Trump's Attacks On Biden Reveal Where His Genius Lies
Trump does have a particular, unlikely genius that has allowed him to succeed in the swamps of corporate America and the equally cutthroat arena of presidential politics.
by Ben Cohen
The words ‘genius’ and ‘Donald Trump’ should almost never be used in the same sentence. Despite the president’s penchant for describing himself as a “very stable genius”, Trump is by most civilized standards, a deeply ignorant imbecile. His inability to construct coherent sentences, legendary lack of attention span, and total incapacity to engage in critical thinking should place should him at the very top of everyone historian’s “dumbest presidents ever” list.
That being said, Trump does have a particular, unlikely genius that has allowed him to succeed in the swamps of corporate America and the equally cutthroat arena of presidential politics.
There are two aspects of Trump’s intelligence that could be defined as ‘genius’: his capacity to promote himself, and an uncanny ability to find his opponent’s weakness. Trump tore through the GOP primaries in 2015/16 by taking all the limelight away from his opponents and humiliating them by coining unfortunately accurate nicknames. There was “low energy Jeb”, “Lyin’ Ted”, “Little Marco” and so on, and so forth. It was highly entertaining to watch — like a car wreck happening in slow motion — and highly effective.
Trump lashes out at those he feels threatened by, and pays particular attention to anyone he feels could present a serious challenge. It has been widely reported that Trump fears Joe Biden in the 2020 election, and for good reason. Biden is beating Trump in the polls in states that Trump cannot afford to lose under any circumstances. So Trump is leveling what remains of his sparse attention span directly at the former Vice President. This was Trump’s latest attack on Biden:
As Jack Holmes in Esquire writes, “The bill is now widely viewed as having wrought destruction on African-American communities, ushering in the era of mandatory minimums and mass incarceration. Even Bill Clinton, the Democratic president who once championed the bill, has begun to back away from it. Biden helped usher it through the Senate, and is struggling to defend that work as he courts black voters in the Democratic primary. So Trump went there.”
Because that is what Trump does. He goes there. When you have absolutely no shame, you can call violent white supremacists “very fine people”, call black NFL players kneeling during the national anthem “sons of bitches”, and call black countries “shit holes”, and still criticize someone else for being racist.
Make no mistake, Biden’s support of the 1994 Crime Bill was a grave error and he should not only be embarrassed by it, but should apologize for it too. But Trump doesn’t give a damn about it or care about mass incarceration of black Americans. As Holmes points out:
The hypocrisy of this particular Trumpian shtick is mind-blowing. Trump does not just have an extensive record of overt racism, he's got one that specifically includes peddling propaganda about black-on-white crime. And more to the point, around the time of the crime bill, he spent $82,000 to take out a full-page ad in The New York Times advocating the death penalty for a group of black and brown teenagers, known as the Central Park Five, who were accused of raping a jogger. He refused to back away from this even after they were completely exonerated of the crime and awarded a $41 million settlement for their wrongful imprisonment.
So why is Trump doing this? As a lifelong grifter and opportunist, Trump sees this as a way of turning liberal voters off Biden. He knows Biden is viewed as a centrist and not sufficiently left wing enough by much of the Democratic base, so he is crafting his attack strategy on creating a divide in the party. It’s devious stuff, but it works and Trump knows it. Just as Trump turned around his non-stop spewing of fact-free bullshit into an attack on the “Fake News” media, he uses the same tactic on his political enemies. He had the temerity to call Hilary Clinton “Crooked Hillary” despite being the most corrupt presidential candidate in recent US history, so he obviously has no qualms attacking Joe Biden for being a racist. It’s classic Trumpian projection, and thanks to his maniacal base and the deeply fractured political landscape, he makes it work.
Joe Biden and other Democratic candidates need to counter this type of attack quickly and efficiently if they are to take Trump on in the general. They must hit back immediately and spell out Trump’s glaring hypocrisy. They must also pledge to not allow Trump to divide the party, and speak out in defense of each other whenever Trump tries the divide and conquer attack strategy. Because if they don’t, Trump will exploit the weakness mercilessly.
Given the Democratic candidates for 2020 haven’t begun debating in public yet, Trump is clearly just warming up. When the election kicks into gear next month, we can expect a lot worse. So buckle up and prepare yourself for one truly horrific election.
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