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He may not be all that smart, but there is no doubt that Donald Trump, like any good con man, has an innate sense of what his marks want to hear.
That is why the former president generally shies away from controversial topics. He knows that, no matter what he says, some people will not like his stance, so why take one in the first place?
This is reflected in Trump’s public appearances, which usually focus on political winners for the GOP, like border security and the economy, as well as other non-controversial topics like sharks, electric batteries, and Hannibal Lecter.
He rarely talks about things like contraception or abortion, apart from taking credit for putting a right-wing majority on the bench, because he will either upset his base or moderate women that he needs to prevail in November.
In other words, Trump knows a political loser when he sees one.
There is just one problem for him: Because he lacks any kind of subtlety, he tries to tackle his vulnerabilities by drawing attention to them.
The former president primarily does that in two ways.
His most common strategy is projection, i.e., he tries to assign his own traits to his opponents. For example, he often accuses them of lying and being “crooked” and corrupt.
Or, if he is accused of being a threat to democracy, he will try to turn this around. We have seen that play out this week when Trump, the man guilty of staging a coup, suggested that Joe Biden deciding not to run for reelection is “the real threat to democracy.”
Another strategy he employs frequently is simply lying and engaging in gaslighting, for example by telling his followers that he won the election.
Essentially, Trump tries to convince voters that his vulnerabilities are not actually vulnerabilities at all. However, because he is ham-handed about it, he often draws attention to precisely these things.
A great example of this is his repeated insistence that he has no idea what Project 2025 is, the playbook his conservative allies have drawn up for a second term in office. Mind you, more than 200 people with ties to him were involved in drafting that document, and Trump himself has even alluded to it.
And, since it is such an extreme agenda that is unpopular among voters, Trump now tries to distance himself from the authors.
However, because he is so transparent about it, the result of his denials (and a focus of Democrats on the issue) is an uptick in awareness of Project 2025.
According to research from the progressive group Navigator published on Tuesday, more Americans now know about this effort… and they do not like it one bit.
Sometimes, the former president’s attempts to hide a particular vulnerability are simply hilarious.
For example, after Republicans have spent the last three years making Biden’s age a campaign theme, Trump all of a sudden finds himself facing a much younger opponent while he became the oldest presidential nominee in US history.
In a Truth Social post Trump published Monday night, he refers to himself as “a fine and brilliant young man.”
Well, if he thinks that drawing attention to his vulnerabilities is a stroke of genius, then he is certainly as brilliant as he is young.
