Trumpworld Is Trying to Make Don Lemon Its 2020 "Basket of Deplorables"

https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2020/01/trumpworld-trying-to-make-don-lemon-2020-basket-of-deplorables

Trumpworld Is Trying to Make Don Lemon Its 2020 “Basket of Deplorables”
A clip of the CNN host and guests riffing on Trump’s “rube” supporters is already being featured in fundraising emails and a Republican National Committee ad.
By Caleb Ecarma
January 29, 2020


The Democratic primaries don’t kick off until next week, but Trumpworld has already zeroed in on its primary 2020 opponent: the media. A new Guardian study on Donald Trump’s advertising tactics found that attacks on the media and “fake news” featured in 18.25% of the campaign’s Facebook ads last year—more than any other issue. On Saturday night Trumpworld got some fresh material for its media-bashing adverts. A segment from CNN host Don Lemon, in which his guest, GOP strategist Rick Wilson, riffed about Trump’s “rube” supporters, has inspired widespread hysterics on the right, and is already being featured in a Republican National Committee ad that likens the comment to Hillary Clinton’s infamous 2016 “basket of deplorables” line.

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As for the RNC’s strategy, its ad interweaves Wilson’s comments and Lemon’s laughter with several similarly themed clips, including MSNBC host Chris Matthews saying that “Trump always loves the low-information guy”; Pete Buttigieg saying that Trump’s base looks “the other way on racism, at best”; Joe Biden saying Trump harps on the “issue of racism across the country because that’s his base”; and Clinton’s “deplorables” comment. The ad ends with a call to action: “They think you’re a joke. Prove them wrong in November.”

The Trump campaign is likewise attempting to fundraise off the segment; it fired off an email blast on Tuesday, telling supporters that this is what “ELITES think of everyday Americans who support President Trump. These radical hacks painted conservative voters as illiterate hillbillies on national television because they DESPISE President Trump and they DESPISE you, Friend.” While no Democratic presidential candidates appeared in the clip or endorsed it, the Trump campaign lumped them in anyway: “This is what D.C. Democrats like Joe Biden, Bernie Sanders, Michael Bloomberg, and Elizabeth Warren truly think of you.”

To say that this type of outrage is a little disingenuous coming from a guy who has called Baltimore “a disgusting, rat and rodent infested mess,” mocked a disabled reporter, and regularly suggested his dead enemies are rotting in hell is something of an understatement. But as with most blowups of this sort, Trumpworld seems to have had its sense of irony surgically removed. Just because the media-bashing is in bad faith, however, doesn’t mean it’s not effective. It’s a convenient tool for a president whose supporters are trapped in a feedback loop of distrust, and who can therefore position himself as the only source of truth, and their only ally in a world that disdains them. If a few throwaway lines from Don Lemon confirm it, all the better.