Angelo Carusone tells MS NOW's On The Line with Alicia Menendez: Where there used to be a Fox-Trump feedback loop, Trump is now “building his own feedback loop of really intense loyalists and AI slop”
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From the October 1, 2026, edition of MS NOW's On The Line with Alicia Menendez
ALICIA MENENDEZ (HOST): This is the danger, Angelo. Right? It's not just that he doesn't believe the polling and that he's going to a bunch of red states. It is about the fact that he is inoculating himself from the pain that Americans are feeling, even the pain his own supporters are feeling and articulating to someone like Jason. What is the danger, the substantive danger, not the political danger to Republicans, but the danger to us all of a president who lives in a different reality?
ANGELO CARUSONE (MEDIA MATTERS): So, we have two more years of him being president. So, you know, I think there's this idea, this to many people, I know my friends and others feel relief. Oh, it's just November. That's the finish line. No. That's not the finish line. That's just the halfway mark. We have two more years.
And why that matters is your question. Because one of the things that he's done is not just insulate himself and sort of, you know, avoid all this stuff, but create this sort of cycle that Ruth Ben-Ghiat describes as autocratic backfire, which is that you actually lean in and intensify all of the most destructive impulses, not just to the politics, and that's the smallest ball, but to all of the larger policy issues. And you — there's nothing to stop you or even to dissuade you or disconnect you from that.
And we shouldn't lose sight of the fact that when he is not using AI to manufacture a visual or video reality for himself, he's surrounding himself— these campaign things, I think of them more like a production schedule than a campaign rally, because what he's basically doing is creating content that he's then going to post on Truth Social and on socials and possibly in these ads and distribute and reinforce the narrative that he's telling himself. And who is with him on this? Not just his own people, but Steve Bannon's production team is following him around for behind the scenes stuff and clipping.
So, he is really creating that own — what used to be the Fox News feedback loop. At least there was some filter. Now he's just building his own feedback loop of really intense loyalists and AI slop, which is going to intensify the autocratic backfire that we're all going to have to suffer over the next two years.