'Make up anything': How Trump’s 'campaign strategy' prioritizes 'false narratives'

23 September 2024

Although many post-debate presidential election polls being released in late September are showing Democratic nominee Kamala Harris with small single-digit national leads over her GOP rival Donald Trump — including 5 percent according to NBC News, 4 percent according to CBS News ,and 2 percent according to Fox News — Harris continues to describe herself as the "underdog" candidate and cautions that it still a very close race. The Harris campaign's strategy is to project confidence but not cockiness.

Meanwhile, according to The Guardian's David Smith, the Trump campaign's strategy is to throw a variety of things against the wall and hope that some of them will stick — even if they have no basis in fact.

This approach, Smith notes in an article published on September 22, was evident when Trump and running mate, Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio), promoted the racist and debunked conspiracy theory that Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio were kidnapping residents' cats and dogs and eating them.

Kurt Bardella, a Democratic strategist, told The Guardian: "It's a logical continuation of what once was called 'alternative facts' by the same camp. It's obvious that is a long-term mission statement, more than just an offhand comment. Their entire strategy is to say anything, make up anything, invent false narratives to try and distract away from the very real consequences of their radical and extreme agenda that is so far out of the mainstream of the American people's interests."

Bardella added, "They think they have a better chance of winning by making up insane stories about people eating pets versus having a subsequent conversation about the consequences of their policy agenda."

Smith points out that during his September 10 debate with Harris in Philadelphia, Trump "made false assertions about topics including inflation, immigration, tariffs, House speaker Nancy Pelosi's role on January 6, Joe Biden's role in the criminal cases against him and popular support for the overturning of the constitutional right to abortion."

Journalist Charlie Sykes, a Never Trump conservative, has been sounding the alarm about Trump and Vance's willingness to lie if they think it will benefit their campaign.

Sykes told The Guardian, "What JD Vance is saying is that the facts don't matter and that I am completely unashamed to have peddled a false story. It underlines the degree to which Trump and Vance and the MAGA movement are addicted to these fake online internet memes and unshakeable in their attachment to them."

The Never Trumper added, "Even when they are refuted, they stick with them — which is a dangerous thing because it means that no matter how much evidence you can provide, no matter how dangerous the lies turn out to be, they're not going to back off.”

Read David Smith's full article for The Guardian at this link.

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