Along with The Majority Report folks, I also have to question Ana’s point as to what she was wrong about. She said that MAGA “hates” Project 2025. Is there any reliable data on this?
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Cenk and Ana seem to think the right-wingers they interact with on Xitter represent the majority, if not the entirety, of the opinion of Trump supporters.
Do we have to even entertain how flawed this assumption is?
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She did explain where she gets that conclusion in the clip, though. She didn’t point to a specific source of compiled data if there is any (a meta-analysis of favorability regarding the individual previsions in it would point to a favorability rate of the whole Project 2025 document… there must be already polls addressing these, I would have to check). She explained the train of thought that led her to conclude that, and it seemed to me a valid one. It could be argued that the reactions of the republican electorate across the town halls validates this conclusion. What do you think?
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If anyone has a link directly to Ana’s remarks, that would be great. At a quick look, all I can find is reactions to her remarks from other youtube sites.
Note I donated some money (or paid to be a member? I don’t remember which) via tyt.com, not via youtube.com. This means I can’t access member videos on youtube.com, if it’s a member video.
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That was my bad. Ana Kasparian Responds To Sam Seder and Emma Vigeland - YouTube.
I am now checking the portion in which she explains, I want to refresh my memory.
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Time stamp: 2:18. Her reasoning is the following (and I agree): it seems telling the audience what they want to hear (during the campaigns) is one of the few marketing tricks that DJT uses, and that this is indicative of the MAGA crowd not being on board with it.
Trump himself distancing from Project 2025 (even if only to save face) could be taken as an indicative of how desfavorable is for his constituent that position is. But it can be argued that he was trying to appeal the whole political spectrum.
I wasn’t so sure that DJT was telling the truth, though. If telling the audience what they want to hear is a strategy totally different than committing to be honest.
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Thanks for digging it up, I"ll take a look after work.
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I would say its a pretty fair assessment. I live in the heart of MAGA land and I do talk to MAGA folks all the time. I can tell you that if you ask one of them questions like “help me understand” it forces them to think critically for a minute. When you divorce policy from party, some of them are Progressive and they don’t realize it. I honestly want them to explain their positions to me, so I am sincere. I do want to understand, and when I do that I get surprising answers. Of course, there are plenty of ignorant racist assholes, but it is not all of them. The biggest opportunity lies with the MAGA women. See, when you live in a small, isolated town in the middle of Yellowstone, you go along to get along. When the wife talks, the entire tone changes. They’re Americas lost and forgotten. Yes, some do support the immigration “strategy” outlined in 2025. That alone is bad, but they dont want a king, even if it is dumb dumb. Also, maybe Ana and Cenk are trying to remain hopeful and they’re being overly optimistic. I can live with that. I dont think I could go on if I thought 30 percent of the country was in favor of Nazi Fascism. Problem is, even if its 10 or 15 percent, its a shitload of people. So, yeah, its all bad 
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It seems, to me, we could use more internal cohesion. People become Progressive for different reasons, and some have a myopic view of our most challenging issues. If our messaging does not have a broad appeal, we cant expect to win much going forward. Bernie is going after Oligarchy and his message is clear, concise and resonates with everyone. We need a unified brand and it cannot exclusively resonate with 20 percent or less of the population. If we dont win politically we cannot influence policy. Just sayin, if we all focused on the money in politics and the Oligarchy, we are not only going at the heart of all our political ills, EVERYONE agrees with the goal. Even though 30 percent of our country thinks more billionaires is the answer to having too many billionaires. Honestly, what scares me most about MAGA and dRumph is how unnatural it all seems. His bit should not work this well. I can’t quite make sense of it. If I believed in heaven and hell and all that, I would say maybe he is the Anti-Christ!!!
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Ana does this thing where for months and months she makes assertions based on her arguments with people online (snide comments, ascribed motives, sneering derision) without providing much evidence for her “tone.” Then, when she’s called out for being so dismissive of anyone who disagrees with her, she compiles a segment filled with arguments and justifications for her past statements, without really accepting any blame for the criticism she (and Cenk) claim is coming out of nowhere.
I’m just tired of it. I finally had to stop listening after almost two decades of being a fan of TYT. So I didn’t hear her response to MR, and decided not to listen to all of it linked to above. I tried for about a minute and couldn’t take the dripping condescension in her voice. I just can’t anymore.
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Wow, its weird how 2 people can look at the same person, yet each see something very different from one another. You should come back. We need the help!!! 
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[edited]
While Ana’s a big part of the reason that I am here, I’m sometimes frustrated with her (and I’m definitely not a Progressive).
And no, I could not do her job (can anyone imagine how much heat these folks must get?), and yes, I am offended by some (but not all) of the criticisms emanating from the Vanguard and the Majority Report.
I have edited this post way down because when I started to go through the link (there is too much covered in her response for me to just quickly digest it and comment on it intelligently), and when I thought more about it, I think we also have an obligation as internet commenters to be humble/respectful/etc. So, I’ll try to absorb more about her response before I come to some conclusion about whether or not I agree with her on broader issues.
On the narrower question I’ve asked here, there are some subtleties to work out as to when Trump is lying (imagine that) and when his supporters are of mixed views, or in some cases not as clear-cut as some might think, on a given matter or set of matters (such as Project 2025). I thought that Trump was lying as to whether he would try to implement much of Project 2025, and so far I think that has borne out at least to a decent degree.
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I am definitely a progressive. I was a huge fan of Ana, so when she shifted to the right, it was especially irksome. Now, her condescension toward “the left”, when she goes into that mode, is like nails on a chalkboard. In her and Cenk’s fight with MR, I find the latter much more persuasive. I’ve only seen snippets of the Vanguard.
Btw, two things I found especially annoying since TYT moved rightward the last couple years: 1) their massive blind spot about all things climate related and 2) every time Ana attacked Biden and said she couldn’t vote for the Democrat in the election, she never once added the caveat that she lived in California so her vote on the presidential line was essentially irrelevant. By omission then, she was providing audience members the permission structure to support Trump.
And yeah, her pre-election dismissiveness of Project 2025 was maddening. After all we’ve seen of the right-wing Republican movement, how could she possibly have been so gullible?
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Actually, Ana often said her non-vote for Harris wouldn’t matter because she lives in California. I like Ana a lot, and while I get angry at some of her commentary, I am mostly sad because I think she’s hurt and hurting herself. As much as I bitch about what she has to say at times, and I’m sure I will again in the future, her heart’s in the right place, and, for me, that’s pretty much everything. While I would love it if everyone on the planet was super Progressive, it doesn’t matter if she or anyone moves Right, Left, or Center, so long as they are a good person really trying their best. She’s a good person who’s been shit on a lot and needs support. I found that segment hard to watch because it seemed to me that it came from a place of pain.
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100% Drea. (Hopefully we are talking about the emma/tmr segment) To stick my neck out, i even got the sense that Ana is trying to subtly mend bridges and even though she was justifying her positions, she in the end decided to be the bigger person by starting the discussion on apologies and by including we are ALL human in the end, couldve just scripted that SHE was human and made a mistake. Imo all both sides have to do is admit they were wrong and publicly start back and forth sorry videos or someshit. I cant read Anas mind and say she wants to or is willing to be friends with them again but we all know, especially Ana and Cenk, that the infighting on “the left” is killing the movement. We have been taught rich want to divide and conquer, lets not allow it.
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Getting back to basics a little bit here, in retrospect, it was a goal of mine with this thread not so much to make it about Ana, but about the question that was raised as part of her “I was wrong” thing. Does (or did) Maga actually hate Project 2025? When I heard her say that she was wrong, but that this was the way in which she was wrong, I did not think that her thinking was yet full-on corrected, though she had made some progress.
I mentioned that I don’t have the link at hand for that episode. I do appreciate the link you posted, but that was to Ana’s response to Majority Report’s response. I still don’t have the original link to the full episode where Ana just said plainly that she was wrong and what she thought was wrong, but there is a short that TYT helpfully posted here:
TYT Ana Kasparian I Was WRONG About Project 2025!
I think there are also probably some links out there from TYT which get at where Ana’s thinking has been on project 2025 going back to a few months before the election.
What I really want to say is this, (and it is not fundamentally about whether I like or dislike any one commentator’s points of view on this):
There are different issues to unpack here:
- How truthful was Trump in distancing himself from Project 2025 prior to the election? (My own BS meter went off immediately… I thought he would not do everything he was told by the background cabal of right-wing thought leaders, and that sometimes he would defy them and/or some in his voters, but that he would be fine with enough of it to be very concerned…)
- How should we discuss whether Trump was or was not in favor of a 900 page document? Isn’t there work to do to have a mature discussion of this rather than just stating a quick thumbs-up or thumbs-down?
- How should we discuss whether Trump’s voters were or were not in favor of a 900 page document? I am not as in touch with MAGA thinking as some internet commentators, but my immediate thought was that Ana was mis-stating what she got wrong in that:
— MAGA voters might have mixed views on Project 2025 (my questions about this are not rhetorical… I still would like to know if there has been any reputable polling done).
— Trump might have mixed views on Project 2025, and is a political master (in my opinion) at reading the tea leaves and knowing when to go to town and start pushing for an issue that outsiders might claim he can’t sell to his voters and backers.
[cont.]
[cont.]
I believe you or someone had asked what I thought of Ana’s response, and as usual, when Ana sits down to do some research, she is often on the mark. But the MR folks were responding (at least in part) to Ana’s initial dismissiveness and gross over-simplification and I was to some extent with them on questioning where Ana was coming from on both her reasoning (I do think Trump would be willing at times to go against his voters, or be mis-perceived on this), and her claim (is a broad-brush claim appropriate that MAGA voters hate Project 2025). It would also be useful to know where Ana has been intellectually as to her evaluation of Project 2025 several months before the election. Perhaps the MR folks had that in mind.
In any event, while it may not fully sound like it, I believe there is some very rich discussion here to be had here. I also think that the Vanguard folks, when they are not being petty jerks (not everyone is a “grifter” who disagrees with you on matters of deep principle… they may just be highly principled people who hold different core principles than you and are honest about it, or are struggling to work out what they think… imagine that…)… they do have something to offer here and that the MR folks also have something to offer, along with the TYT hosts. But when the conversation is dragged into pettiness, then everyone in the room (including us listeners) loses.
I’ve been trying to read a bit more of a book called “Democracy in Chains” by Maclean. This book, and the thinking behind it, contributed to helping protect me from being naive to what some of the Republican thought-leaders were up to with Project 2025.
https://www.kobo.com/us/en/ebook/democracy-in-chains
Still, even without the book, my guess would have been that we needed to take Project 2025 very seriously. Yes, there is a difference between what the great mass of MAGA voters want and what some manipulative behind-the-scenes idealogues want, but those idealogues know their audiences well and know what they are doing, and have been chipping away at the Constitution for decades (the first couple of chapters of the book have helped with understanding this) and so I don’t think they crafted a document that would be just dead-on-arrival with MAGA voters in a number of its ideas.
I don’t mean to hold Ana over-much to some quick comment she made in a difficult brief segment,… what is important here is not to criticize Ana, but to get to having real discussion of some of what the document creators are up to, and whether they have created a document and taken other actions that will succeed (including getting enough MAGA support) in their ultimate goals.
She may have mentioned her vote for president not mattering in California once, maybe twice, but I’m positive it wasn’t often. I listened carefully every time she told us she could never vote for a Democrat in this election (and she did so a lot!) But she didn’t follow up with the disclaimer that she’s in California, so her calculus is different from voters in swing states. Her failure to include this info was incredibly irresponsible for someone with a platform as big as hers, imho.
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