Conservative Washington Post columnist Max Boot recalled that infamous moment in 2016 in which then-candidate Donald Trump sneered at Hillary Clinton and said, "No puppet! No puppet! You're the puppet!" That philosophy seems to be making a resurgence as Boot wrote Sunday that Trump has employed an "I know you are but what I am," kind of campaign for 2020.
"Yet the basic idea proved so successful that President Trump and his supporters are recycling it," wrote Boot. "They are accusing presumptive Democratic nominee Joe Biden of four sins of which Trump himself stands accused with far better cause: racism, sexual assault, corruption, and mental unfitness."
The strategy for Trump's campaign has been to try and create scandals that are similar to his own. Instead of the Russia scandal, Trump and his sometimes-lawyer Rudy Giuliani attempted to create a Ukraine scandal for former Vice President Joe Biden. It ended up being the reason that Trump was impeached in 2019.
As Biden quipped African-Americans "ain't black" if they vote for a racist president like Donald Trump. Ironically, Trump's campaign then attempted to label Biden the racist. This is the same president who claimed there were "very fine people on both sides" of the Charlottesville rally where Nazis and white supremacists marched in the streets with tiki torches chanting "Jews will not replace us."
Boot called it "pretty sick." He recalled a speech Trump made where he attacked Jewish people who vote for Democrats.
"I think any Jewish people that vote for a Democrat, I think it shows either a total lack of knowledge or great disloyalty," Trump proclaimed. Boot noted that at the time, there was nonexistent Republican outrage.
"Shamelessness is, as I've noted before, Trump's superpower. No other candidate could have the chutzpah to accuse his opponent of so many offenses for which there is far more copious evidence of his own guilt," Boot closed. "Yet it worked for Trump once and could work for him again. If there's one thing he has learned from a lifelong career as a huckster, it is to never underestimate the gullibility of his supporters."
