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Matt Gaetz as Attorney General? Bypass congressional checks and balances with recess appointments?
Even the conservative editorial board of the Wall Street Journal is shocked, but Trump’s base sees their leader as striking out with bold actions against the establishment elites they despise. It’s the showmanship of his professional wrestling interest. Please the crowd, keep them inside the bubble of illusion, appeal to base instincts, and distract them from thinking critically.
This tactic may be intuitive for Trump, but it achieves some important strategic objectives for him:
- Keeps the base impressed because it enrages the establishment leadership.
- Keeps the country polarized. (Trump loses if America unifies around shared values. That can’t happen if we are too angry to listen to each other.)
- Distracts attention from reality, and from his mendacity and incompetence.
- It gobbles up time in the news cycle, providing cover for less sensational adverse acts and obscuring rational analysis.
Dominating the news, triggering primal fears and other lizard-brain-level emotions, is a manipulative tactic that his adversaries are loath to use. Encumbered by scruples and unwilling to sacrifice integrity, the resistance fights an asymmetric war.
But Trump’s base is bonded by a web of lies and misinformation. Reality eventually crushes misperception. Therein lies a major vulnerability.