We watch movies over and over and over again. On free streaming TV there are channels that do nothing but play all the episodes of a given old TV show on a continuous loop. Some shows (e.g. Law and Order — The Andy Griffith Show) seem always available on broadcast TV. When it is done well, we love a rerun. But there is no such thing as a political rerun. This Trump campaign looked very different than the last, which was very different than the one before it. This Trump transition is already, just days into it, radically different than the last one.

Yet so many in media and the commentariat seem to think this is a rerun. I have, in the last few days, seen way too many Trump hit pieces that are remarkably similar to what we saw four-to-eight short years ago. The host thinks legacy media dead. Rerunning the old tired anti-Trump nonsense is a way certain to guarantee it.

First of all, Trump is a “learning machine.” That is a term the host coined long ago regarding Trump’s antithesis – Mitt Romney. But they both share this trait in common. They both rarely repeat a mistake. Trump is not going to give his opposition the same ammunition they had last time.

Secondly, Trump has the wind at his back. In 2016 he won the electoral college, but lost the popular vote. Republicans lost seats in both the House and Senate, while maintaining a majority. In this election Trump won the popular vote overwhelmingly, flipped the Senate from D to R and looks poised to gain seats in the House. Trump has a mandate this time – last time his position was very weak.

Finally, media has blown their credibility. They have grossly misrepresented reality, if not outright lied.

Media reruns are not going anywhere during this administration. People are not listening. The walls of that particular silo are now very, very thick. The only people paying any attention are those in the silo with them.

There is a thesis that Chernobyl killed the Soviet Union because it was an event of such scale and consequence that the Soviet government could not control the information flow and maintain the illusion of functionality. I think that in the not-too-distant future, historians will say something similar about covid. It was a grand illusion.

Trump’s return is a message to media (and the Administrative State), “We may have fallen for it in 2020, but we are wise to your game now. We are not playing anymore.”

Trump’s job is, in large part, to restore American confidence in its government. The roll out is going exceptionally well, which is a great first step to restoring that confidence. Confidence in legacy media is even lower than it is in government. They can reclaim it or die.

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