WITH RUSH DEAD AND TRUMP OUT OF OFFICE, CNN HAS PICKED THEIR NEXT EMMANUEL GOLDSTEIN: Tucker Carlson is the new Trump — because there is nobody else.

‘Tucker Carlson is the new Donald Trump.’ So said CNN’s Brian Stelter on his Sunday program, Reliable Sources.

Stelter was apparently handed his own TV show based on the principle that at least one CNN host ought to resemble the network’s target audience. Nevertheless, he is correct. Progressivism needs Tucker to be Trump, and so for the moment, he is.

To work in cable in the age of Donald Trump was to live life on easy mode. For years, channels tried desperately to hook viewers with endless updates on missing white women, murdered white women or murdering white women. Suddenly, with Trump, none of that was needed. Every day brought a fresh outrage, a new ridiculous statement or tweet or national policy. The news cycle shrank from a week to a day to mere hours in some cases.

Print journalism wasn’t spared. The New York Times abandoned its post of affected neutrality, discovering that it could dramatically expand its subscriber base and keep winning Pulitzers as a full-time resistance paper. Other publications followed.

But what can the #Resistance do without someone to resist? For five years, progressives shrieked for a Donald Trump Twitter ban. Now, the president is gone, out of office and apparently uninterested in appearing on any media platform he doesn’t own. While his press releases read exactly like tweets, they are few and far between.

Like Tom without Jerry, Scratchy without Itchy, or Stacey Abrams without the McDonald’s Supersize option, progressivism is lost without the Bad Orange Man to transfix their viewers and themselves. CNN and MSNBC ratings have tanked in recent months.

Progressivism clearly needs a bogeyman — and Tucker Carlson is quickly filling the 45th president’s void.

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