I think one of the reasons that Trump has done such a bad job at handling this scandal,

it's related to things that we talked about with Kurt Mills about the Iran-Israel situation

that I wrote about in my column that was about the same thing, which is that Trump doesn't

really understand how the MAGA media universe is organized anymore.

He more or less just watches Fox and he doesn't listen to the podcasts.

And he's aware that there's all these people who support him, but he's not really plugged into it.

He doesn't really get that there's all these people who have made

a lot of money and a career for themselves and kind of have a huge audience. So they may be

loyal to Trump, but they also, this is a red line that they can't cross without losing their

audience. So they have like a financial like incentive that's in conflict with Trump's desire for

everyone to just shift on a dime the way they normally do.

Like there's so many things that Trump can do where his propagandists will just like

massage it so that it seems like what they always thought.

And this is just this is the first one where

it's like, no, you can't do this. Like they can't do it, you know, maybe to give them credit

because they really think it matters. They've convinced themselves that it's a serious issue

and that like Trump was elected to uproot the pedophile cabal, but also because if they do,

they will, they could compromise their like, you know, their source of income.

They're captured by their audience. The thing about MAGA is that it's like, yes, it's a political

movement, but it's also just a way for a lot of people to get attention and make money.

And most of the time, that is completely compatible with just defending Trump at every turn.

And this is a rare issue where they are in conflict. They're in contradiction. I also think that

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