From a Trump Campaign stop in Arizona yesterday:
Thank you very much, everybody. Thank you. Well, thank you very much. Thank you very much. And considering that we caught President Obama and sleepy Joe Biden, spying on our campaign, treason, will probably be entitled to another four more years after that. I wanted to thank you, and Art and Brandon, you’re incredible. [Factbase]
Critical to Trump’s success in his reelection campaign is keeping his base together and confident. As evidence continues to pile up of his collusion with foreign adversaries, namely Russia, from highly credible agencies, such as the Senate Intel Committee – hardly a bastion of liberal ideological leanings – suggesting that Trump is a creature of a swamp much uglier than the one he promised to replace, it’s necessary – from his point of view – to keep the base distracted.
A classic maneuver is to loudly proclaim your confidence and your innocence, and that’s what this is all about. No doubt he is aware that SCOTUS would vote, at a minimum of 7-2, and more likely 9-0, to deny him a third term. But that’s not the point at the moment; at the moment, it’s to assert that he’s an innocent victim of forces, dark and evil, to take him down, and to suggest that he’s so innocent that he’s deserving of an exemption from a rule that applies to other politicians.
His base is excited and confirmed in its belief that he, like they, are victims – and therefore good people who would otherwise prosper if it weren’t for those dark and evil forces. They’re also too busy to investigate all these ‘baseless’ claims, all these ‘exonerations.’ Never mind the reality that evidence for a second and third impeachment is continuing to pile up, that his Administration incompetence is damaging the nation. Victim, victim, victim, gollum, gollum, gollum.
This blue whale is not happy being compared to Trump mendacity.
But there’s also risk, because as the evidence piles up, his assertions of total innocence make it more and more likely that those of his base who do, finally, at the urging of family, friends, and clergy, look closely and discover their leader has feet of the most loathsome clay, and that the culture of victimhood has little, beyond its initial sugary rush, to offer, they may finally walk away from him. A little mendacity can be swallowed by partisans of any sort; but this is a shitload dumped by a blue whale, and any ordinary member of the base, and even some of those who owe their positions to him, will stop swallowing and start walking away, once they realize this isn’t an unreasonable political lynching of Trump – but the assertions of a profoundly incompetent man.
They might even vote for Biden – or West.
That’s how big the divergence is between what comes out of Trump’s mouth and reality.
