“Trump always gets all the coverage,” an adviser to one of Trump’s opponents tells Politico. “This is what it’s like to run against Trump.”
Poor babies! If only Trump’s rivals could do something to get attention.
Trump gets more media attention because he’s unpredictable and therefore interesting. “Listen, because you never knew what he would say, there was an attraction to put those [Trump rallies] on the air,” CNN President Jeff Zucker explained in an effort to defend the fact that his network covered more of Trump’s live appearances than Hillary Clinton’s. Ratings drive revenue. Why air Clinton’s cut-and-paste stump speeches—a campaign staple that should have remained in the 19th century—when you know bored viewers will tune away?
Memo to Hillary: you could have played the same game. If you had, you might have won.
Trump’s secret sauce is out there in plain sight. If one of his viewers wants to mount a serious challenge to the former president’s current lead, they ought to try out his formula for attracting free media: ditch the boring scripted speeches, speak extemporaneously, identify voter concerns that politicians have never addressed before, defy party orthodoxy, avoid jargon, make fun of other candidates, use straightforward, simple language.
In a political world of bores and prigs, Donald Trump is entertaining. Hey Republicans! You can do it too!
During his first campaign Trump hammered away at deindustrialization. “George,” he said on ABC’s “This Week,” I’ve gone all over this country over the last three—really, more the eight weeks than ever before. And I’ve gone over and I’ve seen factories that are just empty, beautiful factories, although now they’re not so beautiful, because they’re starting to crumble. But I’ve seen buildings that used to house thousands and thousands of people and they’re just empty. You can buy them for $2. And I stayed in New York…Pennsylvania…Carrier, Ford…I want them to come back.” No American politician had ever spoken to the hollowing out of the Rust Belt before, much less promised to reform trade agreements to protect U.S. manufacturing jobs. It won him the Midwest and the election.
Who would have thought that so many Republicans agreed with him that Bush’s invasion of Iraq was a mistake? He understood something other Republicans didn’t: it was always Pat Buchanan’s party.
Trump takes chances. He’s bold and brash. He doesn’t give a F. Which is why his supporters love him.
Wanna win? Embrace the risky lifestyle, anti-Trump Republicans! You have nothing to lose but the Republican nomination—which you’ll lose otherwise.
N.B.: This advice is not for all of Trump’s rivals. Nikki Haley, the Republicans’ Kamala Harris, sits in low single digits. Like the Clive Owen character in the movie “Inside Man,” however, she’s exactly where she wants to be. She’s running for vice president; she needs to be noticed without exuding the Bernie Sanders-level charisma that intimidates a presidential nominee. Chris Christie is a Fury out to hound Trump just because. Asa Hutchinson wants people to know he’s alive. (It’s not working.) No one, including Mike Pence, knows why Mike Pence is in the race.
“[Trump] has a wide lead because he dominates the conversation,” Miami Mayor Francis Suarez, another challenger, said on Fox News. “And I think the press—and you know I don’t want to fault the press—but that’s all they want to talk about. If we keep talking about the former president, frankly, I’m sure he’s sitting at home in Mar-a-Lago smiling and laughing because they’re giving him the nomination.”
Ron DeSantis, Vivek Ramaswamy, Tim Scott and Doug Burgum are classic attentistes. If and when something happens to Lord Trump, God of the RealClearPolitics National Average, He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Shamed, running 51 to 53% in the polls and rising—if and when he chokes on a taco bowl, goes to prison, is eaten by vengeful orcas, whatever, please, God, they pray nightly, do something—the attentistes will vie for the title of heir apparent to the throne of Maga-stan. Until that time, soon may it come, the Great Orange One reigns supreme and the attentistes defend him against persecuting prosecutorial Democrat infidels, vowing fealty and obeisance as they bide their time.
Waiting around like a toad hoping that Trump will die or go to prison before next summer’s Republican National Convention is not a serious strategy. True, Trump is old and fat and never exercises; he is under indictment on serious criminal charges. Still, odds are he’ll survive and remain free on appeal for at least a year. The fact that DeSantis has raised hundreds of millions of dollars speaks to how easily donors can be persuaded to waste cash on a high-risk investment.
DeSantis et al. face a choice. They can keep on keeping on, waiting to fight for Trump’s spot if and when he drops out, wallowing in wonkdom (c.f., DeSantis’ “medical authoritarianism” and “cultural Marxism”) as the electorate and TV producers fight their collective urge to fall asleep.
Or they can become interesting.
(Ted Rall (Twitter: @tedrall), the political cartoonist, columnist and graphic novelist, co-hosts the left-vs-right DMZ America podcast with fellow cartoonist Scott Stantis. You can support Ted’s hard-hitting political cartoons and columns and see his work first by sponsoring his work on Patreon.)
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A lot of people don’t get it. So I’ll explain. Even. to the Blithering Fucking Idiots who won’t understand a word of what I’m saying.
Grace Lee Whitney, who played Janice Rand on the original “Star Trek” series, wrote an autobiography. Before “Star Trek,” she’d had a very full career and been in a bunch of programs. Parenthetically, as part of one part of her book, she mentioned Victor Buono (best known for his role as King Tut in the 1960s “Batman” series), who she’d worked with. Buono was gay. And fat. And not particularly attractive. But he got a lot of action, according to Whitney.
And you know how he did it? The same way Trump gets a lot of press. It’s the same way Harlan Ellison used to write. “Working without a net” is what Ellison called it. It’s basically an act of faith. And the only people who can do it are the ones who are really good. The ones who understand that faith in yourself is the mirror image of faith in the system. The more you genuinely believe that you actually are good at what you do, the more the system will reward you. Buono bedded lots of attractive men. Ellison wrote lots of great stories. Trump has millions of supporters.
But people like Clinton, Biden, etc.? They can’t have faith in themselves because they KNOW exactly how empty they are. Hillary Clinton? During the dark teatime of the soul when she sits at the kitchen table eating sticks of butter and wishing she had a soul so she could have a dark teatime? Don’t you think she knows — in that little empty spot where her soul used to be — that she sucks? She knows she could soar, but she’s afraid of hitting the ground and looking like a total Hillary.
People like Trump? They don’t care how empty they are.
Trump will never be a profound thinker. Neither will Joe Biden. They’re both BFIs. But Trump knows he’s a BFI. Biden, his supporters, his staff, his family, they all get up and talk about the “good works” Team Biden is getting done. Like the derailment factory called Amtrak. And the Sisyphean effort it took to screw millions of students with a lifetime of nondischargable debt. If Trump had hated student debt, it would have been eliminated.
Do you have universal healthcare? Has the climate crisis ended? How did the democrats lose Roe v. Wade? Why does that BFI of a press secretary always look like Timothy Bottoms in the first five minutes of “The Paper Chase”? Are you even allowed to ask these questions before people who are conditioned to support Biden at all costs rush in to shut you down?
THAT is why Trump will win in 2024. Not because he’s better. But because he understands that most people don’t care what the answer is, IF they are made to believe that they were actually listened to when they asked the question.
And now, off to moderation.
The problem with DeSantis et. al. is that they are lashed to the stupid GOP Anti-Trans/Anti-Gay/Anti-Woke War that fails over and over because it’s the “red meat” for the voting base. They could ditch it and have to talk about something else, but then they face rejection. They have dug their own graves supporting a topic that does not appeal to the independents who have to be swayed to vote GOP or Dems every election but it a big deal to the ex-Religious Right that became Tea Party people and then Trump fans. Talking about the actual economic reality of America in 2023 instead of this made-up Alex Jones-style garbage would be brave at this point for any GOP candidate.