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Donald Trump: Difference between revisions
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* [[It Will Never Catch On]]: Outside of his own campaign team the # of political pundits, analysts, or insiders even remotely willing to entertain the idea that Donald Trump could successfully be elected President could literally be counted on the fingers of one hand. Of course, then he won anyway.
** Youtube has a [https://youtu.be/zT0Rjc6jKCg highlight reel of the best Trump election skepticism], complete with punchline.
** [[Dilbert|Scott Adams]] got it right, however.
* [[Kicked Upstairs]]: Picking South Carolina governor Nikki Haley, a critic of his, as Ambassador to the UN has been described as this. The position would give her a position with no actual power to an organization Trump has repeatedly called a joke and would make South Carlina's lieutenant governor, who is more supportive of Trump, the governor.
* [[Metaphorgotten]]: [http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/05/03/trump-gay-people-should-n_n_856951.html He opposes gay marriage because of new trends in golf putter preference.] See also: "[[Troll]]".
* [[The Nicknamer]]: The ability to push nicknames on people and make them stick is considered one of his greatest rhetorical strengths in his 2016 election campaign. The nicknames reflect basic sorting of threat levels, which more minor opponents being called "[[The Napoleon|Little]] Marco" or "Low Energy Jeb" while his biggest primary opponent was "Lying Ted" and general election opponent dubbed "Crooked Hillary".
** Inverted with his fans, who generally take the insulting nicknames Trump's opponents have given them and turn them into [[Insult Backfire]]s. Often after Trump picks up on the insult and calls it out for being such.
* [[Never Accepted in His Hometown]]: Trump joins [[James K. Polk]] as the only Presidential candidate to lose both his home state and state of residence while still winning the election. Unlike Polk these are the same state (New York).
* [[No Such Thing as Bad Publicity]]: Trump managed to sail through the 2016 Republican primary with minimal spending by ensuring the media '''never'''
* [[No, You]]: One gets the feeling that most of the insults lobbed by Trump are things that he himself has been called. There was that time he [http://www.bbc.com/news/election-us-2016-37187531 called Hillary Clinton a bigot], for instance.
* [[Nouveau Riche]]: To a degree. His father was a very successful low income housing developer in NYC, he sent Donald to Fordham, so his family was doing very well before. Donald just took his love of construction and everything else [[Up to Eleven]]. Trump has noted his family was not welcome among the "old money" families from different parts of New York.
* [[The One Thing I Don't Hate About You]]: Hillary Clinton cited his children at the debates as her compliment.
* [[Presenters]]: For ''[[The Apprentice]]''.
* [[Public Relations Ad]]: He's a master of advertisement. It works, obviously… and tricky enough that it's hard to tell where it ends.
** Even the First Lady [https://www.whitehouse.gov/administration/first-lady-melania-trump photo]. It's impressive, but an "ambiguously dangerous" Glamour Shot, really? Is this merely something she wanted to do for fun, and why not? Is this posturing as a political move? Both? Who can tell?
* [[Self-Deprecation]]: You've got to admit he can laugh at himself like at his roast and originally at the White House Correspondent's Dinner before [[It's Personal|the jokes against him got more scathing]], which is unusual for someone so card-carryingly vain. According to [[Frontline]], Obama's jokes about Trump were the turning point that caused Trump to run for president seriously.
* [[Self-Made Man]]: In the sense that he [[Half Truth|inherited his business]], went broke (bankrupting a ''casino'' is, as many have noted, no mean feat), and then rebuilt himself.
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* [[Terrified of Germs]]: Avoids pressing the call buttons on elevators, or even shaking hands. (Which would make him an interesting head of state.)
* '''[[Troll]]''': As demonstrated during his presidential campaign, he would purposely lure the media into writing hit pieces on him by spewing inflammatory rhetoric so they would give him publicity they otherwise would have denied him. His best troll, even acknowledged by CNN, was when he promised to speak about his views on [[Barack Obama]]'s national origin, duped the media into airing nearly half an hour of positive press about him, then made a brief comment Obama was born in America just as they were losing patience and abruptly left.
** In retrospect, "pussygate" shows some of his methods on a small example. It was a [[Defensive Feint Trap]] that worked: the more his "mistake" made opponents overconfident, the more crossfire and losses they brought on themselves. Without more efforts from himself, at that.
**# On the face value, it's a trifle. That the opponents didn't look like the stars objecting from experience, but like a crowd of rabid fangirls objecting too much is mildly amusing. The face value matters little here. A big crowd overreacting to something for a less excited observer looks like a common place or a mediocre hyperbole worked more in his favor.
**# He looks like a man who speaks plainly to the point of rudeness - and [[Brutal Honesty]] in contrast with "slimy" bureaucrats and/or frothing radicals is a very good image.
**# This also meant the opponents will attack him for something he ''said'', rather than something he ''did'' - when the ghost of censorship in general and [[Political Correctness Gone Mad]] in particular worries Internet of early XXI century more than the fabled ghost of communism worried Europe of early XX. "Hey, a little reminder: it's ''their'' thing. See?"
**# It reminds by association that the American politician most remembered for being actually caught on infidelity is [[Bill Clinton]]. A shadow is cast not just on him, but more importantly, on everyone conniving at his shenanigans or being lenient. And not merely by association, but by allowing them to loudly demonstrate hypocrisy. Any return fire hits his main opponent and her supporters.
**# An obvious response would be (and indeed was) to wave the flag of feminism some more. It's also a very slippery and double-edged response, associated not only with affirmative action and Political Correctness, but also the wake of a press corruption scandal ([[Gamergate]]). Also, promoting feminism practically means enabling more ''radical'' feminism. And in a wave of radical ''anything'' not only the loud ones shall drown out the quiet ones, but the worst attention seekers shall compete for the most outlandish stunt. This just as inevitably led to the obviously deranged ones being paraded before public, as more contemptuous memes were born or rejuvenated. The "Trigglypuff" and pussyhats immediately come to mind. There was no way this won't backfire. Lack of caution only managed to make the whole part "how about Bill's girls?" much worse.
* [[Volleying Insults]]: The 2016 Republican party debates generally devolved into this.
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