The message isn't the issue

The monetization of chaos

I don’t think a day goes by that I don’t hear somebody rage about the ineptitude of the ‘resistance’ (which is a catch-all for non-MAGAphiles I guess).

Why isn’t Trump’s name synonymous with Epstein’s by now? How the hell did we let a man who partied with a known child trafficker rebrand himself as a savior of children?

Why isn’t it front-page news that he’s still raking in millions off the presidency-violating the Emoluments Clause like it’s a loyalty test?

Why do we keep acting like “both sides” are equally flawed, when one side is openly promoting values that are antithetical to the liberty and freedom we’ve vowed to protect?

I could fill pages with the ‘why’s,’ and I’ll also tell you that the simple answer is ‘where?’

Where is the pushback supposed to happen? Where can the message be disseminated?

The failure doesn’t rest with the Democrats, moderates, or reasonable human beings.

It rests with the Fourth Estate.

The media is supposed to serve as a check on power. But in this age of infinite scroll-bait, they’ve become a funnel for it. The press isn’t just failing to hold Trump accountable- they’re actively feeding his rise.

Why? Because Donald Trump cracked the attention economy wide open. He doesn’t need policy or principle. He dominates the stage by being outrageous, bombastic, unpredictable, shitty, and weird. He’s a glitch in the algorithm that the algorithm can’t stop boosting.

And corporate media? They love it.

Every tantrum is a ratings spike. Every dog whistle is a headline. Every fascist fantasy is a chyron.

The truth is, Trump didn’t win over the press with charm. He broke it-and now he owns the pieces.

Mainstream media isn’t neutral. It’s consolidated, corporatized, and captured. And those corporations? They care about quarterly earnings, not democratic guardrails. Trump’s rise is their profit model. Which is why even his ugliest moments get framed as "controversial" instead of "dangerous," and why the press continues to normalize the abnormal in the name of both-sidesism.

This isn’t a bug. It’s the business model.

That’s also why public media-independent, underfunded, and non-commercial—poses such a massive threat to Trump, MAGA, and P2025. Real journalism isn’t profitable in the traditional sense. It’s disruptive. It challenges power rather than sucking up to it. It tells stories that matter, even if they don’t trend. It calls out the insanity.

But when our entire reality is shaped by what we see, hear, and share, control of the narrative becomes control of the future. And right now? The narrative is rigged.

We’re not losing the message war because our message is weak. We’re losing because the loudest megaphones are owned by people who profit from our failure—and from Trump’s chaos.

If democracy is going to survive this, we can’t just win elections. We have to reclaim the media.

And that means funding public journalism, supporting independent creators, and calling out corporate complicity every time it launders extremism for engagement.

Because until we do, Trump won’t need to silence the press.

They’ll keep doing it for him.