President-elect Donald Trump is set to serve his second and final term in the White House and his enemies are making all the same mistakes they made the first time around.
In the leadup to the election, Democrats and their mouthpieces in the establishment media became increasingly hysterical, calling him a “fascist” and referring to his supporters as “Nazis.” They painted a picture in which Trump would further oppress marginalized groups while promoting white supremacist authoritarianism.
Yet, Trump has always been able to turn these weaknesses against them, a skill that other Republican candidates would be wise to emulate if they wish to continue winning elections.
New York Times columnist David Brooks discussed the matter during a conversation on “PBS NewsHour” in which he suggested that Democrats should stop jumping on every outrage that Trump gives them and take a more measured approach instead.
When asked how Democrats should move forward now that Trump is set to take office next year, Brooks said, “They should take their time” and acknowledged how Democrats underperformed with Black and Latino voters.
“But the one thing I would say not to do is to respond to every shiny apple that Trump is going to do an outrage du jour. And if they think, ‘Oh, all we have to do is hit him on the outrage du jour,’ and I think this goes for us in the media, too. We know that didn't work. That did not work for four years during his first term. So try to rise up. Don't just get into that tit for tat, outrage du jour. Try to rise above and actually have a vision that's somehow bigger than Trump.”
Brooks made similar comments in another appearance on the program on Election Day. He discussed a conversation he had with a conservative publisher in the 1990s who told him that their strategy for selling conservative books “is not publishing good books. It’s getting liberals mad.”
“Their books would come out with titles like ‘liberal fascism.’ The theory was, if you can get liberals mad and they attack you, then the conservative readers will rally around you. Donald Trump does a lot of that. He gets progressives or Democrats to attack him, and it causes Trump voters to rally around him.”
Brooks continued, saying it was “a manipulative way of getting his people to rally around him rather than getting them to drift off from him.”
On PBS, David Brooks on Trump appeal: Conservative book publishers in the 90s didn't print good books, but books that made liberals mad. (He cited "Liberal Fascism.") That leads conservatives to rally around. Geoff Bennett laments John Kelly saying Trump's fascist didn't work. pic.twitter.com/bRpx8NibtB
— Tim Graham (@TimJGraham) November 6, 2024
There is much truth to what Brooks indicated in these interviews. Trump has the uncanny ability to rile up the left in a way that makes them react in an over-the-top fashion. I’m convinced that he does at least some of this deliberately. He triggers the left, they have complete meltdowns while lying about what he said or did, then he and members of right-leaning media defend him while attacking Democrats and the media for their blatant dishonesty.
What is amazing about this is that it applies even when Trump says or does something that is legitimately wrong. It works because the left’s reaction is always far worse than anything the president-elect said in the first place. I’ve often found myself criticizing the left’s responses more than Trump because they are clearly worse.
If I were a Democrat, I would be frustrated to no end, because Brooks is absolutely right. Democrats would do better to take a more moderate, fact-based approach instead of devolving into hysteria – but they just can’t help themselves. Even now, Democrats are pretending Tulsi Gabbard, who Trump plans to appoint as National Intelligence Director, is a Russian asset even though there is not a single shred of evidence proving this. Leftists are also claiming Elon Musk used his Starlink system to steal the 2024 election.
It’s absolutely wild.
Whoever succeeds Trump as the standard-bearer of the party better learn this lesson. The GOP will need figureheads who can use Trump’s form of political judo to exploit the left’s biggest weakness. It is impossible to be more Trumpy than Trump. But given the way the left can’t resist the temptation to jump on the latest “outrage du jour,” a Republican candidate would not have to be.
