The Trump campaign has been trying to find an effective strategy to attack Joe Biden long before the former Vice-President was even the presumptive Democratic Party presidential nominee. Their attacks have only grown more frequent and more nonsensical as we get closer to November as they are desperate for something, anything to stick to Biden to halt his momentum.
In a matter of weeks, Biden went from being ‘sleepy Joe’ to ‘senile Joe’ to Joe Biden the destroyer, coming to take everything that makes America ‘great’ in their eyes and yes that includes your windows.
None of those attacks have landed so far and here’s why.
In 2015, Donald Trump turned the political world upside down. Making light work of crushing the Bush family dynasty by just simply calling Jeb Bush, ‘low-energy’. He was the shiny new thing in politics whose nicknames and blatant disregard for the truth was the stuff of headlines for weeks. Democrats didn’t know what to do with him and the media didn’t know how to effectively cover him. He ran on being a Washington outsider who was going to drain the swamp and bring about change.
Here we are, five years later and a lot has changed. His nicknames no longer pack a punch and his lies are no longer reported without being fact-checked. As for Washington, it’s even swampier now that it was before 2016.
Donald Trump is no longer the outsider he’s the man responsible for over 146,000 deaths and an unemployment rate in double digits. No longer can he ask African Americans what they have to lose by voting for him since the pandemic that he has largely ignored hoping that it would go away on its own is disproportionately affecting people of color.
Projection
Another reason why Trump’s attacks on Biden aren’t landing is that everything Trump accuses Biden of doing he did it himself and did far worse.
For instance, the Trump campaign is trying to say Biden is soft on China, But, Trump praised China on numerous occasions including their handling of the coronavirus pandemic. Additionally, he greenlit President Xi’s plan to build concentration camps for millions of Uighur Muslims while trying to get the Chinese President to aid his re-election efforts.
When the campaign tried to say Joe Biden is creepy with women, they are hit with, ‘the 24 women who credibly accused Trump of sexual assault says hello’ oh and why won’t Trump provide his DNA to E. Jean Carroll, the woman who accused him of raping her in a Manhattan luxury department store in the mid-1990s, what is he hiding?.
They accuse Hunter Biden of being corrupt. They are hit with Ivanka’s patents from China and tax-exempt shipments and the fact that she and her husband made $100 million ‘advising’ her father. Also, Trump Jr’s corrupt tour through India selling Trump-branded properties with a promise of an intimate meal prompting ethics experts to wonder if Indian officials with ties to the government could purchase a Trump property to gain favor with the Trump administration.
Or when they say Biden is old and senile, we simply show clips of rally goers applauding Trump for drinking a glass of water using one hand or Trump struggling to walk down a ramp.
The Trump attacks on Biden aren’t landing because quite frankly the American people and the political world have gotten used to Donald Trump and all his underhanded tactics, including projection. He ran on a plan to blow up the entire system and he did, PROMISES KEPT. Things are worst, more chaotic and the American people just want to go back to the days when we don’t have to worry the president trying to kill us.
