Officials in President Donald Trump's administration are facing criticism from his supporters after failing to fulfill their promises.
Dan Bongino, Kash Patel and Pam Bondi created their own trap, the New York Times reported. By promoting conspiracy theories and promising to fix them, they've backed themselves into a corner that they can't "fix" something that doesn't exist.
"There is a basic recognition among the president’s advisers and allies, at least in private, that expectations have been allowed to get too far out in front of the facts," said the report. "But bridging the gap between campaign messaging and reality is never easy, particularly in an administration that espoused maximalism, bravado and bending the truth to fit its tactical objectives."
Co-author Glenn Thrush told MSNBC on Monday that GOP officials and leaders make fun of MAGA fans for being easily distracted from issues like the economy by manufactured fights with the governor of California.
"Look, I'll put it in the bluntest possible terms: White House officials and congressional Republican staffers have an expression for it. It's called 'zombie food. Feeding the zombies,'" he said.
"The sense is that they have stoked up — Trump and company — have stoked up the far right with the [Jeffrey] Epstein conspiracy. The issue of the cocaine that was found outside of the Situation Room during the Biden administration, which has spawned a zillion conspiracies. And then something far more important, the Justice Department and FBI investigation into the discovery of pipe bombs on the eve of the January 6th Capitol attack at the RNC and the DNC."
Thrush said normal people likely see those reports as straightforward, but "for the extreme far right," it's a different matter. "Because it seems to implicate this unproven and frankly, somewhat delusional theory that there was a large government conspiracy involving whoever put the pipe bombs in, you know, that will somehow mitigate the fact that Trump supporters stormed the Capitol. There's zero evidence for that so far."
For people like Bongino, who is "terminally online" and "tweets constantly," the goal has been to go after all of these conspiracy theories.
"He is on Fox News perpetually," said Thrush. "He is tweeting out everything that he does, and one of the things that he seems to be taking on as his own responsibility is defending the administration on its record of sort of pursuing investigations in these conspiracy theories. The problem is, [there's] not a lot of evidence to support any of this stuff."
Thrush said that in the abstract, Trump would be held accountable for the MAGA anger with people like Patel, Bongino, and Bondi.
"In reality, this is the way the whole system is geared," he explained. "These guys have adopted an employee model. They are not really appointees. Senate confirmed appointees, at least Bondi and Patel, in the conventional sense, they're behaving as employees, which is what Trump wants. And that entails basically doing what Trump wants to do, absorbing all the incoming and shutting up about it. This is the deal that these guys struck."
See his full comments in the video below or at the link here.
- YouTube youtu.be
