“Whatever your greatest weakness is, that is what you accuse your adversary of.” It is a pillar of strategy from the Joseph Goebbels / Roger Ailes / Karl Rove / Stephen Miller playbook.
In 2004, John Kerry was a highly-decorated Vietnam War hero who had literally gone through bullets (and taken a few) to save his men. George Bush used his Daddy’s connections to avoid Vietnam and stay stateside in a position from which he was mostly AWOL. So of course they FIBricated the Swift Boat ads to discredit John Kerry’s legitimate record as a highly-decorated war hero.
In 2008, birthers (led by Trump) tried to accuse U.S.-born Obama of being born in Kenya, as Obama ran against John McCain who had actually been born in Panama (where his military father was stationed in the nearby Canal Zone). Unlike Kerry in 2004 and Hillary in 2016, Obama was able to swat away the lies and keep control of his message.
In 2016, Trump was being promoted by the Russians, used insecure communications for his Tweets and his staff used insecure communications for electronic communications and Trump had 20+ sex abuse allegations. So naturally he drills down on Hillary’s e-mails (which, unlike the DNC, never got hacked, even though the Russians tried) and Bill’s naughty behavior (which was Bill’s bad, not Hillary, who unlike Trump “stood by her man” and preserved her marriage).
So now it’s 2020. Whoever the candidate was going to be, Trump was going to make THEM the foreign policy bad guy who seeks help from foreign governments (try Ukraine, try China, are we going to hear something from Russia, Turkey or Saudi Arabia?), accuse THEM of politicizing the Justice Department to weaponize it against political opponents, blame the Democrats for his own failure to manage the pandemic disaster and find some way to accuse THEM of a sex scandal.
“Whatever your greatest weakness is, that is what you accuse your adversary of.” It is a pillar of strategy from the Joseph Goebbels / Roger Ailes / Karl Rove / Stephen Miller playbook.
In 2004, John Kerry was a highly-decorated Vietnam War hero who had literally gone through bullets (and taken a few) to save his men. George Bush used his Daddy’s connections to avoid Vietnam and stay stateside in a position from which he was mostly AWOL. So of course they FIBricated the Swift Boat ads to discredit John Kerry’s legitimate record as a highly-decorated war hero.
In 2008, birthers (led by Trump) tried to accuse U.S.-born Obama of being born in Kenya, as Obama ran against John McCain who had actually been born in Panama (where his military father was stationed in the nearby Canal Zone). Unlike Kerry in 2004 and Hillary in 2016, Obama was able to swat away the lies and keep control of his message.
In 2016, Trump was being promoted by the Russians, used insecure communications for his Tweets and his staff used insecure communications for electronic communications and Trump had 20+ sex abuse allegations. So naturally he drills down on Hillary’s e-mails (which, unlike the DNC, never got hacked, even though the Russians tried) and Bill’s naughty behavior (which was Bill’s bad, not Hillary, who unlike Trump “stood by her man” and preserved her marriage).
So now it’s 2020. Whoever the candidate was going to be, Trump was going to make THEM the foreign policy bad guy who seeks help from foreign governments (try Ukraine, try China, are we going to hear something from Russia, Turkey or Saudi Arabia?), accuse THEM of politicizing the Justice Department to weaponize it against political opponents, blame the Democrats for his own failure to manage the pandemic disaster and find some way to accuse THEM of a sex scandal.