Sometimes to beat up a monster you need to become one: on Trump's CNN town hall
A brief case study on dealing with the likes of Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin.
This is a love letter to the American people - or rather, to the reasonable and best part of it - following the disastrous CNN town hall with former President Donald Trump.
Dear Americans, please don’t repeat the mistake with Donald Trump that the West made with Russia’s Vladimir Putin. Don’t play chess with a thug, as the whole world did with Putin up until February 23rd, 2022. You'll lose. A thug - as the democratic world had to learn in all bitterness last year - only understands rude power.
Defending the chaotic town hall, CNN’s Anderson Cooper said that “after last night, none of us can say, ‘I didn’t know what’s out there. I didn’t know what’s coming”, reminding everyone that Trump is the GOP frontrunner for president.
Stating the obvious, none of us - us the Democrats, never-Trumpers and anti-Trumpists, ever had a doubt about what was out there since the very moment Trump descended the escalator in 2015. We knew what was coming back then, and we know what’s coming today. The problem is that in the town hall audience last Wednesday, there wasn’t a single Democrat or anti-Trumpist. It was full of die-hard Trump supporters and supposedly some undecided voters. Judging by the crowd’s unanimous giggles at Trump’s lowest remarks, the latter were in the minority.
Of course, three million more people watched the town hall online. I think it’s safe to assume that anti-Trumpists not only already know what Trump has to say, but they probably can’t stand listening to him as it causes them - us - physical pain. Anyone who made a mistake in 2016 had a chance to fix it in 2020. By today, there is nobody who doesn’t know what Trump is, and none of these people needs another confirmation of Trump’s outrageousness or a fact-check of his infinite lies, including at a town hall. Paradoxically, neither do Trump supporters - who must have been the only ones watching the town hall with interest. And what did they learn that night? That Trump can humiliate and bully down anyone, including the “East Coast Elites” at CNN. And it is, in fact, true considering a doctored fake video of Cooper mocking the network shared by Trump soon after.
This is where Donald Trump should be studied by the example of Vladimir Putin, as a thug should be studied by another thug. As an exiled Russian journalist, I can in all sadness state a fact that the majority of Russian people like, or even love, Putin not despite his vulgarity, cruelty, and ignorance, but BECAUSE of that. It was to them that he addressed his famous line “We’ll catch them in the toilet. We’ll wipe them out in the outhouse” immediately after coming to power. The crowd LOVED that line and many more that followed. The Russian liberal opposition still fails to understand this simple truth and keeps dreaming that if they could only open people’s eyes to WHO PUTIN REALLY IS, Russians would turn on him. Wrong.
Just as it is wrong to assume that Trump supporters need another exposure of his barbarity, disrespect for law, and stupidity to “wake up” and turn on him. They don’t want less lies; they want MORE of that.
Trump supporters know exactly who he is, and they love him for that. He delivers every time. That’s the dirty little secret of how nothing ever sticks to Trump. But the Florida man is not invincible. Being a thug, he operates on fear and humiliation, basically a mafia code. Trump and Putin supporters fear their leaders, and thus respect them (there is an actual Russian saying “one respects you since they fear you”). Respect turns into love and adoration. And of course, being deeply humiliated by their leaders with their attitude, the rabble want to take out their frustrations on others. Thus, the giggles and cheers when Trump calls CNN’s Kaitlan Collins a nasty woman.
Humiliation, however, works both ways. It just needs to be spoken in the language that is available to the audience.
Don't CALL Vladimir Putin as France's President Emmanuel Macron does; CALL HIM A KILLER, just like President Joe Biden did, casually and effortlessly. The remark struck Putin so deeply, it prompted the macho-man to stage an occasional conversation with a cameraman and deliver a rather pathetic response. Perhaps the only thing more humiliating was when President Obama referred to Putin as a regional leader. What a blow!
In other words, maybe playing a Beethoven symphony to a crowd at a wrestling show is not the best idea. Don’t give the audience the things they don’t need and never ask for. If Trump supporters strive to witness someone being humiliated, make Trump the subject. Instead of exposing Trump’s lies about 2020, just ask him something like, “I get it, what’s in it for you today - you keep fundraising and getting money, but what’s in it for your supporters whom you’ve been losing a third election in a row for?”
Instead of accepting his insults about being a nasty woman, just say, “I know, right? How else would I communicate with you?”
When Trump says that “eighteen hundred boxes” of secret documents were found at Biden’s house, politely correct him - eighteen MILLION hundred boxes.
Ask him what happened to his supporters that exactly three people showed up at the New York Courthouse to protect Trump from being arrested. When the crowd boos you, apologize and say, “Excuse me, not three, of course - FIVE people showed up in NYC. Three persons came down to Mar-a-Lago”.
Ask him what his secret is that he sold himself - a silver spoon child - to the crowd as a self-made man; what advice can he give to his GOP challengers like Vivek Ramaswamy, also a rich elite?
Ask him how he is going to pick his VP this time since choosing such disloyal Mike Pence turned out to be such a failure - as did Rex Tillerson, Jeff Sessions and many many more.
When Trump said at the deposition that it’s been a million years since women let celebrities grab them by their private parts, ask him if that’s the advice he’d like to give his female supporters; if that would advance them in life.
Trump is the king of absurdity, albeit a cruel and dangerous one. Therefore, give the crowd what they want by turning Trump's absurdities into even more absurd ones. Strip the emperor of his clothes. And no, you can't play chess with a thug - at some point, he'll beat you up with the chessboard. Just as you can't outsmart a troll - you can only double down on the troll's trolling. And the secret to winning over a trolling thug? Well, you've got it.