Donald Trump and the Power and Limits of Branding and Messaging

You don’t say!

Donald Trump is astonishingly terrible at a great number of things, such as being president. But  when it comes to branding and messaging he’s a true idiot-savant with an uncanny and unfortunate gift for getting the public to believe what he says, no matter how transparently false, evil or unhinged it might be. 

This is done largely by giving his enemies insulting nicknames that have a way of sticking because they often contain an element of truth. Crooked Hillary resonated with the public because the Clintons really did have a lot of skeletons in their closet. “Little” Marco Rubio is, in fact, small in spirit as well as stature. 

Even when Trump’s nicknames and ideas didn’t possess even an iota of truth he has a way of putting them across through sheer mindless repetition. A lie told often enough begins to have a ring of truth no matter how preposterous and Trump’s communication style is heavy on blatant lying and mindless repetition. 

Trump will settle on a word or phrase to describe a situation that vilifies his many enemies and exonerates himself and then repeat it over and over and over and over again until it is drilled into the susceptible minds of his followers with such force that nothing can dislodge it. The Mueller investigation, for example, became “The Russia Hoax.” Critical journalistic coverage of him and his administration was branded as “Fake News” not to be trusted. 

Hear that, Kemp? You’re pathetic human garbage who should be voted out of office. Now do Trump’s bidding!

A Democratic Party whose idea of Socialism entails giving working people a single 1200 dollar payment over a nine month period to cope with an unprecedented health crisis and runaway unemployment was branded as a bevy of bomb-throwing Bolsheviks/the radical left. 

Trump began conditioning cultists inclined to believe everything he says that a presidential election in which he was defeated could only be accomplished through systematic, widespread cheating the likes of which the world has never known back in 2016 despite pundits giving him a very slim chance of shocking the world by defeating Hillary Clinton. 

Trump was so committed to the narrative that the only way someone with no relevant experience and the attention span and emotional maturity of a poorly behaved five year old who was recently caught bragging about grabbing women by their genitalia to Billy Bush could lose the presidency would be if the other side cheated that even when he stunned a horrified world by winning the presidency in 2016, he stuck to it, insisting that he would have won the popular vote as well as the electoral college if it were not for Democratic chicanery. 

So when Trump lost the 2020 presidential election to Joe Biden he had a lot of experience accusing the Democrats of rigging elections against him. He immediately accused the Democrats of not just cheating but perpetrating the greatest, most appalling crime in the history of electoral politics. 

Trump is wrong, of course, as the countless failed lawsuits his people have filed to get the results of the election overturned attest. Being wrong has never stopped Trump before. He knows that the more wrong you are, the more psychotically aggressive you need to be to really get your point across in the face of mountains upon mountains of evidence to the contrary. 

Since November 3rd, Trump has stopped even pretending to do the job of president so that he can focus all of his time and energy to angrily insisting that he not only won an election that he most assuredly did not win, but that he won it in a landslide, only to see that incontrovertible and massive victory stolen by evil Democratic vote stealers. And Republicans too. Basically, everyone is conspiring against Trump, including members of his own administration.

Trump has branded the 2020 election results as rigged and fake and stolen and consequently illegitimate. He has repeated this claim over and over again on social media and in press conferences and interviews, with increasing degrees of rage and desperation.  

At this point, ALL Trump seemingly does is howl into the void about the terrible injustice that has been perpetrated against him, and by extension, our country, and its highest ideals, and God and the Bible and Baby Jesus. Trump no longer seems remotely interested in the actual job of being president. All Trump cares about is holding onto power by any means necessary. 

So Trump has been staying relentlessly on-message regarding the election being stolen from him. He’s more interested in branding the election a fraud than in actual governing. What we are discovering now are the limits of Trump’s branding and messaging. 

Trump’s branding magic has not worked on the judges who have heard the various lawsuits contesting Biden’s victory, a good number of whom were actually appointed by Trump himself and/or are proud Republicans and Trump supporters yet nevertheless ruled strongly against him.  

Trump staying on message and branding his “defeat” an unforgivable crime against humanity similarly did not work on Republican leaders in Arizona and Georgia, who support Trump and would like nothing more than four more years of the waking nightmare that was his first term but are unwilling to risk political suicide, commit felonies and/or do the impossible in order to realize Trump’s angry demand that he be deemed the winner of a presidential race he clearly lost. 

But that does not mean that Trump’s messaging and branding via the election has not been effective. From a legal perspective, it certainly has not worked but when it comes to winning the hearts and minds of his followers and his spineless sycophants in the Republican Party Trump’s angry insistence that he won by a landslide has caught fire with both politicians terrified of inciting the rage of Trump and his violent and unhinged supporters and his cultists.

Trump has weaponized the slavish devotion of his cult in the most literal manner imaginable in the sense that there are electoral officials who are genuinely afraid of being murdered with weapons by Trump super-fans willing to die and kill in the holy name of Donald Trump and his giant, delicate ego. 

Yesterday I read about a Republican official who said that they were afraid to state the obvious and assert that Joe Biden is the president-elect because they were worried about their homes being bombed or set on fire in retaliation. 

On the day I’m writing this 106 members of Congress, all Republicans, filed a brief that essentially asks/demands that the results of the 2020 election be tossed out after being relentlessly pressured by Trump do so. That’s over half of the Republicans in Congress. 

Trump has pretty much lost every lawsuit involving the 2020 election. Unless something dramatic and unprecedented happens very soon Joe Biden will inhabit the White House on January 21st.

Just because Trump lost the election and every subsequent legal challenge doesn’t mean his messaging and branding haven’t succeeded in myriad ways. He’s overwhelmingly succeeded in convincing his followers that Joe Biden stole the election and is consequently an illegitimate president and he’s powerful enough to scare Republicans who know damn well he lost, and lost decisively, into pretending otherwise publicly for the sake of their political future and present. 

Trump’s branding and messaging is such an overwhelming force that even when he loses, and loses big, he still finds a way to win, even if it’s only with a base for whom he can do no wrong.

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