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Did Trump just make ‘one of the best persuasion plays in political history’?

August 2, 2024 | | Print Article

While the left is clutching their pearls over former President Donald Trump discussing Vice President Kamala Harris’ race, Democrats are salivating over his political demise as they drive their outrage.

But some are seeing a strategy behind Trump’s headline-making comments before the attendees of the National Association of Black Journalists convention. The Republican presidential nominee may not have intentionally had a strategy behind his remarks other than his usual ability to tell it like it is, but some argue that Democrats hammering the point home to attack him as a racist may not achieve their goals.

“I’ve known her a long time indirectly, not directly very much, and she was always of Indian heritage,” Trump said of Harris at the event. “And she was only promoting Indian heritage. I didn’t know she was black until a number of years ago when she happened to turn black. Now she wants to be known as black. So I don’t know — is she Indian or is she black?”

“I respect either one but she obviously doesn’t because she was Indian all the way, and then all of a sudden she made a turn and she became a black person,” he said.

“Trump used a persuasion technique called ‘Entering Your Illusion’ when he questioned Harris’ racial identity at the NABJ, and you can already see how well it worked,” author and cartoonist Scott Adams wrote in a post on X.

“The method involves ACCEPTING the illusion you are trying to defeat and showing its absurdity by taking it to its obvious conclusion,” he added. “Trump ACCEPTED the Democrat worldview that identity is the key variable, then casually discussed the incongruity of Harris in terms of her identity. And he did it in front of an audience organized by their identity.”

He predicted that Trump’s strategy “will continue to sink in, to marinate, and to get more powerful over time.”

“The losing play in this situation would have been to argue against using identity to choose candidates. That would be a non-starter. Instead, he ‘entered their illusion’ and left a huge turd in the middle of their living room,” the “Dilbert” creator wrote, illustrating with a compelling word picture.

“It was one of the best persuasion plays in political history. But it will take some time to see it do its magic,” he concluded.

Columnist Kurt Schlichter noted that Trump’s attacks on Harris have been focused on her being a hypocrite and “a shifty chameleon” who changes depending on her audience. Forcing the former president to lay off some personal criticisms as the campaign heads into November may not be the best advice, according to Schlichter.

“The thing that Trump is pointing out is that she is a shifty chameleon who pretends to be whatever she needs to be for whatever audience she is in front of and that she can’t be trusted,” he wrote in a post on X.

“I know a lot of people very sensitive about race issues, but this isn’t really a race issue – the Democrats say it is so they can try to force Republicans to shut up about it,” he added. “No one cares that she’s biracial. They care that she’s a weasel.”

Democrats, he argued, ” have shown us that policy alone is not a sufficient way to campaign.”

“Stop fretting. Her honeymoon is ending. Time to hit her everywhere all the time,” he concluded.

Frieda Powers
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