I’d like a message for anti-trumpers to use to fight trump, winning over as many of his supporters as possible.
I have one suggestion for one: “trump is not a good man.”
It’s simple. It’s easy.
It appeals to a common set of values any of his supporters who aren’t in his family or simply evil agree with as a standard.
In contrast to a message like ‘trump is hitler’— the response to that is, ‘no, he’s not’ and leaves his supporters feeling more justified than ever — it’s easy to prove, hard to disagree with, compelling.
It resets the bar to a more reasonable level. Is it too much to ask for the president we support to be ‘a good person’?
trump relies on his lies and cons fooling people. But his actions will continue to contradict his con.
People can start to notice that more and more, and story after story shows them, trump is not a good man.
And it’s the sort of thing trump can’t really argue against. If he denies it, it will be his Nixon ‘I am not a crook’ moment — saying something people no longer agree with.
An old political story is LBJ ordering his staff to spread a story his opponent had sex with pigs. When they protested it wasn’t true, he said of course it’s not, he just wants to see him deny it.
But trump can’t deny this.
trump is not a good man.
A meme to politically undo him. To get every American to ask themselves, about every trump story, ‘does this show he is a good man, or not?’ And the answer will almost always be, he’s not.
Our challenge is, a media system that can reinforce a message like that — the right has that media.
But, I think we’ll do well to mention a lot, “trump is not a good man.”
As his policies do more and more harm to his supporters, as his lies have more and more of a price, it will sting him badly. Why support him, if the reasons his voters did are false?
’Crook’, while accurate, does not have the same impact it did with Nixon — it’s widely expected a lot of politicians are sort of ‘crooks’— and it’s hard enough to pin specifics on trump for that for it to have an impact. trump himself said he can murder someone and not lose any supporters. So what shakes that cultish following? I think when they start to agree trump is not a good man, he can crumble.