IIn her latest book, “Trump Exile,” about the life of the former president after losing power, journalist Meridith McGraw describes how Donald Trump’s aides led Florida Governor Ron DeSantis to his downfall when he threatened to seduce Republican voters.
“One Trump adviser referenced Saul Alinsky’s ‘Rules for Radicals,'” McGraw writes. “Rule No. 5: Ridicule is man’s most powerful weapon.”
Alinsky was a Chicago community activist who died in 1972 but remains influential on the left and demonized on the right, and Trumpworld has adopted his fifth rule (again, “Infuriate your opponents so they will react to your advantage”) into its coordinated actions.
Governor DeSantis was mocked for his short stature and his extreme cockiness, but he was most effectively mocked for his simple weirdness. The Trump campaign perfectly linked his unpleasant public behavior to an incident on a donor’s jet in which the governor allegedly chose to eat chocolate pudding with his fingers because there was no spoon.
DeSantis collapsed. Trump won the nomination.
With Joe Biden as his opponent, it seemed as though Trump would once again prevail over the nicknames and ridicule of “Sleepy Joe” due to his (even) advanced age. But when Biden withdrew, something unexpected happened: Kamala Harris and her running mate, Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, slammed Trump and his running mate, Ohio Senator J.D. Vance, mocking their personal, social, and, of course, political, plain weirdness.
If the polls are any indication, the tactic worked like a dream.
For Molly Jong-Fast, a podcaster and MSNBC commentator currently on the road with Republican activist turned anti-Trump rally organizer and mockery merchant Rick Wilson on her live show “Politics as Unusual,” Trump, Vance and other Republicans are simply easy targets.
“The Republican Party has gone so far that everything is so bizarre that it’s ripe for ridicule,” Jongfast said. “Everything about the female reproductive cycle,” from its support for abortion bans to Vance’s attacks on women who don’t have children and the endless tangle of IVF, “is pretty bizarre to a grown man and ripe for ridicule.”
“I also think they were so high on their supply that they didn’t stop and think, ‘Well, maybe people aren’t going to like this.'”
Mockery has certainly served Trump well in the past: In 2016, Texas Sen. Ted Cruz was called “Liar Ted,” Florida Sen. Marco Rubio was called “Liar Marco” and, most infamously, Hillary Clinton was called “Cricky Hillary.” Fair or not, the labels stuck.
But eight years later, Trump “just can’t do it,” Jongfast said. “Maybe it’s because he’s almost 80 years old. Maybe he just doesn’t feel like it anymore.”
Trump has given Harris a variety of nicknames, none of which have stuck. He has tried the racist “Kamabra” and “Comrade Kamala,” a moniker with supposedly communist leanings, as well as others.
John Fast said: “‘Are you making fun of Kamala?’ doesn’t make sense, because their plan of attack was that she would laugh and be insincere. And insincere is somehow a bad thing for a president. But the problem with Trump is that he was insincere. So the reason you should have voted for him was because he’s a reality TV host, not because he’s a genius.”
“I think Trump is just tired. He’s been running for president for 10 years and he’s scared and tired of (losing and potentially going to prison on four criminal charges). One thing Trump was really good at was ridicule. He gave nicknames, which were always a bit horrifying, but a lot of the time they were actually right… He was very good at summing up people.”
Now, not so much.
Compounding the GOP’s problems is that Democrats, under Ms. Harris and Mr. Waltz (who was catapulted to the presidential nomination after calling Mr. Trump and Mr. Vance crazy on television), have abandoned the political nastiness, or simply civility, that has long deterred Republicans from fighting back in kind.
“I think Biden wasn’t able to respond in the same way because he was from a different generation of politics,” Jongfast says. “He didn’t get his supporters to behave in that way. I think Democrats now are trying to fight back aggressively, which they have to, right? I mean, it’s a total asymmetry otherwise.”
As Waltz led the way in mocking Trump and Vance, other party heavyweights followed suit. At the Democratic Convention in Chicago last month, Barack and Michelle Obama mocked Trump from the podium. The former president even appeared to question the size of Trump’s penis. All of this was a far cry from Michelle Obama’s 2016 plea for political activism and purity of thought: “If they go low, we go high.”
“They know Trump gets angry,” Jongfast said. “Part of what’s going on here is this ‘audience of one’ mentality, which is, they know that making fun of him will make him angry, so they go after him even more. They know the way to defeat Trump is to make him so angry that he takes action and alienates voters.”
Trump is indeed a co-founder of the anti-Trump Lincoln Project, and John-Fast’s colleague Wilson has become adept at getting Trump to go against him, and has been threatened with lawsuits. When asked about Wilson’s insult comedy style, which has seen him ridicule Trump on stage, on the Fast Politics podcast and on his own platform, John-Fast laughed and said, “It’s great for a podcast. I think it would be a scary show live.”
Maybe. But the next big moment of the campaign will be the Trump-Harris debate, broadcast live on ABC on Tuesday, and ridicule will surely be on the menu. The ghost of Saul Alinsky will be watching with interest.
Recently, David Corn, Washington bureau chief for the progressive magazine Mother Jones, reflected on Harris’ tactics.
“I would give Harris the same advice I gave to Biden,” Cohn wrote. “Sneer, sneer, sneer. But it seems she got the memo.”