Trump gets "Birtherized"

Trump was a master at de-legitimizing his opposition.   His opponents suffered.  They also learned.

Trump is being de-legitimized right now.  He may well survive and thrive, but he is injured by the very technique he employed.   Trump is being branded as a Russian tool.

This blog has likened the 2016 to the spectacle of professional wrestling. There was precious little debate over policy.  By election day each side was a cartoon caricature.

Birther-ize:  pulled under by questions and controversy

Another metaphor better describes the Trump takedown of President Obama: the La Brea tar pit.  Trump made a charge that Obama's birth in Hawaii was fraudulent and that he was probably born in Kenya, or elsewhere, who really knew?  No amount of objective documentation mattered. He stuck to the assertion and a great many people believed it and believe it to this day.  

The facts did not hurt Obama. The controversy did. The endless questions by people determined to remain skeptical, which questions by themselves made the issue "questionable."  The meme spread.

NYT fig leaf: Look at what others are saying without proof.

Trump is being birther-ized.    The New York Times is insulating itself while simultaneously speeding the rumor that Donald Trump is being blackmailed by Russia.  They mention the charges of a scandalous video tape of him, plus multiple examples of dishonest collusion with Russia in the format of saying that they are too proper to spread such terrible charges.   

As with birther-ism, the facts aren't the problem.   The controversy is.  Trump is now immersed in a flurry of assertions.   The media is covering these in precisely the careful way Republicans handled Obama birther talk:   They discuss the controversy and raise the charges by describing third parties who raise the charges.  The liberal media raises the questions with delight--but noting they are yet unproven.  The Fox people say the charges are outrageous and unproven. ```````

Now Breitbart is pulled into the pit

The New York Times is acting the prim and ethical arbiter of journalism:  look at these defamatory and de-legitimizing charges against Trump.  Trump claims he is innocent but of course can never prove a negative.   The Kremlin says they deny the charges, except, of course, that is what they would say regardless of the truth. 

BuzzFeed

Meanwhile, BuzzFeed says the same thing that Trump and Kellyanne Conway said when making claims that are objectively untrue but which have appeal to partisans(e.g. that millions of voters voted illegally for Hillary and that he won the popular vote.)  BuzzFeed says that there are lots of questions outstanding and that their duty is to have transparency and full disclosure of the charges and that the people are free to decide for themselves how much of it is true.


This blog has described that very successful strategy several times, but it has always been employed by Trump against Democrats and opponents, not the reverse.

In the guest comment below Thad Guyer makes the strong case that Democrats are playing with fire here.  Trump, he says, is far better and more experienced at de-legitimization than they are.   

Trump is the predator, but they are both in tar.

I have a different take.  The campaign is over.  Now Trump is the President-Elect and has the responsibility to govern.  He has to make real decisions not make promises of hope and change.   Trump is not in a fight against a less-skilled opponent.   Trump is the predator who has found himself in the La Brea tar pit.   It only looks like he is devouring prey.  In fact, he is being pulled under by the desire of detractors to think the worst now that he has to make real decisions.

The headlines in today's news are ugly--but interesting.  Donald Trump paid a prostitute for to urinate on him?  The Russians have this on tape.  Yuck.  But interesting and sticky in the mind.   The stories associate Donald Trump with Russia.   How much of this is true?  Some of it?   All of it?  

The issue is now being discussed in the NY Times as a journalistic ethics session, in the general mainstream press as a yet unproven allegation full of salacious allegations, and in the conservative press as a "witch hunt." 

But the big point is that it is now being widely discussed.  Trump-Russia-Corruption are now linked as a "big question mark".

Trump is being birther-ized.   It is ugly and it is the state of journalism in America, but it is not the new state. It was in place in this election.  Trump stood in front of the cameras and said that the media was dishonest and corrupt.  You should believe me, not them, he said.  And when contradicted by journalists Trump and Kellyanne Conway said people should believe what they want.  Lots of people want to believe the worst, especially when it is interesting and it defames the other party's office holder.

Trump did not only teach Democrats how the media world worked.  He taught journalists how it worked.

Guest Comment:   The UpClose Prophecy- Delegitimization in the Age of Trump”

Among the political phenomena that Peter Sage has analyzed since he retired to become a political junkie full time, none is more profoundly correct than the delegitimization plague. Post after post, informed early by his campaign “tourism” launched in 2015, Peter has insisted that the process of delegitimization is a potent political weapon, early wielded by Mitch McConnell against everything Obama, perfected by Donald Trump in the early primaries. The battle cry “you lie” hurled at Obama by Joe Wilson in a joint session of Congress in September 2009, now no longer seems shocking.

Most of us convulsed at McConnell’s process of deligitimization, but Trump was attracted to it, and saw it for what it was—a contagion that could be spread and used. By October 2009, even NPR referenced claims of a "Kenyan-born Sen. Barack Obama", and in March 2011, during an interview on Good Morning America, Trump referenced birtherism in announcing his presidential ambitions. (See, Wikipedia, “Barack Obama Citizenship Conspiracy Theories”, https://goo.gl/5EafKi). Now seeing Michelle Obama’s call that “when they go low, we go high” as politics of the weak, Democrats and left media now blithely embrace delegitimization as weaponry. There’s an apocalyptic Mad Max or zombiesque Night of the Living Dead feel to the contagion, an ethos that you fight the disease with the disease; counterattack fake news with fake news; and that if the FBI and “intelligence leakers” can be used to infect Clinton, they can be used to infect Trump.

Until today’s reports, first by CNN then the New York Times, I didn’t fully appreciate UpClose's delegitimization prophecy, or that the whole of the body politic would be infected. Other than the First Lady, no one is even looking for a cure, we are embracing it with almost maniacal fervor. Those left media reports, now on fire globally, are “Intel Chiefs Presented Trump with Claims of Russian Efforts to Compromise Him”, (CNN, Jan. 10, 2017, https://goo.gl/RMjqcy), and “Trump Received Unsubstantiated Report That Russia Had Damaging Information About Him”, (NYT, Jan. 10, 2017, https://goo.gl/61iD2e). Yet, both outlets emphasize that the reports of Trump being blackmailed by Putin armed with porno films of Trump with Russian prostitutes, are “unsubstantiated”, “unconfirmed”, “unproven”, but “explosive” and “salacious”. The FBI says the reports started as “rumors”, but that a “political operative” was paid by the campaigns of both Trump’s Republican primary rivals, and Hillary Clinton to investigate them. 

Democrats watched and learned.

The Times says Democrats have been pushing the FBI to investigate “Trump’s connections to Russia”, and when the FBI declined to confirm or deny any investigation, Oregon’s Senator Ron Wyden resentfully tweeted: “Director Comey refused to answer my question about whether the FBI has investigated Trump campaign contacts with Russia”. Harry Reid proclaimed he has been “validated” by the FBI investigating what the FBI says is unsubstantiated. The Times reports the FBI went public because it was “concerned that the information would leak”—indeed that explanation itself was leaked to the Times by unnamed intelligence “officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity”. 

Delegtimization, like the “fake news” label coined by the left but now more effectively wielded by the right, cannot be put back into its bottle. (See, Washington Post, “It’s Time to Retire the Tainted Term ‘Fake News’”, Jan. 8, 2017 https://goo.gl/DD3BWQ, and Brietbart, “Washington Post Cries Uncle: Stop Using ‘Tainted Term’ Fake News”, Jan. 9, 2017, https://goo.gl/v1ow0S). 

Pulled under

The politics of delegitimization is a miasma to the uninitiated, but a familiar milieu to Trump. It’s a battlefield he understands, where he thrived as a billionaire. Delegitimized press, delegitimized media, delegitimized intelligence state, and delegitimized opponents. We are now in Trump world, and woe to amateurs who confront him there. 

[Peter Sage endnote:  Thad may be correct.  "It is a miasma to the uninitiated, but a familiar milieu to Trump."  But the mastodon here was large, old, and very experienced when he got pulled into the tar.  Stay tuned.]