How *not* to attack Donald Trump
Don't be nice.
As Donald Trump’s chances for the Republican nomination seem to strengthen with every passing day, his opponents are ramping up their attacks on him.
Eh, sort of.
“We have to move forward,” said former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley in an interview with Real Clear Politics. “We can't deal with the drama that's following him. We can't deal with the baggage.”
“To voters trying to pay their rent, make their car payment or put their kids through college 2020 is ancient history,” said Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp over the weekend. “Not a single swing voter in a single swing state will vote for our nominee if they choose to talk about the 2020 election being stolen.” (Kemp did not mention Trump by name.)
And a super PAC aligned with Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis posted an ad comparing Trump’s tactics to those of Democrats. “What happened to Donald Trump,” the ad’s narrator asks.
If these “attacks” strike you as decidedly lame, it’s because, well, they are. They’re unmemorable, vague jabs at the former president — designed to criticize him without, really, pissing off him or his supporters.1
It’s exactly the wrong strategy to beat Donald Trump.
How do I know? Because we saw it not work in the 2016 campaign.
In that race, it was clear from the start that his more establishment opponents had no idea how to deal with Trump. Most tried to ignore him at first — in hopes that he would go away. When that didn’t work, they began to engage him — politely.
“Donald, you know, is great at the one-liners,” former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush said in a December 2015 debate. “But he's a chaos candidate. And he'd be a chaos president. He would not be the commander-in-chief we need to keep our country safe.”
Chaotic! Oh boy! Harsh words!
Meanwhile, Trump was absolutely savaging people. Trump was attacking Bush as “low energy” and part of a political family that had failed the country. He was making fun of how Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul looked. He was suggesting Ted Cruz’s father might have been involved in the JFK assassination.
In short, Trump was — one by one— attacking each of the candidates in deeply personal ways while the other candidates were offering wink-and-nudge critiques of Trump.
Trump’s attacks were designed to appeal to the emotions of voters. His opponents’ attacks were triple-bank shots aimed at appealing to the intellect of voters. (You don’t want a chaos candidate, do you????)
There was a lone exception — and it was a blip on the overall 2016 radar.
In February 2016, when it looked like the race might come down to a two-man battle between Trump and Marco Rubio, the Florida Senator went on the attack.
He suggested that Trump had small hands for a man his size, noting: “You know what they say about guys with small hands.” Rubio went on to note that “Donald Trump isn't gonna make America great, he's gonna make America orange.”
The criticism clearly got to Trump. In a debate days later, Trump said this:
I have to say this, he hit my hands. Nobody has ever hit my hands. I’ve never heard of this one. Look at those hands. Are they small hands? And he referred to my hands if they’re small, something else must be small. I guarantee you there’s no problem. I guarantee you.
(Still can’t really believe that happened.)
Following the debate, Rubio quickly changed course — walking away from his more fiery rhetoric and eventually disavowing it. 2
So, should DeSantis or Nikki Haley start raising questions about Donald Trump’s penis size? Um, no.
Rubio’s mistake was that he didn’t make a personal attack designed to illustrate why Trump shouldn’t/couldn’t be president. He just made an ad hominem personal attack.3
The lesson from the 2016 campaign is that you have to go RIGHT at Trump and tell people why he shouldn’t be elected again. No hinting. No subtlety. No knowing nods.
Semafor’s Benjy Sarlin nailed it here:
Everyone knows the actual R case for DeSantis — “I am not an unstable incompetent who spends all day whining about the last election I obviously botched and how my entire handpicked cabinet and VP are losers who betrayed me.” If you can’t say it aloud, though, why run?
Yes, that!
What Sarlin is saying is even more true in 2024 than it was in 2016. Why? Because Trump is a much bigger favorite at this point in the 2024 race than he was at this point in the 2016 contest.
The only road to the nomination in 2024 is through Donald Trump. There are no alternative lanes, no paths that can get you there by offering a quiet critique of Trump.4
In order to have a chance against Trump, you have to find ways to strip votes off of him — in bulk. (Trump is averaging 52% of the primary vote right more — almost 30 points better than DeSantis.)
And the way that you do that is by making an un-subtle case for why he shouldn’t be president again.
No one, at least at the moment, is doing that — which is remarkable when you consider that Trump was ARRESTED earlier this month for allegedly authorizing hush money payments to a porn star to cover up an affair.
That would seem ripe for just the sort of messaging we are talking about here. A candidate could easily say “Look, we can’t have someone who has been arrested — and is under active investigation in at least two other cases — as our nominee. It’s a political death wish!”
And yet, other than former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie and former Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson, none of Trump’s opponents criticized him at all for the arrest. Most rallied behind him and said it was the result of an overzealous prosecutor!
That’s not how you beat Donald Trump. Not now, not ever. In the words of Horatio Nelson: “Never mind the maneuvers, just go straight at 'em.”5
Meanwhile, Trump’s super PAC is running ads about how DeSantis eats pudding with his fingers. So, yeah.
Rubio endorsed Trump later in March 2016 and saids that he had privately apologized for the small hands comments.
An attack, by the way, that seemed to make Trump respect him more. “Well, I also happen to call [Rubio] a lightweight, OK, and I have said that,” Trump admitted during a debate. “So, I would like to take that back. He’s really not that much of a lightweight.”
Trump is the troll guarding the bridge. You have to figure out how to beat him or you can’t go further down the road. Period.
Yes, this is a purposeful reference to the great Aubrey-Maturin series by Patrick O’Brian.
>So, should DeSantis or Nikki Haley start raising questions about Donald Trump’s penis size? Um, no.
Chris, when you got into writing about politics, did you ever expect to write a sentence like this?
The MAGA army has every other candidate terrified. It's pathetic. To your point, you can't beat someone of whom you are terrified.