For President Trump, ridicule is the poison tip of his spear. In the short time since Joe Biden announced Trump welcomed “Sleepy Joe” to the race by insulting him 21 separate times, according to the New York Times. Bernie Sanders is close behind with 14 Trump insults. In 2016, “Low energy Jeb” put Jeb Bush on the defensive, and brought him to his knees. “Lyin’ Ted Cruz” stuck, and forced Cruz to fight a losing battle. “Crooked Hillary” may have been unfair, but it struck a nerve—indeed, most Americans said they found her untrustworthy.
Of course, the facts don’t matter to Trump. After all, Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) became “Little Marco” despite his above-average height. Republican voters, predictably, came to regard him as too inexperienced for the job at hand.
Armed with Twitter and his nearly 60 million followers, Trump’s power lies in his language. Ridicule fires up the primal instincts of the conservative base. Trumpian insults are ruthless, but effective psychological warfare, capturing an opponent’s jugular weakness in one phrase – one never entirely unearned. As the Israeli writer Anshel Pfeffer recently wrote, [Trump] has “an uncanny ability to sense [his rival’s] weak spots and sniff out [his] voters’ inner fears.”
Trump’s opponents have so far struggled to respond. Elizabeth Warren—mocked as “Pocahontas”—undermined her presidential campaign with an embarrassing blood test to prove Native American descent. Trump bragged that “I’ve knocked her out of the race.” As he said, “I think Pocahontas, she’s finished, she’s out, she’s gone.” Warren response may have proved Trump right: she launched her campaign by releasing her DNA—and legitimizing his critiques.
View the complete July 7 article by Charles B. Blair on the National Memo website here.