Donald Trump is getting played

For weeks now we’ve seen reporting, rumblings, and accusations that Donald Trump’s 2020 campaign advisers aren’t actually trying to win. Instead they see it as a lost cause and they’re just trying to lull Trump into thinking he’s winning so they can keep their cushy campaign jobs through election day. But how true is this narrative?

Now, one piece of anecdotal but crucial evidence makes clear that Trump’s campaign advisers really are playing to an audience of one – and playing him for a fool. According to the Daily Beast, the Trump 2020 campaign is now running certain TV ads on cable news, just in the Washington DC market, to make sure Donald Trump sees them when he’s binge-watching cable news each day.

Let’s think this through. For starters, the three electoral votes in Washington DC are all but automatically going to Joe Biden. The Trump 2020 campaign won’t gain anything election-wise by running these ads. It’s clear that the Trump campaign is wasting this money just so Donald Trump will see the ads and think that his campaign is doing something. It gets worse.

On Monday night we noticed that the Trump 2020 campaign has begun running TV ads on MSNBC in primetime hours. Why would the Trump campaign be trying to get votes from the MSNBC crowd? There are no votes to be had there. Even if the Trump campaign were trying to convince MSNBC viewers not to turn out for Joe Biden, it would be running anti-Biden attack ads. Instead the Trump campaign is merely running a generic ad praising Trump. The campaign is clearly running this just in case Donald Trump is watching. Trump is getting played by his own goons.