It occurs to me that I am underestimating Trump again. At least I am consistent.
Briefly, his consistent and apparently self-defeating attacks on the mainstream media have puzzled me. But recently something occurred to me.
“An enemy of my enemy is my friend”.
Trump doesn’t care about building broad support. Never has. He is a 50% +1 guy.
He knows that his supporters, independent of him, intensely dislike mainstream media. That media simply doesn’t represent their views nor tell them what they want to hear.
So by making the media his enemy, he isn’t hurting himself, he is strengthening his connection to his base. That base isn’t going to care what else he does, as long as he and they share a common enemy.
Enemy of my enemy-- yep. A week ago, my dad was skating the hairy edge of siding with Nazis in his Facebook posts, just so he could score points on libtards (the people he thought were counter-protesting in Virginia and their ilk).
These people (Trump, my dad, the rest of the supporters) loathe the left so much, that they will indeed demonize *anything *the left supports (the media, facts, a healthcare plan originally crafted by Republicans), and apparently buddy up with any groups that the left outwardly despises (Nazis, white nationalists, Putin).
By demonizing the media, he’s frothing up his base. By putting equal blame on the “liberal” counter-protesters, he’s also frothing up his base. Who needs the support of America when you’ve got a frothing base screaming for authoritarianism and ready to murder for you?
I’m not seeing it. My suspicion is that the average Trump voter just ignores the media.
My guess is that Trump’s war with the media is necessitated by his general incompetence. The media is going to do its job and report it when Trump does something wrong. To defend himself, Trump has to pre-emptively create the idea that everything coming from the media is “fake news”.
And I don’t see Trump as a “50% +1 guy”. He appears to be somebody who has a bottomless need to be admired.
as for 50%+1, I still think it is true. I am no expert on Trump but based on the fragments of what I know about him I believe Trump’s entire life has been a competition to be respected and yes admired by his peers. It is how his family was, consider his dad, his friends and the people he associated with as a young man and a businessman. But what does it mean to be admired? To Trump, it is all about his last deal. People’s reputation and social status is based on the success of the last deal. You had to be polite to a person’s face-unless it was time to stab him/her in the back-but everything resolves around how successful your last deal was. It is how he was brought up and how he grew up. He doesn’t think of broad support, he only thinks about what it takes to win. For instance, he isn’t interested in building broad support for his policies. As far as he is concerned, just change the Senate rules and he wins with 50% + 1.