On MSNBC's The 11th Hour, Angelo Carusone describes how right-wing narrative dominance in online spaces is helping to keep Republicans from speaking out on the devastation of Trump's tariffs
Carusone on MAGA media dominance in new media versus the economic harm of Trump's tariffs: “If we're not able to connect the harms that people experience to the policies of Donald Trump, they are going to spin an alternative narrative”
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From the April 24, 2025, edition of MSNBC's The 11th Hour with Stephanie Ruhle
STEPHANIE RUHLE (HOST): Angelo, Trump's approval rating shows that 38% of people approve of how he's handling the economy. Like — the economy is supposed to be his jam, right? I talked to so many business leaders during the campaign who were like, I can't stand him. He's not my guy. However, he knows business. She doesn't know business. And look where we are. What does that tell you?
ANGELO CARUSONE (PRESIDENT, MEDIA MATTERS FOR AMERICA): I mean, a few things. One, when we think about polls broadly — and I want to caution against that, because when we say people, we want to know who those people are.
RUHLE: Great point.
CARUSONE: Worth remembering that Donald Trump built and organized power on what used to be considered the fringes. And the fringes were never reflected in polls, which is why he's always beaten expectations when it comes to the polls translating into power and politics, right? And if those numbers were really reflective of what was on the ground right now, why are there not more Republicans speaking out? Why is the only person — Republican speaking out Don Bacon? I mean, it's because they know their politics, and their audience is still with Donald Trump very intensely. And that is because the right-wing has narrative dominance. And if you look at the broader information ecosystem, the one that most people are consuming every day, the vibes are great.
And they know that it's painful. So, yeah, the economy is not doing great right now, but there's a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. And Donald Trump is leading us there. They are being promised that main street's going to open back up again, that all the stores that they walked by, you know, that are now boarded up, are going to reopen. It's just a few years away, maybe even a few months, depending on how hard Donald Trump pushes. And everybody just needs to trust him and get on board with it.
And that's where I think there's a disconnect here, because the polls are going down, but they are not measuring the atmosphere. Because if that's the case, the politics does not reflect what's with the polls. Anybody else with those numbers, right? The politics would sort of bend around it. And that's because when you really look at what is driving things right now, the landscape, the vibes are great.
RUHLE: Damn. I told you I was your fan, and you are delivering. But couldn't we also attribute that to the first hundred days is a grace period, and people are just relying on information. But when we go to buy back to school items for our kids in August and they cost twice as much or there's no trapper keepers for sale, if suddenly our loved ones had those federal jobs and they were cut or we don't have a Social Security office to go to, doesn't quite matter what OAN or Fox News is telling us. Our lives will be worse.
CARUSONE: Yes. You're describing something very important, which is an opportunity. An opportunity for people to see the consequences of Donald Trump's actions and connect those consequences to him specifically. And that's the thing that matters right now, which is that if we're not able to connect the harms that people experience to the policies of Donald Trump, they are going to spin an alternative narrative that involves — give him more power. This is just malicious implementation. This is just more of the deep state trying to push back against us, something that is keeping Pete Hegseth in power right now — this argument about the deep state.
I mean, in a way, they've inoculated themselves against a lot of consequences. So you're right. That is gonna be a reality.
There are less ships coming out of China right now. There's gonna be a harder access to shelves in the in the — come summertime. But it — whether or not people see that as a direct consequence of Trump is an open question. And Democrats are the opposition party. They need to be the ones to help connect those dots, but so does the rest of the news media and the public.
And that is the test.
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RUHLE: I want to go back to your point, Angelo, because I get the power and influence of right media.
CARUSONE: Mhmm.
RUHLE: But people do leave their homes and turn the television off. And when they go outside their home, they have to live. Right? We're already seeing, trucking numbers are the almost the lowest they've been since COVID. We have all sorts of businesses warning there won't be items on the shelves.
Things are going to get way more expensive. Home prices just dropped the most they have since 2022. There's not an easy way out. So isn't there great political risk for Republicans who remain silent? Because at some point, running on grievance runs out because this is a self-created crisis.
CARUSONE: Yep.
RUHLE: There will be no one to point to except the president.
CARUSONE: And you're just laying out the calculus that many are not right now for them, which is why they should be acting now. And they're still making a bet that the narrative is gonna prevail with Trump, that, you know, power perceived as power achieved. Right? And that's why you see law firms caving. That's why you see institutions bending to him.
Even though these numbers are abysmal, even though everything you point out is true, that we're walking to a cliff, there are people still that that perception is reality. And every day that goes by, that perception becomes more of a reality. And that calculus is not an argument that Democrats are making right now. That is the — why do we not know the name of every single Republican that won in a district that Harris won? That's a failure of the Democratic party.
I don't wanna bash them, but they're the opposition party. The media needs to be a a part of this, but they're not the opposition. And I think that is the thing that everybody is missing. That ultimately that people are gonna come to this realization and connect those dots. And I right now, the trend line does not suggest that people are gonna connect those dots.
The trend line suggests all the harms are gonna be real, but who gets blamed for that and who then benefits from those consequences? Right now, people are assuming, these Republicans, that in a scrum, when things really get chaotic, that in that scrum, Trump will somehow take that rage and channel that for energy for himself and for more political power.
RUHLE: He's a very skilled politician.
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RUHLE: Well, clearly, we need reminding because a new poll out, Angelo, shows that only 50% of Americans disapprove of Russia. Three years ago, that number was 70.
CARUSONE: Yeah. I mean, and that is a long-term effort where, you know, they have really been pushing Russia as sort of, you know, not as the antagonist that everybody's making them out to be. You know, basically, there was a point in time where anything that was that was seen as, you know, the media's narrative or the Democrats' narrative against Trump, the opposite of that becomes sort of the conventional wisdom amongst Republicans. So Russia used to be a major enemy. Right?
Think about Mitt Romney identifying it rightfully so as a major antagonist. But that shifted when Democrats and the media rightfully pointed out that there was an alignment between Russia and Donald Trump during his first term. And now, you know, the same way they go on science or any other policy, Russia sort of became — they'd rather own the libs and stick it to the Democrats in the media than to actually call Russia for what it is.
RUHLE: The truth matters, but only if you hear it. So we better keep telling it