Not My Party: The Trump Reinstatement Is Here (In His Imagination)

This post is a transcript of Not My Party. You can find it every Thursday on Snapchat.

The Trump reinstatement is here!. . . in his imagination.

When it comes to politics, it seems like our country is living in two worlds. Here on Earth 1, we’re facing some real-life problems. The recent U.N. Climate Report was dire and warned of increasing temperatures and extreme weather events. The vaccine numbers are slowly going up but hospitals and ICUs are filling up with the stubbornly unvaccinated.

“It is not nice to lose a 27-year-old patient, especially one that was not vaccinated. The nurses really cry about that.” [Medical professional]

So, please tell your pals to get the jab.

But rather than deal with these real-world problems, about a third of the country is stuck on an imaginary Earth 2, where infectious disease doctors and climate scientists are part of a mysterious cabal and Donald Trump remains the president. And in that world, s**t is wild.

One of the most influential Earth 2 figures is the Pillowman, a former meth addict and current bed cushion magnate who promises that Trump will be reinstated as president on Friday the 13th. Pillowman told Trump’s former chief strategist, sloppy Steve Bannon, that he’s plotting with the son of Brazilian strongman Jair Bolsonaro to return Trump to power. This madness is on one of the top-five most listened to news podcasts in America, watch.

“It’s a matter of fact, Trump won and Trump won in a landslide.” [Bannon]

“Donald Trump won 80 million to 68 million.” [Pillowman Mike Lindell]

“According to Mike Lindell restore president Trump for his rightful place [sic].” [Bannon]

And the Pillow Plot seems vaguely plausible when compared to this end-times batsh*tery from a conservative pastor.

“I know for a fact that he has already been inaugurated and is president.” [Pastor]

Down in Arizona, a group of so-called Cyber Ninjas are continuing a months-long election audit, which is an utter farce but is being treated in MAGA media like the stone tablets being brought down from the Mount. Meanwhile, when the Burnt Orange Orbán isn’t golfing, he sending bizarro scam fundraising emails, holding pretend voter fraud summits, and according to his former chief of staff, he’s even hosting imaginary cabinet meetings. Watch:

“Well, we met with some of our cabinet members tonight, we wouldn’t be meeting tonight if we weren’t making plans to move forward in a real way.” [Mark Meadows]

Y’all, this is crazy town. This man is one step away from becoming a full-on Confederate cosplay Jefferson Davis, wearing a tri-cornered hat and carrying an imaginary musket into battle against the Union Army.

Now you, as a sane and rational Not My Party viewer, might gaze over at Earth 2 and say, ‘Tim who cares? These loons are outnumbered. They’re loud but harmless.’ And I wish that were true.

Here’s the problem. The one-third of our country disconnected from reality poses a real threat to democracy. People who believe this stuff have important jobs. Consider this: Former Acting Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen recently testified about January’s attempted coup. He said that this Humpty Dumpty looking fool, Jeff Clark, actively helped Trump try to subvert the election when Clark was the assistant attorney general. And a new report details how Trump’s former chief of staff, Mark Meadows, the same Loony Toon from the imaginary cabinet meetings, spent months trying to change the election results in Georgia, New Mexico, and elsewhere. In Colorado, I reported on a MAGA County Clerk’s Office that leaked the passwords to their own voting machines to a QAnon leader in order to try to prove that the election machines were vulnerable. Insane.

Now here’s the thing. Imagine you are one of the people that really, truly believe this stuff. You think the country and everything you hold dear is being stolen from you by dark, unseen forces. Might a person like that avoid getting vaccinated? Might they storm the capital to try to overturn an election? Might they do something even worse?

Those of us living on Earth 1 can’t just ignore this. It affects us all. And the more people we pull away from the Earth 2 brink, the better it’ll be for everybody.