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Dems, Media Keep Handing the Narrative to Trump
OMG! Did you see what Trump tweeted?! Democrats, presidential candidates, and journalists losing their minds over the President’s Twitter feed is hardly new, but the past week has been illuminating. It also spells trouble for those trying to unseat him in 2020.
About a week ago, Trump attacked Ilhan Omar and the rest of her America-bashing squad with a rude “send her back” tweet. The next few days were dominated by screams of racist, misogynist, and Islamophobic. After the great Mueller fizzle, Trump blasted Baltimore as a rat- and crime-infested mess run by Democrats unwilling to improve it. Two more days screaming racist, un-American, and anti-urban. On Monday morning, Trump mocked Al Sharpton, leading to a day screaming racist, un-American, and anti-tracksuits-with-medallions.
There’s much to criticize about anyone, let alone a president, constantly flinging personal insults. It’s uncivil, tacky, and just not done. But, damn, if it isn’t politically effective.
What else has the political world talked about in the past week? Mueller and impeachment got 24 hours. Anyone discussing Kamala Harris? No. In fact, she’s lost her poll bump from the last debate. How about Biden? Haven’t seen him. Warren, Buttigieg, Beto? Nada.
If you’re a masochist and follow these candidates’ social media accounts, they’re trying to get attention. Oh, how they’re trying. Tulsi Gabbard just posted her Lion King workout video. But the only politician going viral lives at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.
What’s odd is that the Democrats and the media are helping Trump to control the news cycle. If Trump’s a rageaholic, the Beltway left are his enablers.
In the middle of an ugly Pelosi vs. Squad grudge match, the Donald praised the former and insulted the latter. DC Republicans wondered why he would step into a red-on-red battle. But establishment Democrats immediately tied themselves to their socialist wing, with Pelosi going so far as to sanction a GOP get-out-the-vote photo for the ages. Their feud might be papered over today but it boils just beneath that rictus grin.
Then, Trump mocks Baltimore, which everyone knows has been a tragic mess for years. All of a sudden, Dems and journalists insist Charm City is an urban paradise rather than the setting for “The Wire.”
By Monday, the political-industrial complex was praising the nobility of antisemitic grifter Al Sharpton. After all, if Trump doesn’t like someone or something, they must be beyond reproach.
Quick question: Do they know an election is coming up?
Love or hate his methods, Trump has assured that all the media focus is on him. The ~143 Democratic candidates are utterly starved of oxygen, unable to promote their latest plan to spend your money or viralize their sweaty workout video.
At some level, the media must know what’s going on, but they just can’t help themselves. Trump types a few words and they launch into an emotional rage.
If a football team isn’t pushing their strategy, but spending four quarters reacting to the adjustments of their opponents, they’re likely to end up with an L. Likewise, a successful politician must seize the offensive instead of merely reacting to the other side.
The problem for Democrats is that the media won’t let them.
Yes, all the attention Trump gets is decidedly negative. Yes, he’s being called racist, misogynist, etc., etc., nonstop by most the media, several Republicans, and every Democrat.
How’d that work out in 2016?
Published in General
It’s refreshing in this hot summer heat to finally see someone push back on the race card, which is an excuse to do nothing about cleaning up your dump of a city, improving the lives and safety of your community, fight back on drugs that are wreaking havoc across the country, bringing jobs and opportunities to our inner cities – and lifting up everyone regardless of color, gender or circumstance. Just keep playing the race card. I think the African American community is getting wise to this victimization that keep Democrats in control. Trump calls it like it is.
But what if instead of just calling Trump “racist” they call him “really, really, really racist” with like “!!!”? That’s the ticket!
It’s like Scott Adams says, the Democrats have placed themselves on the side of Al Sharpton and the rats of Baltimore in response to PDJT. There’s a winning formula, fer sure!
Sure I’m doing more than my fair share of nose pinching, but if the objective is to stab identity politics in the throat, very okay with that.
My sports analogy has been basketball-related. If you’re defending, and you know the player with the ball can’t use his/her off-hand, you overcompensate to their strong side to make sure they’re as uncomfortable as possible. What Trump’s done with the media is simply taking what the game is giving him. To me, that’s kindergarten, not 4-D underwater ultimate frisbee.
A football team can execute its strategy perfectly and still lose if the strategy sucks. Just saying.
Trump has been working the media for free publicity since day one. They thought he could not win against Hillary and that he would embarrass the Republicans, so they puffed him against the other primary candidates. When he won the primary, they started throwing one punch after the other and getting themselves stuck fast. Trump is the media’s Tar Baby. (That’s not a racist comment). I don’t know if Trumps strategy is brilliant or not. Perhaps it doesn’t have to be.
Here’s the question…quite apart from the politics, might this actually shame the Democrats into doing something for the people of Baltimore? All the shrieks of “racist! racist!” are merely to distract us from the question Trump (at long, long last) raises as only he can: why didn’t 50 years of Democrat governance make of Baltimore a shining city on a hill? Why are the children of Baltimore not happy and thriving?
These are the people who think they can fix the planet?
Nah.
Of course, “racist” is the easy and quick label for anything…even when Ivanka buys a…wait for it…white dog. Obviously racist.
The reaction to Trump’s criticism of Baltimore is hilarious especially when the evidence is overwhelming that what he’s describing is absolutely accurate, given many years of articles – some in prominent left-of-center newspapers, a PBS documentary, a Baltimore mayor’s own remarks about the stench of rats’ feces and urine, etc. and the constant videos of what a hell-hole of refuse, garbage, and violence that city is.
Those quick to smear Trump as racist will have a difficult time when Trump sets his sights on San Francisco and Los Angeles, predominantly run by very woke white, Hispanic and Asian Democrat politicians — cities also infested with rats, unable and unwilling to address rampant homelessness, public defecation and drug abuse, and potential outbreaks of typhus and the plague.
Trump’s recent broadside has nothing to do with racism (since he was responding Congressman Cummings’ dishonest remarks about conditions on the border) and everything to do with decades-long Democrat incompetence and arrogance and their inability to manage cities because their ideology of progress is exactly the opposite because it has subsidized the disintegration of the family, elevates and offers safe haven for criminals, and creates urban areas where no sane entrepreneur or company wants to invest because of taxation, regulations, filth, and potential harm to employees.
I wasn’t sure about Trump making personal attacks, but at least for the older folk, they may just step back a bit in their own rhetoric. They’re not used to being treated that way. Well, folks, it’s the new normal: back off or get in line for a smack down.
Jon,
Finally, somebody asks the question.
Question: How could one man with an ordinary smartphone finger type a few short semi-legible sentences and drive the entire massive media complex to complete distraction?
Answer: The entire media complex, they’re idiots.
Regards,
Jim
Beat me to it.
Maybe not a serious candidate but by far the best looking. Wowza
It seems his strategy is very simple: say the truth in an ugly way. The Woke Ones scream at the ugly term. But after the initial shock of the breach of decorum, the simple truth of his remark shines through the ugly term. Thus, he calls miserable countries “miserable countries” (CoC won’t let me use the Trumpian term of art beginning in s and ending in e). People scream at the term and of course call it racist. But everyone not high on wokeness knows the MEANING is true. (His metaphor, alas, is literally true in San Fran. They have squads cleaning the Augean Stable that is that city, I hear.) After all, it is precisely those crappy conditions that justify the claim for asylum on our border. So the liar in chief tells the truth while the ordinary liars pretend that manure is not manure.
As for the effect on the actual election? Who can say?
This seems to apply to both your observations.
Really, he just needed the right simple strategy and he found it. What makes him
geniuswise is his utilizing it in spite its simplicity.Way to bury the lede.
Another thing I find objectionable about some of the reaction to President Trump’s spotlight on Baltimore is that pundits on both the left and the right have opined that Trump shouldn’t criticize how Baltimore has descended into hell without offering a solution to somehow fix it.
Here’s what’s wrong with that formulation: It’s not the role of the federal government to fix urban areas that Democrats have mismanaged and destroyed.
Trump and others in the GOP actually need to turn the knife and emphatically and repeatedly tell the American people – Baltimore, Detroit, Chicago, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Portland, and Seattle are stark examples of what happens when Democrats actually practice what they preach. If voters want other cities, towns, and communities all over America to be riddled with vermin, heroin needles, public defecation, disease, garbage, crime, vandalism and mob violence from Antifa and other gangs…then vote Democrat. If not, break this decades-long cycle of Democrat empty promises, incompetence, and graft and vote Republican. Or words to that effect.
I think there’s a core of black, Hispanic, and Asian urban voters who are fed up with what’s been happening and are ready to break that cycle. The GOP needs to keep hammering home that message.
I don’t think it’s simply Trump controlling the message cycle as it is Trump attacking progressive politicians the media has inflated to high positions, who at the same time are trying to use the same social media tools Trump uses to go over the heads of their party’s establishment, that’s causing this situation.
Trump’s sparring partners, whether it’s The Squad or Al Sharpton, are equally adept at getting big media attention via social media, despite the fact that the establishment Democrats like Nancy Pelosi really wish they’d put a sock in it until Election Day 2020. But she can’t because she can’t control their social media anymore than Trump’s can be controlled, and a significant part of the media thinks that’s a great idea, both for ratings and ideological purposes.
Trump’s bet here is what he’s sending out on his social media feed is more acceptable to swing voters than what the people he’s attacking are Tweeting or saying. You’d think 15-plus months out from Election Day this would give the progressive Democrats and their media backers a chance to wise up and get that they’re being played. But this isn’t Trump playing 16-dimensional chess and winning; it’s Trump playing tic-tac-toe with and beating a really dumb chicken, but one that collectively thinks America was ready for Socialism in 2016 if only Hillary hadn’t cheated Bernie out of the nomination, and that the country is even more ready for it in 2020.
They see no reason to shut up, and because of that, Trump’s going to keep getting chances to Tweet about them and the establishment Dems are going to keep getting stuck defending people and positions they know swing voters aren’t going to embrace under current economic and foreign policy conditions.
Limosine Liberals of Maryland : “How durst he cast aspersions upon our fair city!”
All the Other Liberals of Maryland: “You know, there are a lot of rats here….”
I think it’s more that they are addicts.
Anyone with an ounce of common sense understands this point. But there is simply no evidence from the past 100 years that Progressives now or ever have collectively possessed even a single ounce of it.
“It’s uncivil, tacky, and just not done.”
Seems the way it would be done if the presidency were the prize in a reality TV contest.
I would point out that actually actively campaigning for president was once seen as unpresidential and just not done, also. Then people started doing it and started winning.
I expect the Trumpian method to be the new normal.
Awesome metaphor. I’m stealing and using that.
Long ago Trump learned that bad news is better than no news.
It seems to be working very well for him.
It reminds me of the Magnificent 7 and Eli Wallach. He read the part and nearly didnt take it, as he wasnt in the first third of the movie. Then he realized that he was on almost every page of the first act. When is he coming, how much of a terror he was, what was he go to do when he got there.
Trump is having a similar effect.
I think the plan is deeper than just hogging media attention and driving the Democrats into reflexive chaos. He’s going for the minority voters. Not all of them, but more of them.
He’s making the race-baiters apoplectic to create a divide. First, these racemongers and identity-politics addicts come out to the foreground, playing the same worn-out game.
He’s welcoming the Sharptons to fire all their ammo. Broadcasting their tired insults that have become meaningless. Being able to take the ‘hits’ soon reveals how feeble the charges are. The racism charge should be used sparingly and accurately – something that hasn’t been done in decades and everyone knows it. And just like smokers who know cigarettes are bad for their health, they can’t stop.
So now any potential minority voter in Baltimore or any other major city run by Democrats is presented the actual situation ( they have direct experience with) or choosing the predictable rantings of their supposed leaders as the over-riding narrative.
They aren’t all buying the snake oil.
And it’s important to have this argument out. We have been dancing around this for decades and this is the Thanksgiving dinner when the pretenses come off.
To enter the sports analogy club, it’s like a football team that over-uses the blitz ( rushing the quarterback) , and the team keeps completing quick, short passes that keep making first downs. They celebrate every sack like it’s a victory in itself, but the offense keeps moving the sticks downfield.
And occasionally DeSean Jackson catches a bomb for a touchdown (!)
Brian,
Once in awhile reality breaks through the woke wacky babble. The next thing for Baltimore, San Francisco, etc.., will be an outbreak of the Bubonic Plague. No really, this will be coming soon guaranteed.
Idiots.
Regards,
Jim
I have a question. Is it always a good thing that Trump controls the narrative?
I agree he does, and his opponents play into his hands. Much of what he does via tweets and verbally I think well done. But is all of it?
To me the most important thing is the 2020 election and the small number of voters who are not committed for or against Trump. Are there times when he controls the narrative in a logical sense (exposing another progressive contradiction) but the very method makes it more difficult to persuade otherwise persuadable voters to support him – particularly those who, at some level, support his policies or at least are more in tune with them than those of progressives but continue to be repulsed by his personality and style?
Put another way, is there a pathway between believing all his tweets and verbal assaults are the right strategy and the Paul Ryan/Mitt Romney strategy of responding to attacks by going into the fetal position and quietly sobbing?
I commented with this as the last paragraph to an OP where Gary has the vapors over just one more inferred (by the(D)/MSM/NT cabal) “RACIST” tweet by Trump 14 days ago:
But in the reality of the Trump world we are currently living, this latest kerfuffle will disappear into the news cycle sunset only to be replaced by just one more Trump or (D) latest sky is falling worst thing that ever happened in the history of mankind …. so you may want to get used to this because it’s a safe bet you’re gonna get about 5 and a half years of more of the same.
The point is: If you’re outraged by Trump’s latest worst “racist” tweet de jour save your faux outrage energy because there is another one coming down the pike. No matter how disconnected to race the (D)/MSM/NT combine will find a way to make it RACIST (Baltimore is a disaster = I hate black people????, infested with rats = Nazi persecution of Jews????)
We live in strange times.