Republican political consultant Richard Berman is something of a legend, often credited with taking the art of negative campaigning on behalf of undisclosed corporate clients to the next level. When “60 Minutes” profiled him in 2007, he was portrayed as the “Dr. Evil” of the Washington influence game. More than a decade later, when I visited his office in downtown DC, still had an idiot “Dr. Evil” on his table. (“If they called you Mr. Nice, would that be better?” he asked. “I don’t think so.”) Berman came up with an acronym to capture his company’s aggressive approach to politics: FLAGS: Fear, Love, Anger, greed and sympathy. Of these, he believed, anger and fear were undoubtedly the most effective.
I have often thought of Berman’s formula as I watched the downward spiral of American politics in recent years. It’s not that complicated, unfortunately: fear and anger, deployed by a skilled demagogue like Donald Trump, have captivated a large part of the Republican electorate. Other politicians, recognizing Trump’s appeal, are also increasingly eschewing love, sympathy, and even greed in favor of this simpler, more direct approach. The 2024 GOP primaries are shaping up to be a veritable stew of hate, with candidates raising the alarm on everyone from terrifying trans activists to marauding migrants to “woke” radical left communists. In 2016, during Trump’s campaign, he promoted a “Muslim ban” to protect LGBTQ+ Americans from “a hateful foreign ideology”; this time, as a political writer Dave Weigel recently pointed out, Republicans court Muslim voters by promising to protect them against threatening LGBTQ+ ideologues. The point is to have an enemy—or many enemies—whoever they are.
For Trump, the script of fear and anger has never changed, even if the specific objects of his demonization come and go as quickly as Fox News’ chirons. Win or lose, the guy who launched his 2015 presidential campaign warning of evil Mexican rapists still has a playbook. during a speech at his country club in Bedminster, New Jersey, Tuesday night, shortly after his arrest and indictment on federal criminal charges stemming from his possession of a trove of classified documents, Trump offered a parade of now-familiar horrors: people “who were allowed to pour across our open borders” ; “rigged” elections; raging inflation; out-of-control interest rates and spiraling taxes; murderers “allowed to roam the streets of our Democrat-run cities unchecked”; the “persecution of Christians, pro-life activists, parents who attend school board meetings and even future Republican candidates”; the “fake news” and the “sieve that filters Washington”; and, of course, “the corrupt Biden Administration” and its “allied band of thugs, misfits, and Marxists” who “tried to destroy American democracy” or at least turn it into “Venezuela on steroids.” Listening to Berman’s FLAGS in Trump’s address, there were almost too many to notice.
It’s all so familiar by now that it’s easy enough to tune out, unless you’re part of the target Republican audience that subscribes to these core tenets of Trumpism. Where Trump deviates from the generic Republican fear-mongering script these days is in the voluminousness and specificity of the personal grievances with which he seeks to rouse his audience. Let Nikki Haley, Ron DeSantis and the others try to scare Republican voters with the bogeyman of “biological boys” popping up in girls’ locker rooms or the horrors of political correctness running amok at Walt Disney World. Only Trump would try to scare them with all the ways he himself is being persecuted.
That’s precisely what Trump did during his post-impeachment speech. Among the FLAGS I flagged were his complaints about “one of the most outrageous and vicious legal theories ever presented in an American court”; “the horrific violation of my rights by Crooked Joe Biden’s Department of Justice”; and, not surprisingly, “Deranged Jack Smith,” the special counsel who brought the case against him in Florida and who is a “raging lunatic” as well as a “thug,” whose previous work as war crimes prosecution took place in “Globalist Courts not bound by the Constitution or the rule of law”. (It should be noted that Trump also called Alvin Bragg, the Manhattan district attorney who indicted him in a hush money case earlier this spring, a “lunatic.”) Even all of Trump’s complaints about previous investigations into him, such as “Russia, Russia, Russia cheating” and the “Mueller witch hunt” have now been upgraded to rubbish systemic threats, lumped together as part of the which he called a series of years of “illegal psychological warfare campaigns against the American people.” The point is, it’s scary stuff, directed at you and not just him.
Remarkably and understandably, neither CNN nor MSNBC carried this speech, with its toxic but predictable cocktail of misinformation and lies, live on their airwaves. I saw it on Fox News, which briefly showed Trump along with a picture of President Biden giving his own speech. A chyron snapped across the screen during this split-screen moment: “Wanted dictator speaks at White House after having political rival arrested.” Talk about fear and anger. Fox is an entire network based on its enduring marketing.
But I’m afraid there’s an important reason to listen more carefully than ever to what Trump has to say. As he faces the very real threat of conviction and prison in the pending criminal cases against him, he has dramatically increased the doomsday quotient in his rhetoric. It’s no longer enough to bemoan “American carnage,” like his 2017 inaugural address, or cast himself as the savior who will do something about it. With his own survival at stake, Trump has now adopted a do-or-die presidential campaign platform. There’s a chilling urgency to his words as he calls on his followers to show up for “the final battle,” a phrase I noticed him using for the first time earlier this year. “We will be re-elected,” he said in his speech this week. “We have no choice.”
Trump’s 2024 campaign is turning out to be a master class in fear, his own and what he seeks to inspire in his followers. His doom-casting is designed not only to provoke his emotions, but to lead his audience to the inescapable conclusion that radical action is needed. “All the Republicans, you finally have to get tough,” Trump said Tuesday night. “You have to be tough and you have to show them that when you arrest your main political opponent, we don’t have a democracy anymore.” He concluded by promising to “wipe out” his enemies in the “deep state” and to appoint a “real” special prosecutor to pursue Biden, “the most corrupt president in the history of the United States of America”. and Biden’s. the family too: the same politicization of justice that Trump claims to be a victim of.
The speech ended on the dictatorial note that has become the chilling, messianic signature of his 2024 campaign: “I am the only one who can save this nation,” he said. The state is Trump. ♦
