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Refusing the black pill: How to remain optimistic about Trump's chances this November despite online doomers
Despite surging polling numbers for former President Donald Trump and an opponent with a radical policy platform who regularly dodges the media, some self-identifying conservatives still have a bad feeling about the upcoming election, and they share all the gory details about that sickening feeling on social media.
Such a phenomenon has a name — black-pilling — and it tends to spread rapidly, especially on the political right.
Blaze News decided to investigate the black-pilling phenomenon to better understand the issue so as to offer Trump supporters strategies to prevent falling prey to it and instead remain optimistic as the 2024 election season kicks into high gear.
What is black-pilling?
The terms black pill, black-pillers, and black-pilling may seem strange to some who do not spend too much of their time on X, but their meanings are just as dour and foreboding as they sound.
Jack Posobiec — Human Events senior editor who has a massive 2.7 million followers on X — gave an illustrative definition to Blaze News.
'Fight! fight! fight!'
"A black pill is something that gives despair. So a black-piller or someone who is black-pilled, this is someone who has become totally ensnared by despair."
Blaze Media digital strategist Logan Hall described black-pillers similarly. "It's people who generally, when you have the energy on your side, always find a way to make it seem like we're doomed, no matter what," Hall told Blaze News.
Seth Levy, a Trump supporter with over 50,000 X followers who has been fighting against the trend of black-pilling, likewise said black-pilling is "this whole idea of inevitably we will lose, inevitably things will go badly, inevitably whatever you're hoping to accomplish will not be accomplished."
In other words, black-pilling is far different from mere cynicism in that it insists upon the worst possible outcome, no matter the evidence, and then, like a pathogen, grows until it infects others with a sense of hopelessness and makes those who maintain optimism feel alone and isolated.
It is also alluring, since wallowing in perceived helplessness is easier than continuing to "fight! fight! fight!" as Trump demanded just after he was shot. Like C.S. Lewis' characterization of hell, the gates of black-pilling "are locked on the inside."
Auron MacIntyre, host and columnist at Blaze Media, claimed that black-pillers believe "nothing can get done, and so therefore there's just no reason to try."
Harris supposedly changes the game
Like others who spoke with Blaze News, Levy believes that black-pilling is often based on an "authentic concern" about Democrats' apparent track record of engaging in election-related shenanigans, particularly regarding the COVID virus in 2020.
"In my opinion, that traumatized a lot of people, and they're very scared," Levy said. "And then they see Trump start to do really well, and then they see another — what they perceive as a game that gets played, a twisting of everything, and they look at that and they go, 'Oh my gosh, they're doing it again. So we're going to get re-victimized again.'"
'She was never voted for. She lost the primary when she ran the first time, and she lost so badly that ... [she] didn't even make it to Iowa.'
Though Levy told Blaze News that black-pilling has simmered beneath the surface since Trump first announced his candidacy in 2015 and only recently made a resurgence, Posobiec and Hall agreed that, in the 2024 election cycle, black-pilling mainly began when Joe Biden dropped out of the race and the mainstream media went into a frenzy about Kamala Harris.
Up to that point, Harris was considered such unlikeable and incompetent political leader that just three months ago, the left-leaning "Daily Show" lampooned her mercilessly as an airhead whose speeches go on a yoga-like "idea journey" reconstructed with the help of "the universe" and a "holistic thought adviser" named Dahlia Rose Hibiscus.
But once Harris became the heir apparent to the 2024 Democratic presidential nomination, the media quickly rebranded Harris as a rising star and an unstoppable political force.
"The media were the ones who [ousted] Joe Biden," Hall told Blaze News. "They gave the Democrats about a week of a tough news cycle where they're pressuring the Biden campaign to step down and get him out of there. And then right after that, they install Kamala, and suddenly the media is back to being the cheerleaders for the Democrats."
MacIntyre called the recent "hype" around Harris "manufactured."
Posobiec likewise described the entire process as "fake" and said it came about as the result of media "gaslighting" about her disastrous run for the Democratic nomination in 2019.
"She was never voted for. She lost the primary when she ran the first time, and she lost so badly that ... [she] didn't even make it to Iowa."
Yet despite her horrific political track record and inability to connect with voters, black-pillers on the right still presumed that the new media-driven version of Harris might carry her to victory in November.
"If things keep going like this Donald Trump is absolutely going to lose the election. 100% sure thing take it to the bank Trump will lose big. Not a single doubt in my mind. There’s still time for Trump supporters to wake up, get loud, and work their a**es off. To fight like their lives and their country are on the line. But the clock is ticking," Philip Anderson, a self-described "January 6th survivor" with over 115,000 X followers, tweeted on July 25, though he has also stated that he sometimes projects pessimism to keep Trump supporters from becoming "complacent."
"Trump chance of winning presidential election 16th of July, 2024: 72% Now: 49%," the Spectator Index claimed on August 8, citing Polymarket.
On August 7, Peter Henlein, a professed conservative who is ardently anti-Trump, claimed that the entire "GOP is imploding," and three days later, he added that "Trump is almost certainly going to lose."
Jim Geraghty, senior political correspondent for supposedly right-leaning National Review, wrote in early August that Trump "is too dumb, too old, too racially obsessed, too erratic and idiosyncratic in what interests and stirs him" to pose much of a threat to Harris.
Isaac Schorr, a Mediaite staff writer who calls himself a "follower of Robert Novak," referred to Trump choosing Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio) as his running mate as "the death knell of American conservatism."
A right-leaning tendency
One notable aspect of political black-pilling is that it exists mainly on the right. If Democrats worry about upcoming elections, they rarely make such sentiments known publicly.
A DNC National Organizing Call attended by Blaze News on July 2, more than three weeks before Biden bowed out of the race, was particularly telling. One event speaker insisted, "We had volunteers excited to be on the official 'Let's Go Joe' buses. They were posting selfies for everyone to see as they made their way to greet the president everywhere he went."
'It's fake, and people should know better by now.'
Another called Biden "the right candidate" for Democrats in 2024.
Now that Biden has ceded place to Harris, Democrats are even more confident of victory.
Nia-Malika Henderson, a politics and policy writer for Bloomberg Opinion, wrote a column published on August 28 entitled "Harris Can Win on Vibes — and Trump Knows It."
"Most voters ... don't sit around watching endless hours of cable news or searching for the policy section on candidates’ websites," Henderson claimed. "What they do focus on is how a candidate makes them feel and whether they vibe with a particular candidate."
On August 26, just after the Democratic National Convention came to a close, The Hill reported that Harris had a 55% chance of winning the presidency and would likely boost Democrats down the ballot.
"Harris has surged in the polls over the past month both nationally and in key swing states, building off of new enthusiasm that Democrats have for their ticket. When she first joined the race, she trailed in The Hill/DDHQ national polling average by 2 points, but now she leads by nearly 4 points," the outlet claimed.
Though those on the left and their allies in the media often present Democrat nominees as ascendant and Republican nominees as constantly wading needlessly into controversies. Logan Hall told Blaze News that those on the right should "know better" than to fall for media narratives about Kamala Harris, especially after the lies propagated about COVID and the vaccines; Russian collusion; and Nick Sandmann, who was made infamous back when he was in high school for simply smiling in the face of a leftist activist during a pro-life rally in Washington, D.C.
"There's no reason to treat it with any legitimacy," Hall said. "It's not legitimate. It's fake, and people should know better by now."
MacIntyre sees our media-saturated culture as a major source of the problem.
"With people not having community, not having families, not having friends, they tend to have remote jobs, or ... they're used to being locked inside from the pandemic and everything, they're very isolated, and so all their information comes in from the media," he explained to Blaze News.
"They don't have any connection to real life, real community, real people, so they take all of this doom and gloom coming in from the news and they have nothing to measure that against. There's no contrast in their real lives."
Posobiec believes that much of conservative black-pilling originates with so-called NeverTrumpers.
"They just don't like Donald Trump, and they want Donald Trump to go away," Posobiec told Blaze News. "So whatever their particular form of conservatism or establishmentarianism or neoconservatism can then become ascendant again, because Trumpist populism has become a danger to the gravy train."
Trump is a "real threat" to the establishment "gravy train," Posobiec continued, because he demonstrated that Republicans can effect change at the national level, whereas NeverTrumpers and many supposedly conservative organizations "exist to sit around and complain but not actually win anything."
Other potential black-pill issues
Acting Judge Juan Merchan in New York has decided not to sentence Trump in the so-called "hush money" case in New York until after the election. The debate against Harris has also apparently failed to move the needle on the election one way or the other.However, one major potential black-pill moment before the election still looms large: Biden could resign and hand the presidency to Harris, who then would enjoy the momentum of incumbency.
'Too many people ... even people who like to call the media the enemy of the people, sometimes let the media just control their mind.'
Posobiec believes that could be the proverbial "October surprise" this election, since it would offer some key advantages, including the "power of the bully pulpit" and the "historic nature" of the first woman president.
"It gives her a ton of momentum," he explained. "... It's sort of a way to boost their own candidate, to upgrade their own candidate's standing."
Hall agreed that Harris ascending to the presidency before the election would fit well with one of the media's favorite storylines: "shattering" the "glass ceiling." When such stories take root, they can cause those on the right to give up prematurely, he said.
Another major issue causing strife on the right is the possibility that some of the illegal aliens who have crossed into the U.S. under the Biden-Harris administration will cast ballots in November, thereby affecting the outcome of the election.
Posobiec said Republicans still have ways of preventing or limiting the extent to which noncitizens vote, but they must prepare themselves ahead of time and not wait to react after the fact.
"You could sit there and assume the fetal position and just be terrified of this," he told Blaze News, "or you could say, 'All right, that is the challenge. What do we have to combat that?'"
"We have to not always buy into those narratives and create and control our own narratives," Hall argued.
"Too many people ... even people who like to call the media the enemy of the people, sometimes let the media just control their mind."
Taking the white pill amid an epidemic of political malaise
Another problem associated with black-pilling is just how easily it spreads on social media, causing an epidemic of political malaise among the Republican base.
Posobiec called it "an impediment to action." MacIntyre similarly noted that "the Kamala Harris campaign is really relying on that storyline and the ability of the media to kind of manipulate people's understanding in order to kind of black-pill them into inaction."
'Every major macro factor is pointing to a change election in 2024, and that is very bad for Democrats and Vice President Kamala Harris.'
The good news is that the cure is simply remaining focused on victory and ignoring distractions from Democrats, the media, and doomers on the right.
"There's always going to be things that don't go your way," Posobiec, a veteran Navy intel officer, said in reference both to military operations and to political campaigns.
"The key," he added, is not to "let those challenges control you" but instead "push through them."
Hall was similarly dismissive of the power of Democrat strategies and psyops. "Democrats cheat," he told Blaze News. "We can accept that. That doesn't mean that we have to get all down about it."
MacIntyre suggested that some of the online black-pilling is not even sincere. Instead, he indicated that it comes as the result of "an algorithmic element" that rewards influencers "for putting the worst stories, the most sensational stuff, into social media feeds."
Hall described such influencers as "people who are complaining for clicks."
Another helpful means of combatting the temptation to take the black pill, whether sincere or manufactured, is to instead take the white pill, or absorb news and social media posts that express optimism. According to all those who spoke with Blaze News, white pills are by no means in short supply.
Take the issue of illegal aliens voting, for example. Posobiec noted that Republicans in Congress could make the SAVE Act, which will allow only U.S. citizens to vote in federal elections, a part of a continuing budget resolution this fall.
Hall and MacIntyre pointed to promising changes in the tech industry.
"Guys with personalities who have serious impact like Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg means that you're going to have a much more open and fair election, because the lines of communication through social media will not be as heavily censored this time," MacIntyre explained.
Hall agreed that Musk's purchase of Twitter will impact the election but also noted that endorsements from tech entrepreneurs, including Musk, will prompt other high-profile figures to express support for Trump openly.
"A lot of these Silicon Valley people, tech industry people, big-name CEOs, they were not openly, vocally supportive of Trump in the past, and now they are," Hall said. "And I think this has happened for a lot of the country where they're less afraid to speak their minds."
Sean Davis, CEO and co-founder of the Federalist, told Blaze News that if Democrats truly felt assured of victory in November, they would not have had to resort to replacing Biden, "hiding Kamala Harris," engaging in lawfare against Trump, or "trying to wriggle out of debates."
"Democrats right now are scared," he continued, "because they know they are losing."
If Harris' campaign strategy is any indication, Davis may well be right. Posobiec told Blaze News that Harris is attempting to position herself as a "change" candidate in the vein of former President Barack Obama, who made "change" the central theme of his 2008 campaign.
The only trouble is that Harris is the vice president and will have difficulty distancing herself from her own administration. "Every major macro factor is pointing to a change election in 2024, and that is very bad for Democrats and Vice President Kamala Harris, who has orchestrated and overseen the destruction of our country over the last four years," Davis explained to Blaze News.
'What do you see also historically with Trump? Well, he closes. ... From that September period through November, he tends to squeeze the margin.'
Hall pointed to Trump's literal courage under fire after the shooting at the rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, on July 13 as the obvious alternative to Harris' platform of "communism and hatred for America." "It was ... one of the coolest photos in American history of him pumping his fist," Hall recalled.
Blaze Media co-founder Glenn Beck was even more emphatic during a recent conversation with Tucker Carlson: "We have a guy who is willing to die for the country. Not his fame. Not his fortune. His country. And are we going to sit at home and go, 'I dunno, they might try to steal the election'? Get your fat a** out of the chair and grab people and take them to the polls!"
— (@)
One person headed to the polls for the first time ever is Jason Whitlock, the 57-year-old host of "Fearless" on BlazeTV. Whitlock told Blaze News that he is "100% voting for Trump" and may even vote straight Republican all the way down the ticket.
"I feel like it's something I have to do," Whitlock explained, pointing to the plight of so many January 6 defendants as the main cause. "... If I just sit on the sideline and don't contribute to perhaps providing them some relief, I'm just a hypocrite [and] a coward."
If Whitlock plans to vote for the first time in this election, there are likely others out there just like him. According to Levy, there are — and they overwhelmingly favor Trump.
"The 2020 non-voters are Trump-leaning across the board. That's what the polls say — and by a lot, by, like, plus 10 minimum," Levy told Blaze News.
Levy believes that the Trump team is working hard to convince these so-called "sporadic voters" to take the time to cast a vote for him this fall. If sporadic voters come out en masse, they could "swing the election," he said.
Posobiec and Whitlock estimated Trump's chances of victory in November to be just over 50%, whereas Hall put the odds at perhaps 55% or 60% in Trump's favor.
MacIntyre did not give a number but did say that Trump is favored. "Trump still has a good shot," he told Blaze News. "It's closer than I would like it to be, but I think he is still in the lead."
Levy is likewise optimistic. "What do you see also historically with Trump? Well, he closes. ... From that September period through November, he tends to squeeze the margin."
With such hopefulness about a Trump victory, black-pilling becomes, at best, a needless distraction and, at worst, an attempt to suppress votes through demoralization.
"You should hope for the best and prepare for the worst," Hall said, "but that doesn't mean that you just have to give up hope.
"And that's kind of what the black pill is."
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