The Apprentice
There’s a reason that The Apprentice, Donald Trump’s successful reality television show, ran for fourteen seasons. He found a formula that worked, and he repeated it over and over again. There’s nothing wrong with that, it how success usually works in America. And when the show started to get a little stale, The Celebrity Apprentice was mixed in. New, known faces were battling for the “right” to hear the famous line, “You’re Fired!!”
So we shouldn’t be surprised that the Trump 2020 Campaign is using the 2016 playbook to try to win victory. In 2016 they achieved an improbable win; for those poker players out there they drew to an “inside straight”. They lost the popular vote by millions of votes, but were able to squeak out a narrow victory in the Electoral College. We all know the “mantra:” Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania, and the Trump margins: Wisconsin 22,748, Michigan 10,704, and Pennsylvania 44,292. It takes 270 votes to win the Electoral College, Trump earned 278 to Clinton’s 260. I wrote about these figures in one of the first essays here on Trump World, 77744.
Gy-Nah
Peter Navarro is President Trump’s chief economic advisor. Navarro has been an “outlier” in American economic thinkers for years, favoring an isolationist and protectionist view reminiscent of 1920’s thought. He wrote a book in 2011, Death by China, which endeared him to the Trump Campaign. We all remember the 2016 campaign, and Trump’s continual attacks on China (he pronounced it GY-NAH rhyming with VAGINA).
One of the main strategies of Trump 2020 is to change the conversation. COVID-19 is not a winning argument for them, the growing death total, nearing 100,000 is unsupportable. So in typical American political fashion, it’s time to pivot, to change the subject from something Trump can do little about, the virus, to somewhere where he feels he has better credentials, the economy. So it was no surprise that Peter Navarro was the main spokesman for the Administration this weekend. He appeared on several of the major news shows on Sunday, including This Week with George Stephanopoulos and Meet the Press.
He spent a lot of interview time dodging questions about the Administration’s response to the crisis. “I don’t have time to look in the rear-view mirror” was a typical response to questions about past actions. And in answering questions about whistleblower Dr. Richard Bright’s accusations of Administration neglect of the impending crisis in January and February, Navarro essentially accused the doctor of “desertion under fire” by refusing to accept a demotion and transfer.
Political Equation
Navarro’s message on the virus was clear. It wasn’t the President’s fault: the Centers for Disease Control screwed up the tests at the beginning, and besides, it’s no longer COVID-19 or even the Corona-Virus. No, Navarro has a new name for our current plague: THE CHINA VIRUS. Navarro intoned that they started it, lost control of it, and maybe (underscore probably), attacked us with it. This is step one in Trump 2020’s move to shift blame away from the Administration, and onto someone, anyone else. And Navarro is the perfect anti-China guy to do it.
So step one: it’s China’s fault. Step two is to link Trump’s opponent, Joe Biden, to China. And it’s not enough to just claim, true or not, that Biden through his Vice Presidency with the Obama Administration, was “soft” on China. Navarro tried to make a stronger connection, falling back to the ongoing falsehood that Joe’s son, Hunter, made billions of dollars in what must have been illicit deals in China. The equation they are reaching for: it’s China’s virus, Biden liked China, his son made money in China: Biden equals China.
Obamagate
Navarro wasn’t done though. He went on to put forth the newest Trump 2020 strategy: that in the weeks between the November 2016 election and January 2017 inauguration, the Obama Administration tried to plant the seeds of Trump’s destruction. They hypothesize that it was Obama, and of course Biden, who encouraged the Russia investigation by the FBI (even though it was opened in August, far before the election). As their “proof” they are using the supposed “perjury trap” of then National Security Advisor Michael Flynn by FBI agents. Flynn admittedly lied to the agents about his conversations with Russian Ambassador Kislyak, but now Trump’s Attorney General Bill Barr is trying to drop the charges.
Trump 2020 has a new “catch-phrase”, Obamagate. But it’s not the former President they’re after, it’s the former Vice President, Joe Biden. The Trump campaign is trying to put Biden in the same position Hillary Clinton was with her emails. They are “painting” Biden as corrupt, lowering him to their own standards of behavior. Then, like they did in 2016, they can say that there is no moral difference between Trump and Biden.
They can even use their favorite chant at the rallies: “Lock Him Up!!!”
