Come on! Everybody knows the name of Kamala – I mean, the economy is the strongest it has been in a long – oh, really? The only weave you have is on the top of your –
Arrrrrrrrrrgh!
Trying to counter the lies of the most lieingest liar to ever get into the Oval Office is an eternal game of whack-a-mole, only they have grown so monstrous that it’s more like whack-an-elephant! I have no doubt, for instance, that I will be accused of fomenting violence against the former president by referencing this carnival game, even though, given my lack of an audience, it will get him attention for all of a lukewarm half minute before he goes on to complain about Tim Walz’ hair.
Why Tim Walz’ hair? Why Hannibal Lecter? Why sharks or refrigerators? WHY ANYTHING‽
In football, there is a tactic known as “flooding the zone.” This does not mean turning sprinklers on your opponent as they move upfield (as entertaining as that might be, especially if it shrank their uniforms and accentuated their…oooooooh!). It means noticing a weakness in your opponent and filling that side of the field with as many players as you can afford.
Trump practices the political equivalent of flooding the zone: constant personal attacks, lies and, increasingly, non-sequiturs. If your Uncle Merv was like this, you would stop inviting him to family ChristmaKwaanzUkah shenanidigs; the last thing you would do would be to give him the keys to the nuclear liquor cabinet. (I know, I know: strain peas, not metaphors. Still, sometimes an artist’s reach must exceed his grasp, or what’s a metaphor?)
This achieves three of the former president’s goals. 1. Playing Whack-a-[INSERT APPROPRIATE ANIMAL HERE] allows him to avoid serious fact-checking or pushback. Outraged that he lied about his administration’s handling of the COVID pandemic (bleach cocktail anyone?) yesterday? Too bad. Today, he intentionally mispronounced Vice President Kamala Harris’ name and accused her of being a Communist, fascist, bedwetter. Offended by what he said about VP Harris today? Tomorrow he will be talking about how everybody wanted him to overturn Roe v Wade (which will come as a surprise to the women who died because doctors didn’t want to be arrested for helping remove an unviable fetus from their uterus), but he doesn’t support a national abortion ban because…reasons.
It has taken the Washington press corps a decade to catch up with this tactic, and even now most of them look like a deer caught in headlights when faced with having to fact check Trump. He makes journalists road kill for sport.
2. In the absence of a rigorous defence of the truth, the truth becomes malleable. Trump’s crowds are bigger than any other politician in the history of anything? Of course they are! (Just ignore images and video of all those empty seats!) Illegal Haitian immigrants eating dogs, cats and other pets in Springfield, Ohio? Boo, immigrants! (Just ignore all of the officials who say the immigrants were invited to help the city’s economy, which they have done, and nobody is eating anybody’s pets!) Trump claiming to be the greatest speaker since Abraham Lincoln? Cue the standing ovation! (Where do I even begin?)
Unlike the old man shaking his fist at the sky, the former president has a political party and media ecosystem willing to repeat and amplify his words. (Uncle Merv is understandably jealous; he doesn’t even have a tin can and piece of string.) So, when he floods the zone with vitriol and dishonesty (great punk band name – make me an offer!), lots of innocent people drown.
JD Vance, not the sharpest stick in the weapons cabinet, gave the game away when, in an interview, he said: “If I have to create stories so that the media actually pays attention to the suffering of the American people, then that’s what I’m going to do.” Now, all politicians create narratives to support their policies, from FDR talking about the corporate fatcats gouging the average citizen to George W. Bush representing himself as a competent leader. But they generally have some basis, no matter how tenuous, in reality. That’s not what JD was talking about.
To current Republican leadership, create stories = lie. Political calculation doesn’t get much simpler than that.
3. Me! Me! Me! Me! Meeeeeeeeeeeee! This could be a political strategy, inasmuch as when the media is talking about Trump’s latest statement on how the Democrats stole the 2020 election (by getting more votes than he did), they are not talking about the Harris/Walz policies on the economy or climate or…anything, really. But this gives the former president too much credit for strategerizing. In fact, as a malignant narcissist, he just really loves the attention.
And if he has to flood the zone with the tears of his victims, well, that’s just a price he is willing to pay.