Donald Trump and the Art of the Pivot

Everyone has written so many things about Donald Trump that it seems for me to do so would be even more akin shouting into the metaphorical void than usual.

There have been smart takes on how Trump is ruining the Republican Party brand (especially for specific slices of the electorate), how Trump represents the nastiest elements (what some might call the base) of the Republican Party, and how Trump is really actually not so bad (from people who are, unsurprisingly, themselves ‘that bad’). There have even been takes on Trump layered on top of one another in some sort of repugnant, self-perpetuating club sandwich of awfulness.

To me, thinking about Trump (ugh) is less interesting than thinking about his supporters and tactics. Trump proponents, in every focus group, thinkpiece, and tweet I’ve found so far, consistently hit the buzzwords used by those who are least familiar yet most irritated with the political process. They are “fed up with Washington” and “politics as usual.” They want a “straight-shooter” who “isn’t afraid to speak his mind” and won’t be constrained by “political correctness.” Their ideal leader is a “businessman, not a career politician.”

These are people who want something, damnit, but they can’t tell you exactly what it is. They like being angry about politics, but not proposing solutions; they have no time, patience, or sympathy for the complexity of public policy. These are the kinds of people who know exactly what dogwhistle-y bullshit a phrase like “Make America Great Again” means, but only at their subconscious level, expressed via Facebook memes showing soldiers braver than Caitlyn Jenner, Twitter declarations of war against radical Islam on an individual basis, and private conversations among friends that start with “I’m not racist, but…”.

Trump demonstrated both what endears him to his core supporters and how he appeals to a wider base of Republicans with his answer to Megyn Kelly’s debate question about his past misogyny. His response was equally brilliant and despicable. Listing off the nasty things Trump had said to women on live TV, social media, and in person, Kelly appeared to have Trump on the ropes—until he (inevitably) interrupted her. First, disarm: Trump cracked a “joke” at the expense of a figure who was maligned enough by nearly everyone in the audience to disrupt the seriousness and momentum of Kelly’s accusations.

And then, the pivot. No atonement, no remorse, no acknowledgement of guilt; Trump immediately claimed that, in the grand scheme of things, the way he may or may not have treated other people in the past was of little consequence. There is simply no time, he argues, for us to worry about trifles of political correctness or hurt feelings in days gone by. He hit two of the audiences’ rawest nerves in a single touch: the hatred (subliminal or explicit) of the notion that other people might get to define what respectful discourse means, and the impending sense of doom that Bigger, More Urgent Problems are threatening America. It was a masterful stroke.

This one-two deflection is, by the way, not unique to Trump’s campaign messaging. Political correctness is a shield for conservatives of all stripes—the ultimate non-apology, expressing not just “I’m sorry that you were upset by what I said” but rather “You are in fact wrong to be upset by what I said.” It can be used to shrug off any critique that a speaker does not share with his audience—clearly, Trump demonstrates this liberally—and Amanda Taub over at Vox made a damn good case that it as a defined concept doesn’t even really exist.

And the notion of Bigger, More Urgent Problems is equally prevalent in the GOP field. And why shouldn’t it be? It’s a great way to divert attention from an issue you aren’t comfortable with or confident on to one that you are. Consider the Confederate flag juxtaposed with that of ISIL, Cecil the Lion and Planned Parenthood, and discrimination against homosexuals at home versus their criminalization abroad. Indeed it at one point looked like Sen. Marco Rubio was planning an entire presidential campaign around the idea with the slogan “Nothing matters if we aren’t safe.”—the same rhetorical trick on an even grander ideological scale.

So there is the ‘Trump as reflective of the political system we operate in today’ statement: Capitalizing on a base with ill-defined wants and highly charged emotions can get you far in today’s Republican Party. It remains to be seen how long until the more mainstream GOP can force Trump out of the field. In the meantime though, the way he relates to his supporters may prove instructive to candidates looking to channel the malcontent masses in a more defined direction.