Trump Is the Main Character of 2024. Again.
Trump Is the Main Character of 2024. Again.
How to take over the news cycle with this one weird trick.
1. Cats and Dogs
Late last week, in between laughing at JD Vance and Donald Trump, I had a thought:
What if the Haitians-stealing-and-eating-your-pets is actually good for the Trump campaign?
Not good in the tactical sense. Polling on the story doesn’t look especially good for him. But good in the strategic sense. This insane lie—which, borders on blood libel—may be reorienting the campaign in ways that are ultimately useful for Trump.
Let me explain.
(1) Trump needs to be the main character. Trump’s grand unified theory is that politics, like entertainment, is an attention economy. His strategy—always—is to dominate the news and make himself into the main character of every story.
A neo-Nazi march in Charlottesville? It’s about Trump’s response.
A global pandemic? It’s about Trump’s daily antics.
Geostrategic considerations involving a 75-year conflict on the Korean peninsula? It’s about Trump’s relationship with the Korean dictator.
It doesn’t matter what the issue, or context, is. Trump wants it to be about Trump. He believes that if he owns the spotlight—even if it is a very unflattering spotlight—then he can maneuver and find angles.
This theory may be callow, dangerous, and/or immoral. But it is not crazy.
And while it doesn’t always work out for Trump, it works out enough that it’s a good percentage play for him. Like doubling down on an 11. You don’t always win that bet. But you win it often enough that you should do it automatically, without hesitation.
Trump’s period of maximum danger in this election was the five-week span between Joe Biden’s withdrawal from the race and the conclusion of the Democratic National Convention.
It didn’t matter what he did during this stretch because the entire story was about Kamala Harris. She owned the spotlight. She became the main character of the 2024 campaign. And during this time, her polling was a hockey stick.
For a month, Trump couldn’t buy a news cycle. He risked becoming irrelevant and it looked like Harris might steamroll him all the way to November by making the campaign about turning the page on the last decade.
Then Trump took the spotlight back by setting himself on fire.
He went to Arlington National Cemetery and did the thumbs-up over some graves. People were disgusted. But they started talking about him for the first time in a month. And you can see what happened in that graph up there 👆. Harris plateaued and then, a few days later, Trump began gaining ground.
In Trump’s mind, you cannot win just by dominating the conversation. But you cannot win unless you dominate the conversation.
How did Trump follow up the Arlington story? With the debate.
It was a bad performance for him and, more importantly, a good performance for Harris. Again, there was a chance that she would become the main character.
So Trump leaned into the Haitian-dog/cat-eating story in order to yank the focus away from Harris.
And here is the part you must understand: People seem to think that the Springfield story is bad for Trump because it is predicated on a lie.
This is incorrect.
The Springfield story is good for Trump because it is predicated on a lie.
If the tale of Haitian immigrants stealing people’s pets and eating them were true, then it would be one-day affair. We’d see the police reports. Local and state governments would take some sort of action. The Harris campaign would formulate a response. The story would have a beginning, a middle, and an end.