Will Mr & Mrs Moses Wear A Bandana Now?

DONALD TRUMP became the 47th President of the United States of America because he lost the election in Washington DC by the astonishing vote margin of 92.4 per cent to 6.7 per cent. You read that right. Trump won because he lost in Washington DC by an incredible 85 per cent.

This statistic establishes beyond any doubt how far the capital of America has moved from America.

Kamala Harris was the candidate of the capital. She was a protégée of the elitist monarchs of Washington DC, King Barack and Queen Michelle Obama, their smug pseudo-strategists who thought that any nominee could slide past any question on policy with a non-sequitur during a campaign of just 107 days, claim that they had done nothing wrong whatsoever in the past four years, and trounce a Republican speaking the language of garbage. Kamala Harris was being nothing less than sincere when she told America that there was no need to change policy on either inflation or immigration since she and her principals were rich enough to live above the economy, and immigrants in their electoral calculus added to the Democrat vote. This campaign was carried out by cohorts in some of America’s most influential media.

Donald Trump is not penniless either. But his mind lived in America, not on Heaven Avenue.

This American election reminded me of Richard Nixon’s alleged motto: ‘If two wrongs don’t make a right, try three.’ Why? When we say we are watching American elections, we are wrong. We are watching Big American Media watching American elections. This prism gets distorted when some powerful newspapers and television channels, following an agenda of self-interest, set aside objectivity and manipulate reportage or interviews to suit their preferences. This exercise in power has become a peculiar phenomenon of the golden eggshell between Washington and New York.

Big American Media is now a 21st-century Moses. It talks to God, and then gives orders to followers on the route to its Promised Land, which is always on the horizon and never within reach. Its Ten Commandments are ten versions of a single commandment: Thou shalt obey because We know what is good for thee. Hellfire descends on those who dare question its lofty pronouncements. When Jeff Bezos, owner of the Washington Post, refused to endorse either candidate, he was eviscerated because he had transgressed the Moses Line. Bezos spoke the “hard truth” when he wrote in his paper that Americans do not trust the news media because it has become too partisan. Members of his editorial board resigned; some 250,000 readers cancelled their digital subscriptions. They were the vanguard of the force which gave Kamala Harris 92.4 per cent of the vote. Bezos has been vindicated by the results.

Democracy works because voters keep their eyes open and remember pain. Free media is relevant only when it keeps its mind open. In this election, America’s most important news channel CNN was so skewered against Trump that it refused to believe its own exit poll which showed that 72 per cent of voters had become angry and distraught after four years of inflation. Fox News had similar numbers in its exit poll; 70 per cent put the economy as their principal worry. CNN was so consumed by bias against Trump that it spent most of its coverage on results night praying that its exit poll would be proven wrong. The Almighty is too sensible to answer prayers of the mighty.

Unsurprisingly, foreign correspondents who travelled outside the sticky bubble were more accurate. In October Edward Lucas, of The Times, London, spent a week in the eggshell with “foreign policy wonks”, all of whom believed Trump would be an apocalyptic disaster, and none of whom took up Lucas’ suggestion that they check with voters living in Pennsylvania, a crucial swing state just 90 minutes’ drive away. Whoever he spoke to was busy. Lucas went. He discovered, as he wrote in the October 21 edition of his paper, that the Kamala Harris headquarters was “worryingly short of volunteers”. The bustle was around the Trump stall selling baseball caps reading ‘Jesus Is My Saviour, Trump Is My President’. Independent voters, the only category he quoted, believed that Harris had been hopeless on their biggest concern, illegal immigration. They dismissed Harris as “a weak candidate with a weak record and weak messages, wildly overpromoted, boosted by a fawning liberal media and a sinister, duplicitous, left-wing Democratic political machine”.

Harris was never elected by her party, as is the American way. She was anointed by the Obamas and party hegemons like Nancy Pelosi on the assumption that anyone could defeat the dustbin candidate. Harris had impeccable credentials in their estimation; she was obedient and could be trusted to leave all decisions to grown-ups like the Obamas while she presided over the residual ceremonies. Now that voters have done what they do, Democrat patriarchs will blame America for the result, never themselves. Mr and Mrs Moses can do no wrong. Alas, they will have to wear a bandana for the next four years to stop the stench of Republican “garbage” from affecting their delicate nostrils.

Trump went out dancing after his last speech of the 2024 campaign because he knew he had trotted around a largely hostile media to reach the White House. An electoral majority is the sum of many parts. His main base was the politically incorrect male, white and young American. They were the principal battering ram against the establishment, aided by supplementary groups who joined an impromptu alliance for disparate reasons. Independent voters, who constituted 31 per cent of the American vote this time, voted 54 per cent to 43 per cent for Trump according to early indications; the final figure could vary but I doubt by much. Latinos, once expected to serenade Harris to the White House, shifted in good numbers to Trump because inflation did not exclude them from its whiplash. Harris lost at least 10 per cent of the black vote that had backed Joe Biden in 2024. Arab Americans in Michigan turned away from Harris despite Trump’s strong support for Israel because they wanted to punish the Biden administration for duplicity in its decisions on Palestine and the Gaza Strip. They deliberately wasted their vote on a third candidate.

There were non-political indicators of the result. The price of Bitcoin rose by 3 per cent since Trump has promised to legitimise this outlier currency. Or you could have checked with the American gambling company Betfair, which was telling punters Trump would win. In London, British bets went heavily in favour of Trump. British gamblers, second only to the Chinese in their dedication to a flutter, were certain that Trump would win Pennsylvania, Arizona, Georgia, Nevada, and North Carolina, or five of the seven swing states, which means they were better informed than Big American Media. Any television channel could have foretold the result by 7AM Indian time, by the simple methodology of reporting leads. But some kept delaying reportage in the hope that an unexpected miracle would shift the emerging pattern. They refused to recognise Republican gains in the Senate elections, happening simultaneously, as part of the Trump effect. When the battle was lost and won, Trump, who got three million fewer votes than Hillary Clinton in 2016 and seven million less than Joe Biden in 2020, had over five million more votes than Kamala Harris. After all the preceding tension, this became an earthquake without tremors.

The exemplary impartiality of one VIP in the media stands out amidst the usual plethora of anecdotes that emerge from a tumultuous election campaign. In London Boris Johnson was hired by Channel 4 for commentary in the glorious company of Stormy Daniels. Johnson refused to promote either Donald Trump or Kamala Harris. Instead, with commendable dedication, he concentrated on promoting his latest book, until, according to a newspaper report, he was “fired” for talking about his book and holding it up for viewers to see the cover so they could rush out and buy a copy. As Moses might say: Amen.

About The Author

MJ Akbar

MJ Akbar is the author of, among several titles, Tinderbox: The Past and Future of Pakistan. His latest book is Gandhi: A Life in Three Campaigns

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