March 29, 2023
In my first Substack post, I described what I think is the strategy behind the Democrat legal filings against Trump. Obviously, Dems wish to destroy his reputation and legacy. But as I postulated, the secondary aim, at least by wiser heads, is to catapult Trump to the nomination by enraging and energizing his supporters, especially if the indictment or lawsuit appears frivolous or politically-based. So far, the plan is working, as Trump has risen in the polls, along with donations to his campaign, following the Alvin Bragg prospective indictment.
Some subscribers liked what I wrote. But others perceived that I'm not enthralled by Donald Trump. That's a correct perception. Ted Cruz was my man in 2016. I was never suckered into the cult of Trump's personality. Supporting a populist makes you a weathervane----not a conservative.
I assumed my major concerns with a President Trump would be on policy. He used to be a Democrat and donated to Democrats. I felt that programs like his family leave act would have been a hardship for small businesses, for example. But as it turned out, the president's policies and accomplishments over the 4 years were fine overall. Instead, what made me cringe were his flippant and impromptu remarks which were too often ignorant and stupid.
For example, on Dec. 3, 2022, Trump wrote on Truth Social:
"Do you throw the Presidential Election Results of 2020 OUT and declare the RIGHTFUL WINNER, or do you have a NEW ELECTION? A Massive Fraud of this type and magnitude allows for the termination of all rules, regulations, and articles, even those found in the Constitution."
All rules, regulations and articles, even those found in the Constitution?! His critics had a field day with that one. His apologists were forced to explain that Trump didn't mean he wanted to change the Constitution. Really?
If one member of your debating team utters false or stupid arguments, you don't waste your time constantly trying the explain or contextualize those remarks. You kick that member off the team!
WORDS MATTER
Likewise, if you fear being seen as an idiot by emulating, or repeating what your candidate says, then you're supporting the wrong candidate. Most Trump supporters would never invite anti-semites and Hitler supporters over for dinner, or to repeat in public Trump's ludicrous claim that he will be "reinstated" as president! Would anyone dare repeat Trump's asinine denial that he raped Elizabeth Jean Carroll, the former journalist, author, and columnist for Elle magazine? In June 2019, Trump told the Hill newspaper, "I'll say it with great respect: Number one, she's not my type. Number two, it never happened."
She's not his type?!!! Republicans must not invest in a candidate for whom they cannot emulate, or quote from, for fearing they would be seen as imbeciles.
My point is that Trump is not the right vessel to carry our agenda. While Gov. DeSantis is dismantling the administrative state in Florida, and turning it into a red state, the federal swamp hampered and defeated Trump at every turn. Before he became governor, Florida was a laughing stock. From those loose chads during the 2000 election, in which SCOTUS plucked the case away from the shamelessly partisan Florida State Supreme Court without even receiving a petition for it, to the state's unwarranted persecution of George Zimmerman, some 12 years later, for the "crime" of defending his life against a drug-induced Trayvon Martin.
It's easy to forget the many examples of Florida's past pathologies, as we watch DeSantis today, boldly firing state prosecutors for choosing not to prosecute criminals. The question is why Trump failed while DeSantis is succeeding? Past is prologue. In 2015, I made the observation to friends that candidate Trump didn't appear to understand politics, government, or the law. Everything that occurred since then had reinforced that view. His ignorance on those matters took its toll. And Trump would never read very much to improve his knowledge. Instead, he watched the dumbed-down cable network news shows all day, narcissistically taking note of those who favor and disfavor him, and inventing derogatory nicknames for the latter.
In addition, I reminded my friends that Trump was not a sympathetic figure. He eschewed any appearance of being civil, perhaps out of fear he would be deemed a soft, or a pushover. He preferred being seen solely as powerful. But the novelty of toughness and arrogance wears out over time. As Gov. Chris Christy discovered, the bloom of bullying people is eventually off the rose. The Trump-endorsed mid-term candidates had also realized that when the Republican wave never happened.
Eventually, I realized how Democrats were able to get away with saying the most defamatory and disparaging things about a president. Even out-and-out lying about Trump was routine. The license to brashly attack Trump ironically stemmed from Trump's own words. How can you have any sympathy for, let alone respect, for a leader who defaults to using adolescent, schoolyard nicknames for his opponents? Or resorting to disparaging remarks about their spouses? Nothing was off limits for Trump. He alleged that the father of his principal opponent (Sen. Cruz) in the 2016 primaries had conspired to assassinate JFK! And never apologizing for that scurrilous lie.
Candidate Trump also said Sen. John McCain was not a hero. His appalling assessment was that heroes don't get captured!! All Trump needed to say was that as senator, McCain had pandered too often to the liberal media and Democrats' agendas, such as his memorable Obamacare betrayal. That would have had the virtue of being true. But Trump is an inarticulate and ignorant oaf. Last week, Trump criticized the politicized Bragg grand jury, observing----in mobster fashion----that it would be a shame if "death and destruction" results from it.
Words don’t matter to Trump. I think that the linguistics professor at Columbia University, John McWhorter, summed it up precisely when he characterized Trump's style and vocabulary as unrefined, saying that Trump is essentially a "talker", and not a "speaker." McWhorter calls himself a 1960s era liberal (who is anti-woke, anti-CRT, anti-Sharpton, etc.). He's written 2 dozen books on linguistics and has a podcast for people who care about speech and communication, which I think most will agree are the tools of politics! https://www.podbean.com/podcast-detail/n3ye8-20f5e/Lexicon-Valley-Podcast
Keeping with the analogy, if Trump was a car mechanic, he would be using General Tools of Secaucus, NJ----tools known for their poor quality. The following short interviews explains what I mean:
Language expert: Trump's way of speaking is 'oddly adolescent'
Sept. 15, 2017
Linguistic expert: Trump sounds like your beer-swilling uncle
Sept. 7, 2018
Independent, moderate voters are now closed off to Trump. He can't win a national election again. Why? Because he never tried to draw them in by making a case for his policies. Instead, he casts non-supporters as evil. A year ago, I drafted a detailed policy paper for a conservative, anti-vaccine congressional candidate in NYS. I've since removed her name and made it a generic document. My aim is to demonstrate the most effective way to present issues to a moderate-leaning public. You do it by treating people as adults and with respect. You just explain your reasoning for taking a position on an issue, and hope that your audience will understand. As political commentator Dennis Prager says, "clarity is preferred over agreement." There's no upside for resorting to ridicule or alleging malevolent motives.
Download the policy paper:
https://www.mediafire.com/file/2oy82zbjq1to3zn/Generic-Policy-Paper-2022.pdf/file
DEFENDING TRUMP
Defending Trump was a tiresome chore, as it was when GW Bush was president and he (and Karl Rove) foolishly decided to not to rebut widespread criticisms of his policies. After Bush's presidency, Rove later admitted to Rush Limbaugh, in hindsight, that it was a strategic mistake. But I wrote for AmericanDaily.com during those years, and I recall it was an unwelcome chore having to defend a man who willfully behaved like a piñata.
DeSantis is just the opposite. He counterattacks. This month NBC correspondent Andrea Mitchell grossly misrepresented Florida's, and its governor's, education policies with respect to teaching black history to students. The media rep for DeSantis responded by telling NBC News that its access (i.e. interviews, etc.) to the governor would be terminated until Mitchell rectifies the falsehood in public and apologizes for it. Mitchell and NBC relented.
The media lied and misrepresented Trump all the time. But unlike DeSantis, Donald Trump thought his charm and oversized ego could seduce any liberal who hated him. That was very naïve. He had given, for example, New York Times Senior Political Correspondent Maggie Haberman unlimited access to his administration. She wrote the very unflattering Trump bio, "Confidence Man." Trump would even give MS-NBC, of all networks, access to him!
I'll give you a couple of egregious examples of how undisciplined and lazy Trump had been in failing to refute lies which were flagrantly spread about him. To an extent that it's likely you never considered them lies!
+ + + + + The "I can do anything" Lie + + + + +
For Trump's first impeachment, I believe the Dem strategy was to defame and demonize Trump (and Rudy) on a personal level, to drive down Trump's poll numbers to peel off enough Republican senators to convict him. The problem was a lack of compelling evidence, forcing the House Managers to present false and misleading information to the impeachment court. Adam Schiff and Zoe Lofgren and others, for example, showed a carefully edited video of Trump.
It was that same video the Dems played during the earlier House proceedings, in which they allege that Trump said that Article II (of the Constitution) lets him do anything. Do you know what the context of that is? Trump was being interviewed by ABC News' George Stephanopoulos. The question was solely about his ability to fire Mueller.
As a viewer of cable news, Trump was made aware of the Unitary Executive Theory in constitutional law, holding that the US president possesses the power to control the entire executive branch---that the powers of the executive branch are vested in the PERSON who is president. As a subordinate officer to the president (by statute), the president could have legally fired the special counsel, without cause.
But Stephanopoulos was hoping to make him look guilty for wanting to fire Mueller. Trump answered, "I didn’t fire Mueller. I could have fired Mueller. Article II says I can do anything."
So Trump is saying Article II gave him the power to fire Robert Mueller if he wanted to; that he "could do anything he wants", REGARDING Mueller.
The video clip that the House Managers played over and over is the same one that Dems had used everywhere in the media----without the appropriate context----making Trump appear like a ruthless autocrat. They knowingly took what Trump said out of context, to make him sound like an emperor with unlimited powers.
It was deception to present that false impression all over the media. More seriously, it was a false and misleading submission before the impeachment 'court.' Democrats got away with it because it went unrefuted.
+ + + + + The Charlottesville Lie + + + + +
Trump has been a celebrity for 40 years in the media capital of the world. If he harbored a ounce of racism, that would have been widely perceived well before he ran for president in 2016.
Rather, Trump's faults reside in his communication skills. As I've argued, he prefers off the cuff comments over scripted set speeches. But while extemporaneous remarks are fine during celebratory events, they can be fatal at somber gatherings. Trump's interview following the deaths at the Charlottesville rally should have been carefully worded. But I think that Trump feels that any prepared remarks are somehow insincere. So he feels compelled to go off script.
Trump's carelessness with his words that day helped Democrats and their media partners to falsely portray him as racist. To the extent that long afterwards, Joe Biden had repeated that false portrayal in his speech announcing his candidacy for president for the 2020 election. Biden got away with it too, because Trump's Charlottesville comments had been deceptively edited on every liberal media venue to prove he's a racist.
Dylan Scott, for example, wrote in Vox on Feb 5, 2020 that Trump is a racist because of his "equivocation between white nationalists and their opponents in Charlottesville, Virginia, in 2017."
And to support that view, Scott cites the full transcript of Trump’s press conference, published in Vox on Aug 15, 2017. But if you actually read the transcript, it has Trump clarifying that "I'm not talking about the neo-nazis and the white nationalists----who should be condemned totally", right after he uttered the infamous, "You also had some very fine people on both sides"----referring to peaceful protestors.
READ IT IN CONTEXT, from Vox's own pages:
- - - - - - - - -
Q: Are you putting what you are calling the alt-left and white supremacists on the same moral plane?
Trump: I am not putting anybody on a moral plane. You had a group on one side and the other and they came at each other with clubs and it was vicious and horrible [neo-nazis and Antifa]. It was a horrible thing to watch. There was a group that came violently attacking the other group [which were peaceful supporters of the monuments].
Q: You said there was hatred and violence on both sides?
Trump: I think there is blame on both sides. If you reported it accurately, you would say that the neo-Nazis started this thing. They showed up in Charlottesville. They didn't put themselves down [i.e. label themselves] as neo-Nazis. So you had some very bad people in THAT group [i.e. defenders of monuments]. You also had some very fine people on both sides [i.e. the peaceful protestors]. I saw the same pictures as you did. You had people in that group [monument supporters] that were there to protest the taking down, of to them, a very, very important statue and the renaming of a park from Robert E. Lee to another name.
YOU HAD PEOPLE [i.e. the aforementioned supporters of monuments]-----AND I'M NOT TALKING ABOUT THE NEO-NAZIS AND THE WHITE NATIONALISTS-----Who should be condemned totally. So you had many people in that group other than neo-Nazis and white nationalists [i.e. defenders of monuments]. The press has treated them absolutely unfairly. Now, in the other group [i.e. protestors of monuments] also, you had some fine people but you also had troublemakers [i.e. antifa] and you see them come with the black outfits and with the helmets and with the baseball bats. So you had a lot of bad people in the other group too.
Q: You were saying the press has treated white nationalists unfairly?
Trump: No, no. There were people in that rally. I looked the night before. If you look, there were people protesting very quietly the taking down of the statue of Robert E. Lee. But I am sure there were some bad ones. [So Trump is clarifying that the media was wrongfully conflating peaceful defenders of monuments with white nationalists.]
- - - - - - - - -
Speechwriters take great care to avoid such selective editing. But Trump remained oblivious to the dangers, even from supposedly reputable journalists. Every network news anchor on down had ignored Trump's full answer because they felt they had the license to attack a belligerent and crass personality, which was Trump. The one exception was Jake Tapper, who had been made aware of the attenuated video of Trump's interview and apologized for the error.
CONCLUDING
Ben Shapiro provides even-handed commentary on Trump. He'll often preface his remarks by reminding us that there's the "good Trump" and the "bad Trump." But there's a third Trump: The politically negligent Trump. Especially when the Democrats own the media, it amounts to political malpractice for a president to fail to utilize the bully pulpit to counter bald faced lies. Such lies, which had gone unrebutted, was death by a thousand cuts for his administration and for him personally.
Tragically, Trump was unable to articulate IN DETAIL the abuses he suffered. Impromptu comments that an election was somehow "rigged", or that the collusion conspiracy allegation was somehow a "hoax" were never sufficient to make the general public fully understand Democrat infringement of political norms. And the media never helped Trump by explaining them. Why would Trump expect them to? The media was complicit in these violations.
In this article, I selected just one area (i.e. communication) in which Trump failed to exhibit competence. His supporters had a right to expect competence. We don't owe Trump our vote just because Democrats easily roped him into fraudulent collusion and impeachment traps. Candidate, and President, Trump's ignorance of the law and how government operates made him ill-prepared for the conspiracies against him. But his foolish utterances, plus his ill-advised political appointments, which could fill a book, also made it easier for his enemies to paralyze his administration.
Those who still support Trump over other qualified candidates should know the difference between Never Trumpers and Not Trumpers. The latter group never abandoned Trump as president, even when we had to cringe every time Trump opened his mouth. But now is the best time to support a smarter candidate than Trump. Trump showed us that 'stupid' doesn't cut it.
Great article, valid points, yet, I still believe Trump to be the strongest candidate to drain the swamp. Especially with DeSantis now being rumored to having been funded by Soros. IMO, speech and communication are mostly irrelevant when it comes to Trump, he's not a politician after all. He just speaks his mind and doesn't watch his mouth, which DOES get him in trouble often, but overall, I think this appeals more to his base because he sounds genuine. Besides, sleepy Joe makes him sound like the most eloquent guy on the planet, lol.
Well, lots to think about