There's an underlying truth to what he says that his cult vibes with: almost anyone who makes it anywhere in American politics is a sleazeball and/or criminal. He's basically making the case that he's just as corrupt as everyone else, so the cult loves him for "telling it like it is"
The response is extremely weak, because his opponents implicitly declare themselves squeaky clean. It just makes people hate them more 😒
Fascists use projection & hypocrisy as weapons.
I knew the Republican modus operandi was to Gaslight, Obstruct, and Project...
But this helps explain why the Trump campaign's response to "Donald Trump smells bad" was "You smell bad and you never held a real job"
Na UUHhHhh!
Thats what THEY did!
I only did it because they were doing it WORSE!
Quoted from a Random 5 Year Old
I mean... there is a reason why it works, US politics are incredibly corrupt. Hell, bribery is legal.
But because of not wanting to get blackballed people with influence can't come out and say "of course they're corrupt, but not as much as you"
Happened live on stage in 2016 and nobody on the right cared.
I'm no puppet, no puppet... genius idea: YOU are the puppet!
This is the best summary I could come up with:
But advisers say he believes the court appearances dramatize what is fast becoming a central theme of his campaign: that President Biden — who is describing the likely Republican nominee as a peril to the country — is the true threat to American democracy.
Now, Mr. Trump is repurposing his favored tool to neutralize what many see as his worst offense in public life and greatest political vulnerability in the 2024 campaign: his efforts, after he lost the 2020 election, to disrupt the peaceful transfer of power and remain in office.
It’s unclear whether Mr. Trump actually believes that Jan. 6 was orchestrated by the “deep state.” His explanations of that day have shifted opportunistically, and he was a relative latecomer to the baseless far-right conspiracy theory that the Capitol riot was an inside job by the F.B.I.
Mr. Trump has also sought to muddy the waters on voter concerns about corruption, by trying, along with his allies, to neutralize his liabilities on that front by attacking Mr. Biden’s son, Hunter, for foreign moneymaking while his father was vice president.
Mr. Trump and his advisers are hoping to do more than paper over his liabilities related to his election lies and the violent attack on the Capitol, which Democrats are confident remain deeply troubling to a majority of voters.
David Axelrod, a former top adviser to Mr. Obama, said polling indicated Mr. Trump had “made headway with his base in this project.” But a general election, he said, is a “harder” race to convince people that his lies about Jan. 6, 2021, are true.
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