Running Against the Devil: A Plot to Save America from Trump--and Democrats from Themselves

by Rick Wilson

Michelle Obama is wrong when it comes to fighting Donald Trump. “When they go low, we go high” is easy for a popular, talented, charismatic First Couple to say. No. When they go low, you bring out the goddamn flamethrower. You show real passion, real heat, and let people see you’re not taking one fucking iota more of his bullshit…and that no one else should either. I know you will still hesitate. You will still wonder if you can win this with love and not combat. You can’t. I wish we lived in a perfect world where all this would be settled by a scholarly discourse, but this is a chain fight in a biker bar in Frogsass, Alabama.

targeted attacks on the three softest points in Trump’s psyche. First, he’s not rich. He’s poor. He’s—to use the famous words of my hedge-fund friend—“a clown, living on credit.” The billionaire image was a powerful marker for 2016 voters, but the pettiness and greed of his campaign to monetize his presidency is a great vector for attacks. Remind him that eventually we’ll know everything about the serial business failures in his hidden tax returns. The truth about his finances won’t move many in his base, but taunting him on it is known to make him lose his mind in spasms of tweeted defensiveness. Second, his self-image is that he’s handsome, sexy, and athletic. (Try not to laugh.) Trump’s obvious obesity, sloth, and indolent lifestyle are hanging off him in rolls. Call it out. Tell him he’s not physically well enough to hold the office. Hit him hard on his creeping dementia: “Donald, you’ve lost a step. It’s sad and I’m sure your family is concerned. I know you don’t have a real doctor, but we’re worried about you.” One wag suggested to me that the Democratic nominee should insist on a weigh-in before the debates. I’ll max out to the Democrat who takes a scale onstage and dares Donald to step onto it. “What’s the matter, Donald? Is the IRS auditing that big ol’ belly?” This is a dogfight, and unless America sees “some fight in the dog,” as we say down south, Donald Trump will walk all over you. When you start hitting, don’t let up.

Field operations is the place where Barack Obama stole a march on John McCain in 2008 and Mitt Romney in 2012. To be sure, Obama was a compelling speaker, a charismatic liberal leader, and a media darling with a killer targeting operation, but the Obama campaign also out-worked, out-hustled, and out-organized my side. Twice. Don’t even get me started on the nothingburger of Hillary’s field operations. Even against Trump, who had no field operations, she lost.

People trapped in a cult need special handling, and the Trump cult is no exception. Cult deprogramming is a bit of a high lift for the 2020 race, but because rescuing people from cults is always a good thing, this chapter will offer some helpful hints for how to deal with the victims of Trump misinformation and propaganda, and how to talk to Mom and Dad about getting off the Facebook Trump crack. I’m not kind to Trump fanatics, but the Democrats need to give some of the people getting nauseous on the Trump train’s rough ride a kind, smooth path to acceptance. The actions of Trump have built a sense of disappointment, disquiet, and division that has already pushed many Republicans away from him. The job now is to turn regret and remorse into votes, particularly in swing states.

The tribal nature of Trumpism is seated in a host of racial and ethnic hatreds. It’s the sloppy permission society writ large, the victim culture of too many liberal clichés from the 1970s turned on its head. Instead of being angry at the corporate world, they’ve redirected it into being angry at immigrants.

The idea that a career might be shattered by the incorrect use of a gender pronoun may seem perfectly explicable in New York or San Francisco, but the GOP is really, really good at making voters in the states Democrats must win in 2020 feel like the PC Police will kick down their doors if they wander into the minefield of wokeness.

One element of the GOP’s coalition is ecstatically, eternally, passionately happy with Donald Trump, and that’s the evangelical cohort. In the 2016 exit polls,9 some 26 percent of Americans identified themselves as evangelicals—you know, born again, saved, forgiven, and allowed to fuck porn stars for money. The traditional definition.

Trump has transformed the evangelical movement into a more cruel and worldly political tool, validating and verifying their two most powerful desires. First, he empowers them to live in an intolerant society separate from the rest of the United States, one defined and bounded by the Constitution and the rule of law not to protect religious liberty but to achieve their narrowly crafted social policy goals through executive fiat. Their deal with this devil is paying off in spades. Second, evangelicals have found their golden calf, and they worship him as their new god. The evangelical movement has become a social argument, not a religious calling. Their ability to excuse Trump is the new standard for belief and merit.

The simple, clean argument over preexisting conditions is a sure winner, which is why the Democrats are talking about single-payer, Medicare for All, and ending private health insurance.

There are a little over half a million Libertarians registered across the nation, which comprises about a half a percent of all voters. Trivial, you say? Hold still, because I need to slap some reality into you. Donald Trump’s margin of victory in the swing states that moved the Electoral College into his column was infinitesimal. Of the 137 million votes cast in 2016’s election from hell, just 107,000 votes in three states decided the race.

The capture of the House in 2018 is one of the biggest weapons the Democrats have in the effort against Trump. The House GOP bled Hillary with the Benghazi hearings from 2014 to 2016, and the Democrats should now return the favor. Congressional committees should drive and drive hard on corruption by Trump, his cronies, family members (particularly his family members), his business interests, and his allies. His cabinet members need to be on the hot seat early and often.

The Senate will exonerate Trump. He will hang his entire campaign on No Collusion, No Obstruction, No Conviction. You think Trump will be shamed, and you’re wrong. He cannot be shamed. Ever. Your people don’t need impeachment to win, given how fired up their base is for his removal; they do need to keep up the pain.

You’d do well to continue to remind the American people just how many of the Best People in Trump’s world are, you know, fucking criminals and scumbags. There’s no downside in reminding Americans about the people around Trump. The list is long, and distinguished only in their scummy opportunism. STEVE

This is a battle that decides whether they have an unlimited runway to create a dynastic kleptocracy based on an authoritarian personality cult that makes North Korea look like Sweden, or whether the immune system of the republic kicks in and purges them from the body politic.

And they’ll burn this country to the fucking ground to win. You’ll cry out in horror at what they’ll do and how far they’ll go. They will ignite a race war, wreck the economy, and abuse their fellow humans to win. They put children in cages for political theater, and laughed about it.

You beat the worst president in history. You beat him by making the campaign about him; his record, his hideous personal behavior, the reeking cloud of corruption, and his broken economic promises made him unelectable for even a decent campaign, and you ran—shockingly—a decent campaign. His divisive, shitty, be-worst reign was a stain and an embarrassment. He tried to make it a referendum on policy, not a referendum on himself, and you never let him. You went into a reality-television contest understanding the rules, and you beat the master of the genre at his own game.

To the men and women inside government who have confronted enormous risk and danger to their careers, reputations, and personal safety to tell the truth about this White House and this president. In the face of the hatred and abuse that hits anyone Trump designates as an enemy, they have demonstrated something truly rare in today’s Washington: honor. Every authoritarian regime in history depends on silence, either coerced or purchased, and every whistle-blower and truth-teller who raises their hand, swears to speak the truth, and takes fire is deserving of our appreciation.