'Classic overkill': Analyst links Trump's 'sinister' sales pitch to past life

Donald Trump has applied some of the same tactics he learned as a lifelong salesman to politics, but with a darker and more ominous tone than he probably used to close deals, an analyst wrote for CNN Tuesday.

Most politicians offer voters an optimistic vision and promises of change, but Trump issues dark warnings about illegal immigrants, foreign nations, conspiratorial forces and economic ruin — and it seems to work, wrote Stephen Collinson.

"The Republican nominee’s warnings of disaster are not a new wrinkle," Collinson wrote. "In 2020, with Covid-19 rampant, he warned that if he was not reelected, there would be 'no kids in school, no graduations, no weddings, no Thanksgiving, no Christmas and no Fourth of July together.'

"While such rituals were severely disrupted when he was in office in 2020, the country gradually got back on its feet under Biden, who used his first Independence Day celebrations in office to declare independence from the virus, even if it ultimately took longer for normal life to resume."

"Some of this rhetoric is classic overkill from a lifelong salesman — or what Trump once called 'truthful hyperbole' in his treatise 'The Art of the Deal,'" he added.

But that hackneyed patter "took on a more sinister dimension" once Trump entered politics, and his hyperbole became "alternative facts" once he was elected president, he wrote.

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"With his menacing predictions of America’s future if Harris wins, the former president is adopting a tactic typically used by strongmen and dictatorial leaders overseas who personalize leadership and predict disaster unless they are in power," Collinson wrote.

"Things get so bad that only a strongman’s touch can save the country. 'I alone can fix it,' Trump pledged at the Republican National Convention in 2016. He expanded on his theme this year in one of his frequent tributes to hardline Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán during a Fox interview: 'They say he is a strongman,' mused Trump. 'Sometimes you need a strongman.'"

Trump has now conjured up threats to farming and warned that "our country is being lost," though the investments and jobs he promises don't always materialize, Collinson wrote, adding that it's only the sales pitch that matters.

"One reason why Trump’s rhetoric has been effective — at least in cementing the loyal base of the Republican Party — is that it channels the feelings of many voters and legitimizes them," Collinson wrote. "This is where Trump’s authoritarian instincts and economic impulses come together."