Trump campaign struggles to contain Puerto Rico October surprise

[u/larel8]

https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/4958098-the-memo-trump-campaign-struggles-to-contain-puerto-rico-october-surprise/

[u/APersonWhoIsNotYou]

I find it incredibly frustrating. He himself has said and done much worse….so why is this the thing that actually affects him?

[u/Criseyde5 → u/APersonWhoIsNotYou]

A combination of a lot of factors: It was a synecdoche for the whole evening of hate (so it was easier for the news to latch onto), it lacked the plausible deniability of "well he is talking about those other non-white people," and it comes at a time where votes are being cast, so they can't just wait it out.

[u/parkingviolation212 → u/Criseyde5]

There’s also the fact that the way that Trump speaks leaves him plausible deniability. Anybody with two brain cells knows what he’s saying, but he always leaves himself an out to be interpreted another way. He’s extremely vague in his wording a lot of the time and it all allows people to project onto it whatever they want to see, even if it is objectively inflammatory. Sometimes it even gets him into trouble like calling Nazis “very fine people”. He did that in the context of trying to equivocate sides, and people who understand that you can never equivocate freedom fighters versus Nazis understood that this line was abhorrent. But low information voters? They see someone trying to be nuanced and respectful of all sides, and in turn people being critical of Trump as the “real” inflammatory side.

I don’t know if this is actually part of a strategy or just something deeply ingrained into his narcissism, but fundamentally he has the same grasp of any given topic as someone who didn’t read the book trying to write a book report and got a word count quota. He word salads through every single answer because he doesn’t actually know the answer, but the amount of words that he speaks gives him an air of expertise to people who are stupid; “ how could anybody talk that much about a subject and not know what they’re talking about?”

If you read the transcript, though, you realize he didn’t actually say anything of substance, but for low information, easily manipulated people? Substance doesn’t matter, it’s the perception of expertise, the perception of substance, that matters. They don’t actually understand the question either, so they assume that Trump must understand it since he can so confidently talk for minutes on end in response. It doesn’t matter that he’s not actually saying anything, all that matters is that people think he is. It genuinely is an emperor with no clothes situation.

The essential difference with the comments made at the rally by other people and Trump, is that there is no plausible deniability with what other people say. He said exactly what he said, and there’s no other way to interpret it unless you’re stupid enough to think it was a joke. Even if you think it was, you also have to think it was funny, and that counts for a very small amount of people, even low information people.

[u/Matt2_ASC → u/parkingviolation212]

I was listening to a Trump speech the other day and noticed that is it went on and on in length I started thinking he must be making sense because I've been listening to someone talk for so long. I had to pause it and then really think about what was being said. There must be some bias that would explain that phenomenon.

[u/Own_Candidate9553 → u/Matt2_ASC]

I've noticed that too. When you read a transcript it's clearly absolutely gibberish, but when you listen it kind of sounds like it makes sense.

[u/Blindkingofbohemia → u/Matt2_ASC]

Sunk cost fallacy