, you know, little images of him circulating on WhatsApp chats kissing a little kid at a restaurant in Dearborn. And that went viral in communities, where people wanted to hear that someone was showing up and someone was listening.

She then added that Trump "showed up in a lot of different communities," but this didn't sit well at all with Glasser, who then lectured the Arab-American community in Michigan for voting the wrong way:

But what are you seeing? I mean, I’m a little confused though. Like, what are -- what are you seeing? So, because people like Donald Trump kissing babies, that it's -- it makes sense for them to vote for the guy who handed American policy toward Israel over to Prime Minister Netanyahu, who refused, who cut off all U.S. aid to the Palestinian Authority?

Khalid again noted the simple reality from Arab-Americans that they felt Trump was there and Harris wasn’t: "I had people in the community asking me, like, 'where are -- where is the Harris campaign? What are they doing?' Right! And -- but Trump was going there. His -- Tiffany Trump -- his daughter's father-in-law meeting people, and they're promising to end the war."

Even Goldberg admitted she was right, leaving Glasser to tag-team with The Atlantic's Helen Lewis to blame Elon Musk and alternative media for making Trump voters less sophiscated than those who read, say, The New Yorker or The Atlantic (click "expand"):

GOLDBERG: I don't mean to put a pith helmet on you and, you know, you’re — you’re — you’re — you’re hacking your way through the American jungle or something.

LEWIS: Yeah.

GOLDBERG: But — but — but does this make sense? How does this make sense? Now — I mean is this the triumph of propaganda and populism and the man-o-sphere? How — I’m not asking you to bring coherence in the one minute and 47 seconds, but bring a little coherence to this.

LEWIS: But propaganda is an interesting word because, if you think about the media people consume online, they are listening to podcasters who, for example, in the middle of that Logan Paul interview with Trump, he breaks off to sell his energy drink, right?

GOLDBERG: Right.

LEWIS: They listen to —

GOLDBERG: While Trump is sitting there.

LEWIS: Yeah. And — and —

GOLDBERG: It’s amazing.

LEWIS: — Anson Ross, the cyberstreamer, gave him a custom-cybertruck before doing the interview. This is not stuff that happens in classic journalism, but it references the fact that for the younger people that are used to listening to TikTok, Instagram, other things, they are used to people talking to them face-to-face and being open about their political views and trying to sell them things. And so, I don't think necessarily those news consumers have the same idea about propaganda that we do. They think we are all sitting here with a secret agenda, but what's more honest as people who go, yeah, I’m for Trump.

GLASSER: So, like Elon Musk, who is the world’s richest man, who purchased a social media platform, decided to endorse Donald Trump, and amplified his lies and conspiracy theories and misinformation as part of it, in addition to giving more than a hundred million dollars to the Trump —

Near the end, journalist Tim Alberta turned the tables on the conventional wisdom, and contradicted Glasser by noting the Democrats have spread their own disinformation on three massive issues:

As someone who has spilled a lot of ink on Donald Trump's lies over the past decade..a couple of books worth, I want to say this, when we talk about propaganda, arguably, the three most determinative things in this election were propaganda from the Democratic Party. Number one, “Joe Biden is fine and totally fit to be President for another four years.” He wasn't. Number two, “the border is closed. It's under control. There's nobody coming in.” That was not true. And number three, “hey, don’t worry about inflation, prices are fine, Bidenomics. Everything’s great. You guys don’t know what you’re talking about. Actually, the economy is in great shape.” This is propaganda to millions of Americans who said none of that is true, and therefore, I don't trust you. hey might not trust Trump, but they don't trust Democrats either.

In other words, for Glasser, Harris’s loss was everyone else's fault but her own.