Donald Trump and his people have no idea what they’re doing. Here’s how we exploit it.
Each time Donald Trump gets caught up in yet another legal battle, we hear about how he and his advisers are going to just delay it to their satisfaction and he’ll get away with it all. Each time Trump loses yet another legal battle, we hear all about how it doesn’t matter because it’s supposedly helping him on the campaign front. Anyone who questions this narrative is accused of not being “vigilant” enough, or of not taking Trump seriously enough.
But I think it’s important – really important in fact – to talk about the fact that Trump and his advisers keep losing. They failed to keep the E. Jean Carroll trial from happening, and then their trial strategy was so bad it cost Trump $83 million. They failed to keep the New York civil fraud trial from happening, and then their trial strategy was so bad it cost Trump a half a billion dollars.
Now they’ve failed to keep the New York criminal trial from happening, and their trial strategy was so bad that it resulted in conviction on thirty-four felony counts and a realistic possibility of a prison sentence.
And yet through all of it, there’s no evidence to date that Trump’s strategy in these trials has helped him politically. His poll numbers trended slightly downward during the time his civil trials were going on. And the first polls since his criminal trial conviction suggest he may have lost a few points overnight as a result of becoming a convicted felon. Polls are to be looked upon with great skepticism. But the point is that there’s no evidence that anything Trump and his advisers have done at any point has helped Trump in any way. Not legally, not financially, and not politically.
“But Trump’s strategy for delaying his other trials has worked, so he must know what he’s doing!” No, not really. He had a one in seven chance of randomly drawing Aileen Cannon as the judge in his classified documents trial. That’s not knowing what you’re doing. That’s just plain dumb luck. Trump had an 86% chance of drawing a different judge in that trial, and if he had, he’d be convicted in that trial by now as well.
As for Georgia, the only reason that trial hasn’t happened is that the appeals over Fani Willis’ affair with an underling haven’t finished playing out yet. I’m not going to blame Willis for this nasty attack on her personal life. But if the affair hadn’t come out, Trump’s Georgia trial would probably be starting next week. From Trump’s perspective, this is once again just plain luck.
But the thing about luck is that it only goes your way some of the time. In the legal battles where Trump hasn’t tripped over dumb luck that had nothing to do with him, he’s lost – and lost in catastrophic fashion. His entire financial house of cards is now tied up in legal bonds. He’s a convicted felon. He’s hoping that a judge he hates isn’t about to sentence him to prison. And if we’re going to use poll numbers as a measuring stick for lack of anything else available, Trump is now in the worst political position he’s been in this entire election cycle.
So what exactly are Trump and his advisers doing right? Nothing. Trump keeps going into these legal battles with an inept strategy for fending them off, an inept trial strategy, and an inept attempt at spinning it politically. At this point the typical Trump political move is to give a speech at the Libertarian Convention and get booed off the stage.
I don’t think we’re being “complacent” by pointing out that Trump and his people are running the most inept sinking ship of all time. We all know that modern presidential elections tend to be close and wacky no matter how vast the diffidence between the candidates. We’re not going to rest on our laurels. We’re going to work our tails off. But as we’re formulating strategy, it’s important for us to keep Trump’s numerous weaknesses, vulnerabilities, and mistakes in mind. Those are the things we need to focus on and exploit to our advantage – and we will.
