You Just Got Trump’d
Ludicrous and captivating, Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign has been one of the most unique phenomena since its outset to baffle political analysts and critics across the country. Most of the perplexity stems from the remarkable ability for the Trump campaign to have so many damning blunders while still maintaining a high margin of popular support and receiving the GOP nomination. This has become a truth that is undeniable. But Monday night at the Republican National Convention, one veiled campaign strategy irrefutably surfaced with both Donald and Melania Trumps’ blatant plagiarism of previous speeches by Barack and Michelle Obama. The explanation for, potentially, many of the outlandish actions and statements that have caused this year’s election to satirize itself.
They’re entirely planned and on purpose.
I invite you to get out your best tinfoil hat and proudly adorn it for the next few paragraphs.
The common sentiments of rationalists and skeptics everywhere have been confusion and disbelief as they try to explain Trump’s domination of the electorate with some 3D charts and polling data. A lot of people have argued that Trump is clearly operating, to an extreme degree, on the premise that any press is good press. This is what his whole campaign has been after all, and why his air time in the media has been unparalleled. However, Monday’s RNC confirmed that the Trump campaign is not simply exploiting Trump’s deeply flawed character and absent verbal filter for media buzz, they are also in the business of contriving their own infelicities.
Radically racist statements, self-contradictions, and everything in between are subject to our careful inspection for traces of this devious campaign strategy. Melania’s speech writer recently claimed responsibility for the copied work (and then was publicly forgiven by Trump, what a saint he is), but its owner doesn’t matter. What’s notable is that the writer did not plagiarize a lowly state politician or even someone from the same political party that could be chalked up as “creative inspiration”. They chose perhaps the most high-profile and ideologically contrasting woman, and even used material specifically from a previous national convention as the breadcrumbs that the investigative media would inevitably follow to the transcript of Michelle’s 2008 speech. The outright denial by Trump and his campaign in this most recent instance of error is perhaps what’s the most off-putting; as if we are supposed to believe that no one in the Trump conglomerate understands how plagiarism works, or even how to read. This is not a politician’s gut reaction of denial to a mistake (a la Hillary Clinton), though it is well disguised as that. This is a planned reaction that maximizes controversy and public debate.
All the refusal to entertain accusations and the dismissal of obvious evidence serves as a pair of bellows, fanning the fire that this plagiarism controversy will stir up in the news for the next few days, all with Trump’s household name sitting proudly in bold at the top of the front page. While Trump continues to make constant in-person TV appearances on conservative news programs, he makes his appearance on liberal media through their constant video coverage and analysis of his latest solecism.
The Trump campaign is like a struggling reality show late in its third season when the producers begin to nudge the cast in certain directions, or place them in artificial situations to entertain viewers. It’s that extra push that is a characteristic of branding specialists. The real question is, when did The Trump Show get handed off to the campaign-marketing masterminds that hide behind the curtain? What has been a legitimate gaffe by the (very) flawed man that is Donald Trump and what has been a tactful sentence, queued up for him by a cabal of social engineers at Trump HQ, to spit out at the next campaign rally?
At the end of the day, it doesn’t matter. The line between human fallibility and meticulously crafted political strategy has become so blurry that we will likely never know the reason for many of these public “embarrassments”. To doubt that Trump’s campaign team has this much foresight and strategy would be to once again mistakenly attribute his success as a fluke. We know this campaign’s achievement is not a fluke, and it is irresponsibly dismissive to buy into that oversimplification. The campaign thrives on the viewer at home sunken into a futon and perusing the nightly news, where the context of situations takes a backseat to the headlines on the bottom of the screen. Headlines that could very well send Trump to the White House.
