politics

“It doesn’t matter what you say, say it enough and people will believe you.”

The sad reality of the world we live in is that this is a true and correct statement. It is a statement that allows propaganda to even exist. And if there is anything Trump is a master at, it is exploiting this to ridiculous degrees. If there is anything Trump could teach a class at, this is it. It's probably the one and only thing he's ever learned in his life.

This is why he uses small, easy to understand buzzwords that can be repeated over and over and is easy for even the dumbest person to understand. "No Collusion". I'd be willing to bet that neither Trump nor about 80% of his followers even know what collusion means. But they've heard the term so often that it doesn't matter; they don't need to know what collusion is. They just need to know there was none of it. "Election Interference". "Biden Crime Family." "Perfect Phone Call." Same basic process. The list goes on and on and on and on.

This is why his go-to response when he's not getting media attention is to say or do something outrageous. "Kamala turned black". He said it exactly one time. How many times was it repeated over every network, independent media source, tweet, and social media outlet in existence? Hundreds, if not thousands. How many saw them, over and over and over? Millions. It doesn't matter how ridiculous it sounds. As a result of it, there are now people out there who now believe that Kamala Harris is not and was never black. Because Trump said it once, and the Jesse Waters and Sean Hannitys and the Laura Ingrahams of the world have been repeatedly saying it ad nauseum ever since.

And he knows it puts his opponents in a bind. Once his believers start falling for his garbage, his opponents have one of two options available to them. The first is to completely ignore him, which Trump successfully uses as "evidence" that he was "right". "See? They're prosecuting me! I told you if they prosecuted me, the entire judicial system is rigged!". The other is to go out of your way to try to prove Trump's statements false, which usually results in them either directly or indirectly deferring to Trump anyway in order to "appear fair." Again, look at our judicial system as a prime example. Either way, Trump wins. Either he'd have been able to get the DOJ to stay off of him due to his cries of political persecution, or he gets to go through the court system's "easy mode" in order to "appear fair".

And while all this is going on, who is all the attention focused on? Trump. Which allows the man to spew more nonsense and repeat the cycle again. And again. And again. And the media plays right into it. Including us. Don't believe me? As I type this, of the top 20 posts of this heavily left leaning community, 12 of them are about Trump, with 3 of them showing his picture in the thumbnail. By comparison, only the bottom two out of 20 mention Harris directly, and only one shows a picture of her.

He uses this tactic because it fucking works. He has admitted to using this tactic as far back as 1987 in his own book:

“The final key to the way I promote is bravado. I play to people’s fantasies. People may not always think big themselves, but they can still get very excited by those who do. That’s why a little hyperbole never hurts. People want to believe that something is the biggest and the greatest and the most spectacular. I call it truthful hyperbole. It’s an innocent form of exaggeration—and a very effective form of promotion.”