Originally posted Sunday, November 3, 2024

Sometimes I come across a social media post that is so on-point, I take the time to put it into a post here. This is one of those. It was written in light of Trump's comments about Liz Cheney that blew up and were debunked in all of about 10 minutes.

It's amazing how many people still have not figured this out. I look forward to the day when the lightbulb finally goes on and people understand WHY Trump has done what he's done the past nine years.

The Trump Trap by Padraig Martin on Gab

It is impossible to overstate the extraordinary way in which Donald Trump simply walks the media into a trap. At first glance, Trump appears to foolishly speak from the cuff. It would be easy to assume that his words are incautious and correspondingly easy for the media to take out of context. But I do not think that is what is happening with Trump.

Trump astutely walks the mainstream media into traps that force his narrative back to his targeted messaging. Understanding that the media is the enemy of his voting base, Trump also understands that anything he says will get nowhere unless he says something outrageous (but not inaccurate). He also knows the MSM will go over the top in their dishonesty. Consequently, when Trump wants a particular theme to get placed into the minds of potential voters, he says things that are both superficially sensationalized and yet, accurate (albeit somewhat inflated).

Take for example these three things: the Aurora criminal gang issue, the Haitian migrant crisis, and the Cheney war record. Take a look at what he just did to Liz Cheney and Kamala Harris. Liz Cheney, like her father, Dick, are chickenhawks. They have never met a war they did not like. That war record has been conveniently forgotten by the once pacifist sect of the Democrat party. The media seems to have forgotten all of its hatred for Dick Cheney & Co. Yet, here we are with a newfound love of the Cheneys. Understanding that Trump cannot simply rail against Liz Cheney and get anywhere, he made a comment that was clearly intended to highlight her willingness to send young men to fight and die in overseas wars, while neither she nor her father ever served in a conflict. Trump's comment was intentionally made to invoke a firing squad, but not quite. It was a genius move on his part.

The media went apoplectic, claiming Trump was calling for Liz Cheney's execution. He knew they would react that way. In fact, the comment forced parties within the media to dissect his statement and pulled the focus of the populace back to where Trump wanted it to be: the Cheneys' - and by extension Harris' - embrace of war for its own sake.

Why is this important? No one hates American interventionism more than Arab voters in the critical swing state of Michigan. They have said as much. On the weekend before the election, Trump entrapped the media into granting him a free television ad in Michigan over and over and over again with their pearl clutching hyperbole: Trump the Peacemaker vs The Cheney-Harris War Machine.

The media's dismissal of "just a couple of apartment complexes" overtaken by Venezuelan gangs in Aurora, Colorado, and the Haitian dog-eating issue in Springfield, Ohio, are two examples of Trump using the media to help him get his safety message out to suburban moms on the fence. Both Springfield and Aurora were once pretty suburbs that have been overrun in the past couple of decades. Suburban soccer moms are rightfully scared of a similar future for their elite, exclusive enclaves. The media focused on the bombastic, but not necessarily untruthful statements by Trump. He walked them into a trap whereby suburban White women were forced to see what the media was hiding from them: migrants - both legal (Haitian) and illegal (Venezuelan) - as a violent threat to their comfortable lives.

It would be easy to dismiss Trump's rhetoric as simpleton bloviating. The smug media certainly thinks so and consequently, in their obnoxious way, dismisses the man and the way he manipulates them. They believe they are smarter than he is. They are wrong.

One last observation about Trump that gives us a clue as to how well he manipulates language is his command of grammar. Trump is an Ivy Leaguer who started at a Jesuit university. Both educational ecosystems are known to emphasize properly spoken and written English. I know, because I have a similar educational background. These are institutions whereby dangling participles lead to failed grades.

Every so often, Trump will use an elite grasp of the English language, by speaking in a manner that seems awkward to some, but is grammatically accurate. His grand scale speeches are purposely simple, but when he is "weaving" (long winded stories that bring home a point), Trump uses grammar to astounding effect.

This element of Trump's spoken word is often lost on the snide masters of the MSM who lack Trump's educational background. They make fun of it. He knows this and plays their hubris to get what he wants from them.

I do not need to be a fan of Trump to recognize and admire his brilliant manipulation of a people who are clearly the enemy of my people. He makes it too easy to walk them into traps. If I thought better, I might think this was a brilliantly choreographed dance between Trump and MSM villains. But I know some of those people who now lead the MSM. I went to school with many of them. They lack introspection and therefore, they are easily exploited.