Trump 2020 Campaign Strategy: Hate Your Fellow Americans
By Christian Thrailkill
Donald Trump and the RNC are in full campaign mode for 2020. The conservative grassroots is being flooded by fundraising appeals. Swing state voters are being overwhelmed with attack ads. The RNC is pouring millions into a coordinated strategy to turn out the Trumpian base. In order to get the maximum voter turnout, there’s something new in the messaging coming from the President of the United States: An open call to hatred.
During Trump’s campaign launch, Trump made a trial remark to the crowd, claiming that “Depraved Democrats want to destroy you.” He went on to claim the Democrats want to destroy the country and our way of life. At first glance, this may seem like Trump’s usual hyperbolic language, but in truth it’s a deliberate, coordinated strategy to “other” the Democratic party and democratic voters to conservatives. The ultimate goal of this strategy is to get his voters to believe that their political opponents are so evil and depraved that to not vote is to destroy the country. In short, it’s the Flight 93 election to the extreme.
In subsequent speeches and tweets, Trump has pressed this line of attack, painting the Democrats with the most heinous of conservative slurs: “Radical”, “Socialist”, “Communist”, “Anti-Semetic”, “Un-American”. There’s no dog whistling or sub textual meaning in his messaging. Like Trump himself, it’s blunt, incendiary, and purposefully divisive. With historic unpopularity despite a booming economy, it might very well be his best shot at preserving his presidency. On that level at least, there’s logic to his actions. What’s more insidious is that this messaging is the culmination of Trump’s long term conditioning of his base, all the way back to his Birther days.
Trump has been deliberately stoking controversies throughout his administration in an effort to portray the Democrats as Anti-American. Famously, he singled out Colin Kaepernick’s kneeling during the national anthem as a sign of ultimate disrespect to the military, instead of as an exercise of protected free speech. This led to a conservative movement to boycott football itself, one of the most traditionally American pastimes. Any allies who showed sympathy towards Kaepernick’s goals were publicly shamed into submission via twitter. This line of attack was revived during Megan Rapinoe’s preemptive declination to visit the president after the World Cup. The message to Trump voters is that spoiled athletes don’t love the country, and their protest is a slap in the face to “everyday Americans”.
A second major line of attack began when Donald Trump classified Black Lives Matter protesters as domestic terrorists in contest with our law enforcement. This was a way to paint Democratic sympathizers as radicals against law enforcement. Anyone who was upset over senseless killings of fellow Americans by bad actors in the police was really someone who hated our policemen and wanted lawlessness. When this line of attack died out, Trump pivoted to attacking critics of the atrocious conditions at our border facilities as open border radicals, rather than people with compassion for human suffering. This all ties back to Trump’s signature issue of wanting to build a border wall to keep out immigrants, which itself veiled the othering of potential Americans in the cloak of “law and order”.
Finally, in order to inoculate his base to criticism from “outsiders”, Trump has routinely preyed on conservative fear of media bias by painting the free press as “The Enemy of The People.” Anyone who disagrees with Trump’s policy, calls out his many lies, or points out logical inconsistencies is simply “fake news”, which gives the Trump base license to tune out credible journalism detailing Trump’s many cover ups and failures to live up to his oath of office. Even former allies and people imbued with trust by Trump are immediately written off as losers and liars by the Trump base, just ask Rex Tillerson or Michael Cohen.
This purposeful messaging of painting American citizens as enemies of the people has come to a head in recent weeks with the President’s infamous remarks that four Democratic congresswoman, all of whom are American citizens, should “go back to their countries”. This was an openly racist attack on elected officials by our President in an attempt to make his base perceive “The Squad” as Un-American. What’s worse, this strategy is clearly resonating with his base, who chanted “Send Her Back” to Rep. Omar Ilhan in a scene that wouldn’t have been out of place at a Nazi rally.
This brings us to the most defining moment of the Trump Presidency: The Charlottesville “Unite The Right” rally. Trump famously failed to condemn the political violence caused by Neo-Nazi’s, claiming there were “fine people on both sides.” Though Trump attempted to walk back his words, there’s a very clear reason why he said them. He was signalling to his base that Nazi’s defending Confederate monuments were more American than protestors condemning them, because the Nazi’s at least were trying to preserve our culture and history. The ultimate point of this hedging is that anyone trying to criticize our country and our “heritage” is Un-American, and an enemy.
Though Donald Trump is the standard bearer of the Republican Party, make no mistake: These are the tactics and rhetoric of communist and facist tyrants throughout history. The message: Anyone who gets in the way of Trump’s Glorious Revolution, even a fellow American, is an enemy to be hated, othered, and ultimately fought against, with speech and violence. These sentiments are echoed throughout history by the likes of Castro, Peron, Pol Pot, and Mussolini. And now it’s come to America, by way of our highest office.
This loathsome bigotry is the hill that Donald Trump has chosen to live or die on, but it doesn’t have to be America’s. American Exceptionalism is predicated on our ability to live by our better angels more often than not. If we remember that our fellow American is fundamentally decent, and remember that our country was founded on the ability to live together despite our differences, we can survive this moment in our history and come out of it a stronger nation for the test of character.
Christian Thrailkill is a graduate of Southern Methodist University, musician, and columnist. He lives in Dallas, Texas.
