The “facts don’t care about your feelings” Republican party is having *a lot* of feelings about now president-elect Joe Biden winning the White House. Nearly as soon as news broke of Biden’s victory, Republican pundits lined up to defend the outgoing president — who is currently stewing in his plans to discredit the election’s outcome. For example, former GOP senator and inexplicable CNN commentator Rick Santorum wants Democrats to “give Republicans, including Trump, time and space to work through this.” But among the “show Trump some empathy” pundits is unemployed journalist Megyn Kelly, who had a weekend-long meltdown after the announcement of the Biden-Harris win.
In a string of nonsensical tweets and outright attacks on Biden, Kelly proved once-again that her so-called bipartisan “reporting” is entirely focused on supporting a Trump second term. When president-elect Biden tweeted “A nation united. A nation strengthened. A nation healed. The United States of America,” Kelly responded by tweeting, “Written like a man who has been in the basement for a year.”
She then went on a series of rants about the so-called “demonization” of Trump supporters, claiming that it’s unrealistic to ask the over 70 million people who voted for a man who bragged about sexual assault and tore immigrant children from their parents to “hug those who’ve viciously attacked them.”
“I’m talking reality, which is my job,” Kelly tweeted. “Not pie-in-the-sky stuff.” It’s unclear what “job” Kelly was referring to, as she was fired from NBC in 2018 for defending people who have worn blackface.
While Kelly is currently beholden to no employer, she certainly appears to be duty-bound to a completely fabricated conservative self-victimization. And by doing this, she erroneously equates the sensible and justifiable condemnation of Trump advocates, who support the outgoing president’s racism, sexism, xenophobia, and homophobia, with those who he directly attacked. As Kumail Nanjiani tweeted, “Seeing a lot of MAGA people complaining about being demonized. Here’s the big difference. I don’t like MAGA people because of their ideas. They don’t like me because of my existence.”
Of course, Kelly is far from alone in her “we’re the real victims here” post-election mindset. Members of the GOP, like newly-elected congressman Madison Cawthorn who tweet out “cry more, lib,” have peddled the idea that Trump deserves time, space, and due process — things he has never once afforded the majority of Americans. And yet, Trump’s bully-tactics are now demanding empathy from the very people he bullied. In response to Philadelphia Mayor Jim Kenney telling the outgoing president to “put his big boy pants on” and accept the outcome of the election, Fox News anchor Martha MacCallum said: “I think those are comments that are unbecoming to a public official.” She went on to say, “It’s very emotional for everybody across this country.”
MacCallum seems unfazed, however, by four years of the president of the United States calling dead veterans “losers,” Black athletes “sons of bitches,” predominantly Black countries “shitholes,” and neo-Nazis “very fine people.” And when Kelly — among others — choses to defend the president and call it bipartisan reporting, what she is really defending are four years of these actions, and showing that she is nothing short of a hard core Trump supporter, despite the fact that Trump once period-shamed her on live television.
But this shouldn’t come as any surprise to us: the same pundits, reporters, and GOP members who worked so hard to elect Trump, one of the most volatile leaders in American history, will, of course, try to protect his feelings now. But continuing to contest the results of the election seems less about ensuring a free and fair governing (especially considering that all of Trump’s voter fraud claims have failed to make any legal headway), and more about perpetuating a made-up attack on white conservatives. Much like Kelly losing her NBC show, the GOP losing the presidency is really just a consequence of the party’s own actions. And the majority of this country has had enough.
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