Donald Trump should be vulnerable to GOP challengers on countless issues, but Fox has made them all off-limits – By Matt Gertz (Media Matters) / May 24, 2023
Before a single debate — much less the casting of a single vote — the 2024 Republican presidential primary may already be over. Former President Donald Trump has a commanding lead in the polls, with party bigwigs and funders lining up behind him. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who once appeared to be Trump’s most formidable challenger, has floundered in the leadup to this week’s official announcement of his campaign. Other candidates who have already launched their campaigns haven’t shown much support and seem to be making plays for future races or simple attention.
Trump’s Republican opponents have a lot of trouble explaining why, exactly, voters should prefer them instead. The former president would seem to have a wide array of vulnerabilities: He is a twice-impeached bigot recently found liable for sexual abuse whose actions are under scrutiny from multiple state and federal criminal probes and whose previous race ended in attempted election subversion and violent insurrection. But other GOP candidates are loath to mention any of those issues, instead relying on banal calls for a new generation of leadership and glancing suggestions that Trump is part of a “culture of losing.”
Their conundrum stems from the cult of personality that the GOP and its propaganda outlets became during Trump’s presidency.
