Why the recent anti-Trump attacks strengthened Trump

In the past week, there was a spate of attacks on Donald Trump that fizzled. The reason why the attacks made by former Presidential candidate Mitt Romney belly-flopped is that Romney looks just like the kind of establishment insider that Trump’s supporter’s hate. All Romney’s attacks did was to remind Trump supporters of all the people that they hate.

Then there were accusations that Trump is sympathetic to National Socialism, Italian fascism, and white supremacy. First, Trump was accused of employing Nazi imagery when a picture of his supporters holding their right hands in the air, as if they were giving a Heil Hitler salute, was circulated. A related incident occurred when Trump failed to denounce white supremacist David Duke when he endorsed Trump. A third occurred when Trump supposedly quoted Mussolini approvingly. The latter attack fizzled quickly when World War I scholar John Schindler pointed out in a tweet that Mussolini never said it. Rather, it was a popular saying among the Italian military at the time.

Here’s the reason why the first attack backfired: the charge is ludicrous. In order to be a National Socialist, at the bare minimum, your world-view has to be animated by a belief in anti-Semitic conspiracy theories. If you don’t believe at least that, then you aren’t really a Nazi. Given that Trump’s daughter converted to Judaism, and that his first lawyer was Dick Morris’s father, it is incredible to assert that Donald Trump is a National Socialist.

Reckless accusations of this sort are exactly the kind of thing that makes people hate Political Correctness, and opposition to Political Correctness is one of the main forces propelling the Trump candidacy. For instance, I am personally so sick and tired of specious accusations of racism that whenever I hear somebody accuse another person of racism, my automatic assumption is that the accuser is a slanderer and that the reputation of the accusee is being unjustly maligned. Why? Because 99% of the time that is the case.

So why did Trump not denounce David Duke? He did. His accusers assert that he didn’t do it vigorously enough, or quickly enough, or often enough. But here’s the thing, if Trump had denounced David Duke as often as his critics demanded, then the only result would have been Donald Trump’s face constantly on TV with the words “David Duke” coming out of his mouth over and over again.

An essential principle of Public Relations 101 is to never repeat a charge. The paradigmatic example of why doing this is bad occurred when President Nixon said, “I am not a crook”. Instead of seeing a denial, the public who saw an image of Nixon with the words “crook” coming out of his mouth. As a result, the denial ended up proving the charge, at least in the minds of the voters. In trying to skate away from a denial of David Duke, all Trump was trying to do was PR 101. He did it badly, but that’s his only sin in this affair.

To Trump’s supporters, and to any honest observers, it is transparently obvious that these accusations are unfair. The end result was that more people sympathized with Trump so that his vote tally increased.

Now, I am not a Trump supporter. I prefer Ted Cruz. But when people criticize Trump in such a transparently unfair manner, all they succeed in doing is immunizing him from the substantive attacks that could be made.

I am from Toronto. Our previous mayor was Rob Ford. Perhaps you heard of him and his crack cocaine scandal. Have you ever wondered why he was able to survive this scandal? Why his conservative support remained rock-solid? It’s because of how unfair the local media was to him leading up to that scandal. To give one example among many, the Toronto Star published a front-page expose of Ford eating a bucket of Kentucky Fried Chicken in his car. The car was parked. (I am not making this up.) The cumulative effect of all these specious ‘scandals’ was to inoculate Ford when substantive charges finally did surface. But by then, many people (myself included) had concluded that the Star just had it in for Ford.

And its not like there aren’t credible lines of attack that can be made against Trump. There are many. There is Trump University. There is his ideological “flexibility”. There is his past dealings with Democrats and establishment Republicans (including making donations to Chuck Schumer and Mitch McConnell). There is his past support of amnesty. There are also possible ties to organized crime. (Hey, he’s a New York City real estate developer who set up a casino in New Jersey. What is the likelihood that he doesn’t have such ties?) Interestingly, when these charges were leveled, just prior to Super Tuesday, Trump significantly underperformed in those primaries.

The lesson here is that if you want to hurt Trump, cut out the nonsense and stick to the facts. Going after him with transparently bogus allegations only makes him stronger.

Comments

[Marek Zyskowski]

I am from Montreal and I have been watching the Trump Campaign since August and he is doing really well.
The media have missed the boat in this election. The real story is that in the next election people are voting for change and Donald Trump is the best candidate for that.
The people are not stupid. They are pretty tired of the way the federal government runs and will probably elect Trump because he is the most credible candidate. They don't care what he says but will expect some kind of result. Let see what happens in Florida.

[james]

I don't care what the polls say the most important issue is the illegals. No one up until Trump has talked about it and then they all came running. Too little too late guys. What's happening in the southern US is a complete disaster. You have to live there for a while to see it.

[Gabby in QC]

Sorry to contradict you … but Trump equivocated on David Duke, claiming he didn’t know anything about him.
http://www.cnn.com/2016/02/28/politics/donald-trump-white-supremacists/
"Just so you understand, I don't know anything about David Duke, OK?" Trump said.
Trump was pressed three times on whether he'd distance himself from the Ku Klux Klan -- but never mentioned the group in his answers.
"I don't know anything about what you're even talking about with white supremacy or white supremacists," he said. "So I don't know. I don't know -- did he endorse me, or what's going on? Because I know nothing about David Duke; I know nothing about white supremacists."

Mind you, I don’t understand why anyone running for office, regardless of political stripe, needs to disavow anyone who declares his/her support for the candidate. The person declaring support is free to do so. The person getting the support is free to welcome it or not. If a candidate acknowledges the support by having that person join the campaign in some way, like Chris Christie did, that’s one thing. But simply stating one’s preference for a candidate, like Duke apparently did, is no reflection on Trump, IMO, unless he welcomed it like he did Christie’s.

What does reflect on Trump’s character is his denial of knowing anything about Duke or white supremacists. And constantly proving what a bombastic blowhard he is every time he opens his mouth also reflects on Trump’s character. How low have so-called American conservatives sunk!

[DPT]

I am for Cruz as well. My kids are all over the map. My daughter swoons for Sanders, one son wonders where Ron Paul has gone, and another is a very brainy intellectual Trump supporter. I just tremble with the thought that come March of next year, assuming Trump can become slightly more popular than Hillary, that both his current supporters and what is left of the Republican Party will be having a Whiskey Tango Foxtrot moment. I fear for the conservative movement, come-what-may.

[WiseGuy]

I have also been a Cruz supporter but I am now leaning towards Trump. The reason has little to do with the conventional politics for me, it has everything to do with defeating the political correctness and also the Alinsky tactics, now used almost everywhere in politics. If Trump is defeated, the Alinskyites will have won again. Defeating Alinskyism is more important than the particular candidate.
Watching the antics of the anti Trump crowd reminds me of how during the Civil War, generals still used mass charges against an entrenched line of men armed with rifled muskets. It took most of that war for them to update their obsolete tactics. I hope defeating these modern political tactics won't take more than one campaign.

[Autoguy]

Cincinnatus, thanks for another excellent communication of the issue. The crux of the matter as you so rightly point out, is that ridiculous accusations destroy the credibility of media. Then we simply don't trust any accusations they make.

[monkey]

My choice is John Kasich as he seems the most reasonable of them all. Despite claims he is moderate, he is still a strong fiscal conservative, he just has a dose of pragmatism which you need to get things through congress. As governor of Ohio, he took a $8 billion dollar deficit and brought it to a $2 billion dollar surplus and all while doing this brought strong growth and unemployment fell below the national average. So much for our federal Liberals claim we need to run big deficits to jump start the economy. He also won 64% in a state that is known for it's nail biter contests and even got 25% of the African-American vote (GOP struggles just to get 10%) so he has a strong appeal amongst swing voters looking for something different.

Cruz is a little too inflexible and too right wing for me, while Rubio is alright but doesn't seem overly articulate nonetheless he could help the party amongst Latinos which they need to do better amongst to win long-term.

I despise Donald Trump and in fact as a Canadian conservative, he would be a disaster for us. He promises to rip up NAFTA and on trade issues (which matter most) he is like Bernie Sanders which we don't need. By contrast Cruz and Clinton oppose the TPP, but favour keeping NAFTA, while Rubio and Kasich are pro free trade and support ratifying the TPP. We need a pro free trade president not a protectionist one. In addition I don't believe attacking various groups is the right way to go about things. You can favour tougher immigration without blaming all Mexicans and you can favour tough action against ISIL without blaming all Muslims.

[JohnT]

Today Kasich will likely win Ohio and Trump the other 4 states. I agree Kasich seems to be a popular governor and in fact may be the most "reasonable" of all. The problem is that he doesn't have a snowball's chance of winning the nomination.

I don't despise Trump, though I don't necessarily agree with all his positions. Free trade is great in the economic text-books, but doesn't always work out so well on the ground (say in Michigan or in south-western Ontario). And we apparently have another softwood lumber dispute on the horizon with the Americans. These free trade deals are not always as "fair and free" as they seem, which is Trump's point, I think. And I agree that a pro free trade President would be great for Canada. Too bad for Canada that there hasn't been one in the White House for the last 8 years. Yes, it's speculation but my guess is that Trump would not have killed Keystone.

The result of NAFTA is that Canada will be still be a "hewer of wood and drawer of water"; Mexico will become the manufacturing hub of N.A.; and the U.S. will remain and grow as the financial and banking power. In other words, NAFTA doesn't really change things, it just accentuates the strengths of each country's economy, which is the whole point of free trade, right? There is no point in Canada or even the U.S. complaining about losing manufacturing jobs. Under free trade we're supposed to. Is this the way we want it to be? Perhaps it's inevitable but at least Trump is raising the issue. Free trade is problematic for some people, for sure, and maybe their concerns have not been adequately addressed.

[Autoguy]

Monkey, a couple of things I would add...
Trump being against all Mexicans/Muslims is a fabrication of the media. Go back to Trump's original statements and that seems pretty clear - to me, at least. Your concern about protectionism is well founded, but I believe that the US and Canadian econonomies are too intertwined for protectionism to be workable. I could be wrong on that.