On Sirius XM, Angelo Carusone explains why MAGA media will rely on bigoted attacks on Kamala Harris to activate their audience
Carusone: “Their base demands it. There's no way to activate them on anything else. ... It all gets down to this otherizing. You have to make her seem so deeply foreign and disconnected from what they see as America.”
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On Sirius XM, Angelo Carusone explains why MAGA media will rely on bigoted attacks on Kamala Harris to activate their audience
Citation
From the July 25, 2024, edition of SiriusXM's The Dean Obeidallah Show
ANGELO CARUSONE (GUEST): I would say that part of — the part where I'm like oh, it's just not clear here — it is not yet -- the Republican apparatus that sort of drives these cycles, it's all — the oppo and all that other stuff, they just don't know what they're doing yet.
Like, you know, the Republican National Convention — the clipping of, like, I saw two days where they were, like, where Fox News was basically, like, brats are bad. You want a brat in charge? Like, guys, you're just totally missing the plot here. You look stupid. You look stupid. And the RNC research where they're clipping things where she said the f word. They go, you know, you have to kick the f-ing door down. Like, look at that. How could she say the f word? The clips that they're putting on their oppo research are actually things that make her look positive. Like, they just don't know what they're doing yet. And I think that that is –
DEAN OBEIDALLAH (HOST): But their instinct is that — as you guys have wrote an article about it and it's at Media Matters, their instinct is to go racist and sexist. Right?
CARUSONE: Yes.
OBEIDALLAH: So right now, they're pushing back on Republicans who say calling her DEI hire and all that, that's gonna break. Let me get your prediction. As the polls change today, Morning Consult poll, national poll, Harris up by one. As that continues to grow and Harris up by four and five, there's no way they're gonna be able to hold that back because they have to fuel that because they could -- that's the only thing to get their base out. That's it.
CARUSONE: And the thing is they're stuck. They don't have a choice. They have to do it because their base, like you said, their base demands it. There's no way to activate them on anything else. You have to activate them on that. And it all gets down to this otherizing. You have to make her seem so deeply foreign and disconnected from what they see as America, and that's what they've been telling us.
And, you know, it started a little bit with this idea that she's not a mother, that she doesn't have a biological child, and that was, like, a bizarre and weird attack and probably will backfire — will backfire, but they won't. They're going have to go race. You know, they will struggle with how to do it in a way that lets them have it both ways, but they will. They will do it; they will. And that's gonna be their challenge because their audience wants it.
And so even if just like in some ways, you know, they become captivated by your own audience, they pump so much of this into the bloodstream that this is the only fuel that fuel that car runs on right now. And so whether or not even Trump says it, it will be there because that is the animating principle. And, it's off-putting and disturbing, and it will be a real issue. It will be an issue for them. They just don't have a choice.