[View here as a Twitter thread]
Info from Jason Stanley’s book and this lecture.
The main skill required is to be able to lie big. Trump lies naturally. He doesn’t hesitate to tell easily disproven lies. He doesn’t hesitate to lie even when he knows that the people he’s talking to know the truth. He tells grand, outrageous lies.
This is one of the wildest Trump lies of his presidency. He told the Wall Street Journal that the tariffs he has imposed and bragged about do not actually exist: https://t.co/4lHm75uXW0 pic.twitter.com/DAkJ8iD97b
— Daniel Dale (@ddale8) October 24, 2018
The traits that allowed Trump to con his way to the White House and convince people that he was a successful businessman are the same traits that allow him to manipulate the media, keep people in line by bullying them, and keep everyone riled up.
Keeping everyone riled up, particularly his opponents (outrage!) is another technique. That’s why his approval rating ticked up during the Kavanaugh debacle. Outrage from the left actually helps him by keeping people stirred up and angry.
MaggieNYT, who has been observing Trump closely for years, said he isn’t dumb and he knows how to provoke a reaction.
This is also one of his bits of genius, is creating a distraction when a news tide is against him. He does not read books, but he is also not dumb, and he knows how to provoke a reaction. https://t.co/5QMzwVYfXo
— Maggie Haberman (@maggieNYT) October 19, 2018
We’re on a steep learning curve in dealing with these tactics. We must learn to see when we’re playing into his hands.
From Stanley: Trump gets people hyped up into an “us v. them” mentality—so he can take their money. Hyping people up & getting them to swear loyalty to him while he enacts policies to make himself rich isn’t the behavior of someone with dementia or the mentality of a toddler.
Last June, Heidi Stevens with the Chicago Tribune said to stop comparing Trump to a toddler. In overseeing the cruelty of separating parents from their children, he wasn’t acting like a child. He was acting like a cruel, angry, entitled adult.
https://www.chicagotribune.com/lifestyles/stevens/ct-life-stevens-wednesday-stop-calling-trump-a-child-0613-story.html
Trump supporters know he’s not dumb or bumbling. They probably don’t realize, though, that he cynically uses a proven and time-honored set of techniques to manipulate them as well. Outrage from the left amuses them. But maybe they’d listen if people explain how they’re being duped
As I watch Trump’s lies get more outrageous, what I think about is this: The amount of evil that can be done by a person with the ability to (1) be cruel and (2) cynically use a set of fascist tactics to gain and maintain power.
