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PaperclipPerfector  1yr ago (text post)   6142 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for May 21, 2023

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-- Trump 100% originally ran for President on a dare from Bill Clinton. It was supposed to be a joke run to weaken JEB! and Ted Cruz and soften them up for HRC in the general, then he got there and thought huh maybe I can win the damn thing. None of the principals involved can admit to it after it went the way it did.

Hmmm .... imagine you are a boxer hired to participate in fixed match. You are supposed to convincingly fight for few minutes and then lose, but your opponent is so bad that you KO him by mistake and win.

You can enjoy your victory, but have lots of explaining to do afterwards.

This could explain Trump's lackluster campaing in 2016, this could explain Trump's face when he saw the states going red and number of delegates going up, this could explain why Trump had no victory speech prepared.

Most of all, this could explain the extreme rage that Trump inspired and extreme attempts to bring him down.

The plan wasn't to have him win the primary and take a dive in the general, it was to have him enter the Republican primary, force the "serious" Rs like Bush and Rubio and Cruz to take ridiculous unpopular positions and look silly arguing with Trump, ultimately lose the primary, and then HRC crushes a Bush or a Rubio who took absurd positions in the primary campaign. The early Trump campaign was intensely flamboyant, and seemed highly unserious by contemporary political standards, everyone assumed the establishment would rally and knock him down.

What happened then was some combination of

  1. Trump's "absurd" positions turned out to have a massive following among everyday Americans. He started winning. He knocked out like seven serious R contenders one after another, and at first knocking out Jeb Bush and Chris Christie was helpful for HRC, but he got addicted to it, and pretty soon there weren't any R contenders left.

  2. Bannon, who in this theory was a patsy they all thought was a nut who wouldn't achieve anything, the equivalent of the director they hire in The Producers, took it seriously and was extremely talented. Springtime for Hitler was hit!

  3. Trump realized he liked winning, and would give it a shot. He started drinking his own kool aid, buying his own sales pitch.

  4. Clinton (et al) tried to puncture the Trump surge by attacking him personally and leaking info on him. Trump took offense at this, and said OK you're gonna try to hurt me, I'm not taking a dive. He was willing to take the L, but the other guy has to pull his punches in that situation, if you make it a survival problem the Tomato Can has to fight back.

I have a heavy prior against this conspiracy theory based on the fact that running a presidential campaign is incredibly stressful and chaotic yet Trump (despite running a, shall we say, creative campaign) never had a major logistical or basic operational fuck up. He didn't miss a debate or a big event to my knowledge.

But.....

I remember reading articles about him being chronically late to rallies. This was often portrayed as Trump being a prima donna and resisting taking the stage until he was damn well ready. But what if it was actually a Benny Hill scene behind the scenes and he was arriving just in time (or very fucking late) to event after event and just getting up to the stage and saying whatever the hell was on his mind. Therein lies my second "Damn it, @FiveHourMarathon might have something here" idea --- Trump's relationship with his rally crowds was legendary. It really was him at his Zenith. I wonder how much that turned into a forest fire creating its own wind and propelling Trump into the mindset of "no, actually, voters want me to be President."

This is where point 2 comes in, the staff they put together turned out to be shockingly competent. The plot never recovered.

never had a major logistical or basic operational fuck up

You think Fours Seasons Landscaping rally mix-up was a deliberate joke?

I love the Producers theory and I would love to see a movie made one day of this scenario.

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