This runs roughly 100% too long and really could have benefited from an editor (yeah, we got those early points the first time and didn’t need to be reminded), but the points are largely sound.

Tuesday, Republicans got crushed in elections across New Jersey, Virginia, and New York. Not close races. Not razor-thin margins. Massive defeats in states they’d convinced themselves were winnable after Trump’s 2024 victory.

Bret Baier—on Fox News, to Fox & Friends—had to explain to his audience how bad it was. “It’s a big loss,” he said. Not just the results, but “the spreads are surprising.” Young women “overwhelmingly” supported Democrats based on the economy and “those ICE images.” Based on how they “feel about the economy” versus “how Wall Street’s doing.”

Trump posted cryptically: “AND SO IT BEGINS.”

He’s right. Something has begun. Just not what he thinks.

The simulation is collapsing.

Not literal Matrix-style unreality. Something more precise and insidious: the manufactured consensus that authoritarianism was inevitable, that resistance was futile, that most people had become—or would become—what the sociopaths are.