It’s a surprise to nobody that Incumbent President Donald Trump is running for reelection in the 2020 presidential election. Surrounded by a large pack of his rabid and loyal base in a giant Florida stadium, he declared to the world that he was far from being done in the White House. Spewing rhetoric that he’s been pushing since his first day in office, he played the crowd perfectly. This was Trump’s big party for him and his supporters, a showy entrance into the race. It was all very predictable messaging and Trump took every effort he could to exaggerate his achievements and often straight up lie about his last four years as president.
Starting with the ridiculous claim that his administration has and will continue to “drain the swamp” of the government, Trump claimed quite proudly during the rally that “Many times I said we would drain the swamp, and that’s exactly what we’re doing right now — we’re draining the swamp.” That feels like an empty claim coming from the President who, during his time in office, has assembled the richest oligarchy that the executive branch has ever seen, refused to release his tax information after years of badgering and has been surrounded by a huge amount of scandals since he stepped into the Oval Office. Trump, however, will probably keep making that false promise, right up to the point he is reelected even though he has shown the complete opposite. The audience certainly believed him, cheering with devoted joy and belief as he went on.
Then in an even more far reaching attempt they begin pushing the Russian angle. At first he touted the Mueller “victory” as expected, starting by saying, “No collusion and the facts that led our great attorney general to determine no obstruction. No collusion. No obstruction.” Then Trump went for the heavy hitter and blamed everyone he could think of. “The only collusion was committed by the Democrats, the fake news media and their operatives, and the people who funded the phony dossier, crooked Hillary Clinton and the DNC,” he said. This was a good spread of everyone that has bothered our President in the last couple of years. All of them are apparently guilty of collusion because of Christopher Steele’s one unsavory document against Trump. To top all of that off, he made his most insane declaration: “Nobody has been tougher on Russia than Donald Trump, nobody.” Donald Trump turned his back on U.S. Intelligence, outright denying their info and siding with Russia or leaving Syria wide open for Russian influence with the approval of Putin. These don’t exactly send a “tough” message to Russia, perhaps the opposite considering Trump’s friendly respect for the Russian president.
Finally, in his most malicious tactic, Trump raised the stakes for the 2020 election to cataclysmic levels. He pushes the fear into his base supporters and paints the opposition as un-American and evil, which gets them motivated to go to the polls for him. The way he frames the opposite party as Machiavellian communists out to destroy the country is a corrupt tactic but it works. This rally had no shortage of excessive hate mongering. Trump made bold statements: “A vote for any Democrat in 2020 is a vote for the rise of radical socialism, and the destruction of the American dream […] Instead of bringing us together as one America, Democrats want to splinter us into factions and tribes. They want us divided.” After making it clear that the Democrats hate America and everything that is stands for, Trump moved on to what the election was really about. “This election is not merely a verdict on the amazing progress we’ve made; it’s a verdict on the un-American conduct of those who try to undermine our great democracy and undermine you.” It’s clear that the message being sent out is that if you don’t vote Republican in the next election, you and everything America stands for will be at risk. This, of course, is not true in the slightest but it makes voting more urgent and it makes the crowds come out for Trump.
Trump showed off all his guns, proving that nothing has changed with the man since he first stepped into office. If you were looking for a different tactic from Trump in this coming election, you might be disappointed. He’s the same exaggerating and lying showman. Trump seems confident, ending his rally with a call to arms: “We are going to keep on fighting. And we are going to keep on winning, winning, winning.” I guess we will see whether or not Trump will win, win, win in this next election.
