Some Friday messaging advice
Two bits about defining Trump caught my attention. You’d think the guy’s image is as set as can be with his friends and foes. What else is there to tell about the twice-impeached, yada-yada? But this is campaign season. The GOP was working “but her emails” all the way up to the election in 2016. Take the hint.
Joe Biden is running ads here in N.C. beginning with “Here’s the difference between me and Donald Trump…” In the wake of the Key Bridge collapse this week, Biden immediately pledged, “It’s my intention that federal government will pay for the entire cost of reconstructing that bridge.” Full stop.
Brian Beutler reminds his Off Message readers that should Trump get reelected we can expect him to hold recovery funds hostage and to extort Maryland and Baltimore for favors:
Four years ago this week, it became clear that Donald Trump would husband emergency pandemic resources like ventilators and personal protective equipment for Republican-run states. Or rather, Trump made it clear. Blue-state leaders would get to see their residents die gasping for air unless they feigned fulsome praise for his pandemic response in public. “If they don’t treat you right, I don’t call,” he declared.
Three days ago this morning, an enormous cargo ship lost power and drifted into a pillar holding up the Francis Scott Key bridge, which collapsed instantly into the Patapsco River in Baltimore, MD.
[…]
Already the contrast with Trump’s response to COVID-19, devoid as it was of common humanity, is stark. But its not just the contrast that looms large in my mind. It’s also the recognition that the Baltimore rescue might still be underway seven months from now when voters cast their ballots for president. And we know from Trump’s response to COVID, and to a number of other disasters that struck non-Republican states and territories during his single term, that if he inherits the effort to rebuild after this disaster, he will likely sabotage it or hold it hostage until the leaders of Baltimore and Maryland offer him political favors or concessions. It’s a reminder in microcosm of one of Trump’s most disqualifying abuses of power, and why it’s critical for real reporters to press him for a response to the Key bridge calamity—whether he intends to resume using federal disaster resources as a tool to extort his political enemies.
So ask him. We’re waiting.
As of this writing, Trump has said nothing at all about the Key bridge collapse. And why would he? It can not after all be blamed on the Democratic mayor of Baltimore, or the Democratic governor of Maryland, or the Democratic president of the United States. The men killed in the accident were immigrants, rather than blue-collar white men. So as far as Trump is concerned, it merits no comment. No condolences to the families of the dead; no assurances to the affected communities that he intends to be their president, too.
Left to his own devices, Trump will either continue to ignore the incident, or he’ll respond only when prompted by an ally in right-wing media. Extrapolating from his response to every other tragedy, he might assert monomaniacally that the accident simply wouldn’t have happened if he’d been president. He’ll almost certainly assert that if he were president, the bridge would be rebuilt in a matter of weeks instead of months, notwithstanding his famously abysmal failure to build anything of significance during his presidency.
Then remind him that he built jack when he was president, you “nasty” reporter.
Anat Shenker-Osorio tells her fans that what’s important is not to remind voters who Trump is, but to hammer home what “Trump will do” to them if he returns to the Oval Office.
Better still, she recommends, is to pivot away from viewing this presidential election as a contest between two old men to a choice between two different futures for America.
We need to get off cruise control and learn new tricks if we expect to prevail this fall.
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