Trump Does Not Go “Off Message” - He IS The Message

Throwing a rotten tomato at the anti-union candidate on Labor Day weekend

Remember the first time Trump threw himself into a presidential bid, he stood on stage with his Republican primary rivals and accused Latin Americans of being racists and scum?  Everyone was horrified.  Except the people who were thrilled about the cruelty and ended up voting for him. 

Trump got more “unearned media” for his scalding attacks than he ever would have done by putting forward a ‘platform’.  The voters in his corner don’t care about platforms anyway.  The US county that relies most on Federal aid is the also the most Republican county in the country.  His People cannot connect the dots: federal funding means support for your family.

So when Trump’s handlers are stressed that he is not ‘staying on message’ in his postings and comments, they fundamentally do not understand the politics behind his wins.

Message tracks are not going to do it for Trump, and he knows it!

He knows it better than his managers.  But they are pushing back, and having some tiny influence.

Their problem with Trump is in fact their problem…they are election managers, not visionaries.  Trump is the visionary.  We may not like the vision, but some do.  No one seems motivated, though, by the election platform pushed by Trump’s managers.  Especially the 2025 manifesto for dictatorship of the rich.

A lesson to bring from this doomed struggle is not that they could prevail – never happen – but that the managers have even been able to enjoy a modest success in keeping Trump on-message.

Trump has not been able to shut them down completely.

If he were full of his usual energy and vigor he would have proceeded with his messages regardless of what anyone else said.

His managers are so afraid of his unrestrained statements that they are insisting that for the coming online debate with Harris, Trump’s microphone be muted while she is talking.  They are afraid of what he will blurt out.

This means that he has been so shattered recently by the success of the Harris campaign that he does not yet have the energy to re-assert himself and take back control.

Mind you, the path to success in 2016 will not work anymore in 2024 – most people are tired of his message and see him for what he is: a self-centred criminal and huckster.  But Trump has no way of processing that.  He is sensitive to some input – he has dialed back his public support for the abortion ban – but he cannot face the overall notion that he, Donald Trump, is unloved by most of the voters and is a Loser.

He knows that a ‘platform’ will not save him – he has to fight this on the basis of personality – but he is flailing.  Harris has knocked him back on his heels.  He can’t find anything that works.  The accusation that she is Black got trounced in the Obama era.  The revelation that she is a Woman is actually bringing in voters for her.  What does he have left that is an attack allegation?

As noted, the abortion access cause is a bit of a mess for him.  To illustrate with Florida, because it is his home state, Florida has a six-week abortion ban that went into effect in May.  Most Florida voters want the ban lifted – in fact, they want reproductive rights enshrined in their state legislation.  Trump has suggested a few says ago that he will support the removal of the ban: “I am going to be voting that we need more than six weeks,” he said a few says ago.  His staff rushed in to add that he meant that six weeks is too early in pregnancy to ban abortion. 

His wishy-washy strategy is likely to leave anti-abortion voters less than eager to vote for him. 

The reproductive rights plank of his platform has just hit him in the face.  Why he couldn’t see 20 years ago is beyond me.  Perhaps his inbred desire to control women is unstoppable.

Women now comprise the largest group of registered voters.  They turn out to vote at higher levels than men:  two-thirds of them did in 2020. 

In the Republican primaries, more than 40% of the women voted for Nikki Haley, instead of Trump.  Abortion is one reason, but he also faced the sexual assault ruling in the Jean Carroll case, where he continued to defame the plaintiff during and after the trial.  Turnout rates for women could reach historic highs in this election – bad news for Trump. 

Mind you, this is the man who buried his previous wife on his golf course, so perhaps there is phantom justice coming.

Ivanka Trump’s grave at Trump National Golf Course in Bedminster, New Jersey.

Now, Trump is already skating on the thin edge of numerical probability.  Only one other former president has ever come back after being defeated for re-election to win a second non-consecutive term.  Grover Cleveland, a Democrat from New York, won by a narrow margin in 1884 but lost in the Electoral College in 1888 despite having the popular vote. Cleveland was renominated in 1892 and decisively beat Benjamin Harrison – the man he had lost to four years earlier.  It must have felt good.

The only thing Trump has left, is to shut down Democratic voters.

In Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton has removed more than one million voters from the rolls.  He has sent police into the homes of Latino families.  Voters now have to pro-actively check to see if they are still on the voting lists.  If they have been suspended for whatever reason, there is a delaying process involved in getting back on.  There is nothing wrong with cleaning up the voter lists, but Governor Greg Abbott is using this information to discourage people from participating in the electoral process.  It is sending a chill through the Dem ranks.

Trump says he would "shut down the government in a heartbeat" if a measure is not passed that blocks non-citizens from voting.  That is already illegal, but the facts won’t stop Republicans in Congress from trying to shut down the government. 

It looks like Trump is just laying the groundwork for another accusation of unjust election practices when he loses in November.  There are already stories of Republican take-over of Electoral College delegates.  They are trying to execute successfully now the very same plan they failed in executing in 2020 and to overturn the 2024 election. Their plan involves electing Trump-endorsed candidates to state legislative offices in key swing states, installing into office their favored state election officials who deny that Harris won the election.

This will be harder in 2024 that it was in 2020.  Trump will have to reach way back, in fact, to claim that Harris won unfairly…he would have to demean her earlier Senate win as well.  California has more than 22-million registered voters – the most of any state.  She won it in 2017.  Trump has never run for electoral office other than president, so he has no knowledge of how an electoral system functions.  But to claim that California or the US itself could have more than a handful of illegal voters is a sham.  And trying to replace their representatives in an Electoral College would be a massively disruptive procedure.

Not that Trump would care.

All he really has right now is chaos and disruption.  Claims of extraordinary power.  Falsehoods about his opponents. 

But no platform.

That is a management dream.

It would not at all suit the Regent of Rage, who aspires to Office not for the good of the country, but for his own good.

As far as he is concerned, all you need to know is that he is running.  It’s all about him.

So in October, make sure it’s about someone else.