The Trump playbook is dead
Last week potential Trump running mate Kristi Noem tried to get ahead by bragging that she once shot a young hunting dog just because she hated it. She was clearly trying to come off like Trump – cruel, bullying, and nasty – but she fell flat on her face. Noem is just the latest right wing politician to try using the Trump playbook, only to find out that it doesn’t work. See also DeSantis, Haley, and too many other Republicans to list.
So why is it that no one can figure out how to use the Trump playbook with any degree of success? Some have argued that Donald Trump alone has some kind of perverse anti-charisma that allows him to use these unhinged and unappealing tactics and ride them to victory.
But something else also happened last week. Trump’s former longtime friend David Pecker took the stand and confessed under oath that he and Trump conspired to rig the 2016 election by strategically promoting fake news and corruptly suppressing real news. Trump and Pecker didn’t just criminally conspire against Hillary Clinton. They also rigged the Republican primary race as well. Without such criminal antics, there’s a good chance Trump would have lost the primary race as well.
In other words, Trump didn’t even really win the one election that he won. He had to criminally cheat his way through that election from start to finish, with outside help, just to narrowly defeat the unpopular Ted Cruz for the nomination, and then lose the general election by three million votes. That was while cheating.
So no, the Trump playbook has never worked. His approach to politics was so ineffective, he had to cheat just to pull off one narrow upside-down win. And once cheaters like Pecker weren’t in a position to help him in 2020, Trump lost by seven million votes.
Donald Trump has never, ever run a successful or competent political campaign in his life. His playbook is a recipe for how to lose. It’s a joke. It’s based on the naive belief that you can build a broad enough coalition to win by alienating everyone who doesn’t already love you. It’s an idiot’s approach.
The reason the Trump playbook isn’t working for anyone else is that it never worked for Donald Trump to begin with. His cruel, bullying, disgusting, repulsive, psychotic approach to politics certainly appeals to a scumbag minority within this country. But if not for criminal cheating, Trump never could have even so much as gotten into the White House on a visitor’s pass. Trump is one of the most ineffective political candidates of the modern era. The “Trump playbook” has only ever been a how-to manual for how to screw up and lose.
