From Woke to Awakened — RFK Jr.’s Running Mate: The Media Lied to Me About MAGA

Media “bias aids Democratic candidates by about 8 to 10 percentage points in a typical election,” informed Professor Tim Groseclose in his 2011 book Left Turn. As to this bias’ reality, there’s a story currently in the news that illustrates it well. To wit:

Nicole Shanahan, billionaire, entrepreneur, and Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s running mate, just made a startling confession. “I was completely misinformed about what MAGA is,” she admitted in a recent interview.

And it was the media that misinformed her.

(Now, who, again, is spreading “misinformation”?)

The Transformation Begins

American Thinker (AT) reports on the story, writing that until “recently, Shanahan’s political orientation was Democrat. For 20 years, she’s donated to Democrat candidates and funded Democrat issues.” The website provides quite a bit of biographical information on Shanahan, too. It informs us, for instance, that she holds some anti-establishment positions (e.g., she’s suspicious of Big Pharma). But we’ll pick up the story with her entrance into politics. As AT relates:

In March 2024, Shanahan joined Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., as his running mate in his independent presidential campaign. By this time, Shanahan had already witnessed the Democrat party freeze Kennedy out of the primaries, and from March forward, she saw Democrats ensure that Kennedy couldn’t get on most state ballots.

Now that the campaign is over and Kennedy has endorsed Trump, Shanahan has done a few press appearances—with conservatives, everyone from Jesse Watters to Adam Carolla. What’s interesting is that [due to] this exposure to actual conservatives, rather than to the leftist caricature of conservatives, … as she told Dave Smith [host of the Part of the Problem podcast], she now understands how the media and the Democrat establishment have consistently lied about conservatives and the MAGA movement.

In Her Own Words

As Shanahan told Smith about her quasi-red-pill moment:

You know, actually, the best part of joining forces with Trump has been seeing MAGA, which I’m learning so much about. I was completely misinformed about what MAGA is.

I don’t know if you’ve taken any deep dives into MAGA-world, but I was just under the impression that they were gun-toting radicals who wanted to come to my doorstep and rip my liberal family out of my house, and, I don’t know, do horrible things to liberals. And that’s how … MAGA has been sold to a huge portion of America by the mainstream media.

And I have to say that what I have learned about MAGA is that they’re actually their own party. They’re their own grassroots organization that chose Donald Trump. They have so much power in deciding where to point their energy and support.

And they are really, really smart, thoughtful, intellectual people within MAGA. I’ve received beautifully written notes from MAGA supporters….

You know, our base didn’t know how to engage with MAGA. Our base was not, you know, MAGA-oriented in the sense of even knowing who and what MAGA was…. [Video below.]

Myth vs. Reality

The detachment from reality Shanahan experienced is an interesting phenomenon. While everyone can fall victim to prejudice, conservatives do understand liberals more than vice versa. One reason (there are others) for this is that “leftism” is today’s establishment default. With it thus pervading culture-shaping media, entertainment, academia, and Big Tech, it’s hard to avoid exposure to liberal ideas.

In contrast, by imbibing just mainstream media and associating only with co-ideologists, left-wingers can live in a faux-reality bubble. Consider, too, that our entertainment portrays leftism as the enlightened default while presenting straw-man, comic-book-versions of conservatives (e.g., Archie Bunker). Perhaps coincidentally, this is precisely the conception the pre-awakening Shanahan and other liberals have of “MAGA types.”

Hardly Alone

Speaking of which, Shanahan has company in her awakening. Just yesterday, in fact, a columnist named Adam B. Coleman related how he “was a Trump hater” — until he “learned the truth of the media’s ‘very fine’ lies.”

Writing at the New York Post, Coleman admits that he “used to be one of those naïve people who thought the American media placed the public’s interest ahead of their own.” He consequently believed all the vile calumnies the press peddled about Trump. That is, until he began investigating the Charlottesville “good people on both sides” myth and learned he’d been deceived. “I felt racially manipulated,” he wrote, and then later added:

When you’re confronted with betrayal as you unveil a lie, you’re left with an obvious question: If they’re willing to lie to me about this, what else are they lying about?

I was a Democrat because I presumed that the main ingredient of the information I was being served was authenticity, never imagining it was laced with poisonous falsehoods.

Then there’s the pink-haired young woman who posted a short video here (language warning). She explains that while she once hated Trump, she has realized she was misinformed — and now will vote for him.

Too Little, Too Late?

Multiplying this by thousands perhaps paints the picture of “the awakened.” Tragically, though, multiplying that figure by many more may represent those still asleep.

This brings us back to Professor Groseclose’s estimate that mainstream media bias aids Democrats by eight to 10 points every election. Know here, too, that Big Tech bias aids Democrats further. One estimate, for example, holds that it can shift up to 15 million votes toward them at election time.

Some may now say, “Wow, 10 percent plus up to 15 million votes! Subtract that from Democrats’ column, and they’d never win another election!”

Actually, though, they would.

Democrats wouldn’t simply die on the hill of left-wing lunacy. Rather, they’d proceed as political parties always do: They’d adapt. In their case, they’d adopt a more moderate, more pro-American platform to stay viable.

And that’s what is so tragic here. If the media did their job, it would help our entire country — including the Democrats. They’d become a better, more honest party. The Republicans would improve, too, unencumbered by vicious, agenda-stifling propaganda. And Americans would have better government, with the greater and lesser of two evils both being greater and lesser still.

But, of course, Heaven on Earth does not exist. This temporal fold doesn’t, though, media take note, have to be Hell, either.