Republican lawmakers are finding themselves at a disadvantage when they venture out of the right-wing media bubbles in which they and their hardcore supporters exist, according to a Washington Post columnist.
Rep. Glenn Grothman (R-WI) faced boos after returning to his ruby-red district as town hall attendees vented their rage over Donald Trump's first month in office, as did Rep. Richard McCormick (R-GA) and other GOP lawmakers who heard from angry constituents. Post columnist Philip Bump appeared on MSNBC's "Morning Joe" to explain the dynamic fueling those confrontations.
"It's important to recognize that those town halls are a rare moment in which a Republican elected official from Washington, D.C., faces exposure to something outside of the universe of media coverage that the right dominates, right, and we've long talked about the fact that the right has its own media infrastructure and it exists in this bubble," Bump said.
"One of the things that's happened over the course of the past several months with Trump's return to Washington is that it has enveloped D.C., as well, that the right-wing bubble now controls D.C. and the federal government in a way that it didn't usually, and so for Republican legislators who rely upon what's happening on Fox News or rely upon what's happening on Twitter for information and for an understanding of what the base is agitated about, they are hearing a whole different set of things that is reinforced within that bubble that is different than what a lot of Americans are hearing."
Trump enjoys broad support among Republicans, but he's deeply unpopular with Democrats and has the support of about half of independents. Bump said that GOP lawmakers are encountering that opposition firsthand.
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"We talk about Trump's, you know, he's coming back and he's all chuffed up and he's feeling very bold," Bump said. "But he won very narrowly, and there's tens of millions of Americans who disagree with him and who don't subscribe to that universe of information, and that's who Glenn Grothman and other folks are encountering, the people who are not subject to that universe in which false claims elevate very quickly and are spread rampant."
Republicans hold narrow majorities in both houses of Congress, as well as having control of the White House, but Bump said the right-wing media bubble could encourage them to overstep their mandate.
"It's really remarkable the extent to which it is also self-reinforcing, right, so there are claims that are made and Jesse Watters from Fox News encapsulated it very, very accurately, I think, last week in which he said that there are claims that are made in social media, and Elon Musk retweets them and Joe Rogan puts them on his podcast and then Fox News, and by the time it gets on Fox News, millions of people have heard them, and that's true – it's 100 percent true," Bump said.
"The difference is that it used to be, the role of the media was to say, actually, we're not going to amplify fake things, we're not going to say, you know, 'Oh, look, everyone's talking about this,' if what they're talking about is false, and so the challenge for Republicans, not for Trump, because he exists in this universe and he helps create this universe, but for Republicans who are responsible to constituents, is that they exist in a world where they don't hear any of the contrary information – they literally don't."
"They hear from their base and they hear from, you know, their colleagues and their peers that this is how the world is when that's not how the world is," he added, "and then they go out into the world and they learn how the world is, and it can be jarring."
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