Donald Trump’s a bit confused about who’s
the confused candidate
His embrace of Kremlin-style propaganda doesn’t have to make
sense. His goal is to deny that there’s a verifiable reality at all.
By Gene
Lyons Sep 11, 2020, 11:53am CDT
In the real world — that is to say, the non-televised part of
our lives remote from social media — we would shun somebody who went around
spreading ugly rumors about neighbors, relatives or co-workers. Not that it
never happens. I have a friend who resigned from a local charity after a clique
of rivals spread a false tale that she’d slipped into dementia, poor thing.
She decided that she wanted nothing more to do with them.
Alas, from the gossips’ point of view, the smear campaign
worked. Not that my friend isn’t better off without them. More than anything,
the pretense of compassion made her furious. In time, they’ll probably turn
against each another, because that’s what such people do.
Indeed, something quite similar has been going on in the U.S.
presidential campaign. With the help of Russia’s infamous Internet Research
Agency, based in St. Petersburg, the rumor’s been spread that Democratic
nominee Joe Biden, poor thing, scarcely knows his whereabouts, mistakes his
wife for his sister, believes that he’s running for the U.S. Senate and more.
For months, I’ve been getting emails from Trumpists claiming
that Biden can’t so much as speak in complete sentences or utter coherent
thoughts at all. It’s all over social media. Like my friend’s phony consolers,
some express empathy for poor Uncle Joe, cruelly tricked by ruthless Democrats
into serving as a stalking horse for the so-called “Squad,” four minority
congresswomen with left-of-center views.
Smart as she is, it’s amazing how much Rep. Alexandria
Ocasio-Cortez scares some Republicans.
Most of my correspondents appear to have been bamboozled by a
doctored video making it appear that Biden, who has stuttered all his life due
to a speech impediment having nothing to do with intellectual capacity, can
scarcely speak. More recently, according to The Washington Post, White House
social media director Dan Scavino shared a manipulated video that falsely
showed Biden seeming to fall asleep during a television interview, complete
with a fake TV headline.
In reality, a 2011 video of a confused interview with singer
Harry Belafonte was intercut with a few seconds of Biden looking downward as he
listened to another speaker at a 2020 town hall. Snoring sounds were added. The
whole thing was entirely fictitious.
Readers may recall that, also with Russian help, Trump’s 2016
campaign portrayed Hillary Clinton as virtually at death’s door.
Boss Trump himself has been all over the Biden-as-dotard theme,
taunting his rival as “Slow Joe,” “Sleepy Joe” and the like, along with
sneering remarks about him hiding in the basement, etc.
For those of us resident in the visible world, the most obvious
question about such clumsy propaganda was: What would the Trumpists do/say
after the Democratic convention, once Biden had spoken to millions on national
TV and proved to be clear-spoken and damn near eloquent? As, indeed, he did
during the Democrats’ TV show and has continued to do in campaign appearances
ever since.
Naive question. Trump turned on a dime, asserting that Biden was
obviously hopped-up on some performance-enhancing drug. He demanded that drug
tests be administered before the forthcoming candidate debates (always assuming
that Trump himself shows up). Biden has ignored him, much as Clinton ignored
the same demand in 2016.
It’s all “kayfabe,” a term of art for fictive storylines used to
get professional wrestling fans worked up before pay-per-view grudge matches —
strictly part of the promotion. Also what Trump probably intended when he
tweeted about “constant negative press covfefe” that time. As a veteran of WWE
promotions, he knows all about it.
Meanwhile, it just may be significant that the Department of
Homeland Security reportedly tried to hide a report documenting that the theme
of Biden’s impaired mental health came directly from the Kremlin. It cited
numerous reports on Russian state media outlets Sputnik and RT (Russia Today)
dating back to last September. DHS claimed it deep-sixed the document because
it was “poorly written.” Yeah, right.
The chicken-and-egg question of whether Putin or the Trump
campaign invented the smear isn’t worth pursuing. The purpose of such
propaganda isn’t to persuade; it’s almost the opposite. If Trumpism, like its
Russian cousin Putinism, has proved nothing else, it’s that adepts believe whatever
they need to believe.
Everybody else stays confused. Mere reality be damned. Indeed,
the crazier the political conspiracy theory — witness the QAnon superstition —
the more it excites some people. There’s an element of psychological projection
involved, too, because occasional verbal stumbles aside, it’s not Biden who
talks gibberish, gushes non sequiturs and contradicts himself daily.
It’s Trump.
In the final analysis, Kremlin-style propaganda doesn’t have to
make sense. Its ultimate goal isn’t to establish what Trump aide Kellyanne
Conway memorably called “alternative facts.” It’s to deny that there’s a
verifiable reality at all.
Because where there is no truth, there is only power.