Playing into his hands

Donald Trump has been president for nearly three years. He’s been on Twitter for more than 10. Yet the only thing more surprising than President Trump’s increasingly awful, hideously unpresidential, deeply divisive tweets is that we still manage to be surprised by them.

The latest, in which he called the impeachment inquiry against him “a lynching,” had the predictable effect: setting our collective hair on fire.

Of course it would—likening a constitutionally designed political process to the scourge of racial terror lynchings in the 19th and 20th centuries is appalling, insensitive and absurd. A fact which Democratic lawmakers were quick to point out.

Sen. Cory Booker tweeted: “Lynching is an act of terror used to uphold white supremacy. Try again.”

Rep. Bobby Rush tweeted: “What the hell is wrong with you? Do you know how many people who look like me have been lynched, since the inception of this country, by people who look like you. Delete this tweet.”

And Rep. Will Hurd, the only African American Republican in the House, said: “It’s a crazy statement. It shouldn’t have been said, and it shows a level of insensitivity to a horrific period in the history of our country.”

Their outrage is understandable. It’s also the point.

My friend and colleague Amanda Carpenter wrote a whole book about it called Gaslighting

America, which walks through the time-tested formula he uses over and over again to withstand his own self-inflicted crises and drive us all crazy in the process.

But one of Trump’s most odious qualities is unfortunately one of his most effective: ad hominem race-baiting when he’s in trouble.

It’s his go-to move and one that usually delivers the intended consequence of getting the media and his opponents to divert at least some of the news cycle to his foul mouth and mind instead of the thing he’s really worried about. It’s so familiar a move by now that instead of pounding our fists we should merely shrug.

Over the summer, facing criticism over the poor conditions for migrants in U.S. detention facilities on the border, Trump trained his racist ire on the Squad—four women of color in Congress—to say, “Why don’t they go back and help fix the totally broken and crime infested places from which they came.” All but one, of course, came from the United States. But he was able to dine out on that tweet for about a week after his supporters took up the chant “send her back!” at a rally.

Similarly, in response to the late Rep. Elijah Cummings’ criticism of border conditions, Trump went after his predominantly black Baltimore district, tweeting: “As proven last week during a Congressional tour, the Border is clean, efficient & well run, just very crowded. Cumming District is a disgusting, rat and rodent infested mess. If he spent more time in Baltimore, maybe he could help clean up this very dangerous & filthy place.”

Of course, there’s more. Back in October of 2018 at a rally, he stirred up racial animus by declaring Robert E. Lee a “great general.” There were his attacks on Colin Kaepernick and the NFL that became their own news cycle lasting months.

Our continued outrage over this tactic actually does Trump a favor. It reminds everyone that all the ones before the latest one didn’t actually result in his demise, or the end of the world as we know it. And it implies that there are even worse places he hasn’t yet gone. It imbues him with a sense of power he earned the cheap way. Why do we keep giving him the sense of satisfaction?

As the mess in Syria continues to reverberate and threats of impeachment heat up, Trump’s willingness to go there will likely only increase and worsen. We can’t stop him—Trump’s gonna Trump. But we can decide not to play into his hands. Our reliable outrage—and our unfocused attention—is exactly what he wants.

S.E. Cupp