Donald Trump Is No Machiavelli
There Isn't A Master Plan
Over the past week I saw the return of a storyline that I had naively believed had been put to bed following Donald Trump’s election loss to President Joe Biden in 2020: Donald Trump, Master Media Manipulator.
The argument in favor of this idea says that Trump is an expert at knowing just the kind of dumb, content-free story that the mainstream media loves to cover, and that he expertly kicks off these stories to distract from more substantive coverage. The argument in this most recent cycle involved the controversy over his and JD Vance’s made-up stories about Black Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, eating cats and dogs. The press, it was argued, was distracted and covering these stories instead of the fallout from Vice President Kamala Harris destroying Trump in their debate.
I don’t buy it. On paper, I can certainly see why it feels like a national discussion about immigration is more favorable to Trump, rather than a discussion about him faceplanting on issues like abortion and health care. But I would argue that this sort of discussion about immigration isn’t helpful to Trump.
For sure, the knuckle-dragging racists that constitute the core of Trump’s electoral power like to argue and harumph about debating brown-skinned people, but they aren’t the only people who get politically activated around this topic. Trump and Vance’s lies have been widely condemned and led to Democratic leaders from Biden and Harris down to members of Congress taking them to task for their bigotry and mendacity. Less than two months before an election I would argue that headlines about you and your running mate making up lies about a vulnerable ethnic community are as much a turnoff to normal people (the majority) as they are a turn-on to your much-loved deplorables (the minority).
2016 will always loom large in the minds of liberals because the unthinkable happened with a Trump victory. But while it always necessary to keep that nightmare outcome in mind, it is also vital to keep the race in context. At the end of the day, despite crappy media, a hubristic Democratic campaign, and numerous other factors — Russian election interference — more people voted against Trump in 2016 than for him. Too many people were fine with his racism and misogyny, but it still wasn’t most of us. And if anything, the Trump of 2024 is even worse at campaigning than he was in 2016 or 2020 (when he also lost the popular vote, along with the electoral college — what a loser).
As a creature of tabloid media, Trump gets the types of shiny objects that attract media attention. But I would argue that there is little to no strategy involved in his outbursts. Trump is not a particularly deep thinker with the ability to strategize and release information in any sort of systemic fashion. Instead it is literally crap thrown against the wall in the hopes that something sticks. As the public has become overly familiar with him — the chances of those things sticking outside the minds of his most fervent cultists is low.
I came of age politically in the era of a politician who embodied a truly Machiavellian level of media control and narrative manipulation: George W. Bush. While Bush himself was a mental black hole, he was good at politics and stuck to his rote stump speech with the precision of a mechanical wind-up toy. The people in Bush’s immediate orbit understood precisely how to get the press to regurgitate their bullshit, and then seemingly, independently “validate” that bullshit. Figures like Karl Rove and Dick Cheney, combined with allies like Fox News’ Roger Ailes and Rupert Murdoch, were competent propagandists.
Trump is nothing like that. He is a cult leader surrounded by cult priests and priestesses who operate on his whims. And his whims are dumb and largely counterproductive to political wins. Trump is a gullible fool who believes in conspiracy theories and television nonsense. His comeback to the debate fact check of his lie about people “eating the dogs, eating the cats” made this clear when he told debate moderator David Muir that the story was true, because he had seen people “on television.”
People shouldn’t get cocky or arrogant about the outcome of what is most likely going to be another narrow election. But there is also no need to see a bull rampaging in a shop and think the bull has some sort of well thought out plan to get it’s next meal. Not only is Trump on a rhetorical rampage, but he is being called out, contained, and mocked mercilessly for putting on another loser’s tantrum.
He’s not the wizard behind the curtain, just a crank having another meltdown.
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— Oliver
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Exclusive Kal-El Photo
Kal likes to sit behind me while I work. Despite me being a big guy, he enjoys being squished down back there. Of course, at the end of a full day of wiener dog behind you, my back mysteriously hurts a lot!
Bungling his way through seems to be working pretty well for him, to be honest. MUCH better than I would have expected. I still have trouble grasping the fact that he essentially bungled his way into the White House. Not sure exactly what that says about us, but it’s nothing good.
Unfortunately the lies about the pet eating migrants have a power beyond their veracity. After hearing the repeated lie no one has any doubt where Donald Trump stands on migrants (and Muslims, and people of color from Africa and South America, the shithole countries). He hates them and would like to round them up and get them out of our lives. People who aren’t overtly racist and who believe in all that America stands for, may also not want many migrants in their neighborhood and may not want people not like them and who don’t assimilate, in their community. In the privacy of the voting booth they may vote for the person who will keep the migrants out of their community, even though they hate his bigotry, rapes, etc. It’s a disgusting lie, but the point is made. The migrants are different and one guy will keep them out.
I believe that by following the Hitler and Stalin playbook Trump is creating the fears that even good people may respond to.
My advice is not to waste time correcting the lie or spend much time on the positive value of immigrants, or on being compassionate because those responses don’t undo the fear created by Trump and Vance. Instead we ought to make clear how dangerous for all of us their solutions will be. The solutions are more frightening than the problem.
Rounding up millions of migrants mixed in with retribution will be full of mistakes. There won’t be anyone to appeal to if you are rounded up by mistake. People will not go willingly. If this is done by the police then there won’t be police to do their regular jobs. If it is done by auxiliary police, as Hitler did it with drunken deputies, it will be full of violence. People will turn on each other. Do you have a neighbor or colleague who might turn you in, if so should you turn them in before they do it to you. Paranoia will be widespread. Where will the rounded up people be stored? It would need to be like prisons to keep them from getting away.
Who will do the work they used to do?
So in the privacy of the voting booth, don’t worry about immigrants but about how Trump will ruin your life if he does what he promises.