Ever since Donald Trump shocked the world by winning the presidency in 2016, there has been a premium on political pundits and journalists locating his Secret Political Genius. This long-running search is irresistible for three main reasons: 1) It’s a fascinating political parlor game; 2) The subject is universally interesting; and 3) It provides a bunch of contrarians the chance to buck the conventional wisdom.
Such is the case with Trump’s racist tweets this weekend. While your surface-level analyst would swear it’s bad politics to tell nonwhite congresswomen to go back to their countries (even though they were born in America), plenty have argued Trump’s got something up his sleeve. It’s just smart base politics, they say. It’s tricking the media and Democrats into overreacting, others say. And then there’s the longest-running bit of amateur analysis: It’s a distraction — from the ICE raids, or his asylum changes, or the Jeffrey Epstein scandal or . . . something.
“Forget the man’s tweets; he’s playing us like a Stradivarius,” Rep. Emanuel Cleaver II (D-Mo.) pleaded Wednesday morning on CNN.
View these complete July 19 article by Aaron Blake on The Washington Post website here.