How to Fight and Defeat MAGA (Part 1)
Part 1: Trump's MAGA Scammer Playbook
Democratic politicians and online social media personalities are falling into Trump’s trap—again—and it is going to have the same result as the 2024 election: massive losses for the good guys. But this time, it is Democracy (with a big “D”) that’s going to lose. This time, America’s survival is at stake, at least the America in which most of us grew up.
The same old, same old is not going to cut it. We have—maybe—one more shot at getting rid of the putrid authoritarian MAGA cancer that has infected the United States.
Donald Trump, and his MAGA elites are successfully crushing everything in their path as they scam the American public for profit and power. The first step toward defeating them is understanding, recognizing, and exploiting the techniques they use to manipulate us.
The Trump Playbook
Donald Trump is a narcissist. He cares only about himself, and he has absolutely no shame or moral compass whatsoever. That frees him up to lie, cheat, steal, grift, kill, and then lie some more. Everything is transactional to him – if there is not something in it for him, whether money or power or votes, he will not move an inch for you. Like a toddler, he is impulsive and self-centered, so whatever is most recently in front of his face is going to be what he wants to do.
It does not matter to him if he betrays “friends” (he has no actual friends), or foes. Nothing matters to Donald Trump except Donald Trump.
That is all well-known by now, but it is important context. To defeat such a deeply flawed and corrupt, yet successful man like Trump, we need to recognize the techniques he uses to manipulate people. We need to focus on what is important and disregard what is not important.
Trump does not exist in isolation; there are hundreds of sycophants and wannabe mini-Trumps who have spawned in his orbit. They have infected Congress, state governments, school districts, and with Trump’s return to the Presidency they are now spreading like toxic mold throughout the federal bureaucracy. These parasites have learned to use the same propaganda methods and attacks that Trump has been using to gain power for themselves; call it the MAGA Playbook.
The MAGA Playbook
Trump’s goal is to benefit Donald Trump because at heart, he is a scammer. Scammers thrive when people are not looking at the scam, so Trump makes a lot of noise and sows a lot of chaos to distract the watchers. If you are looking at, and reacting to his latest stupid comment or decision, you are not looking at or reacting to what he is really doing, which is either ripping you off or gaining more power for himself.
It is a very simple but brutally effective technique that has been used by dictators and authoritarian leaders for hundreds of years. Because Trump has no shame or moral backbone, he could not care less if moral people are outraged at his racist or bigoted or violent rhetoric. As long as we are all talking about that, then we are not talking about or noticing that he is purging the FBI, or raiding the Treasury, or illegally letting Elon Musk dismantle the apparatus of government, or weaseling his way out of felony convictions, or violating the Constitution for his own gain.
So he says insane things that will rile up the MAGAs’ emotions like, “The Panama Canal belongs to us, we are going to take it back.” The leftwing media and influencers go into maximum overdrive analyzing and responding to how dangerous that is, how wrong it is, why it is wrong, why it is illegal, what talk like that does to the United States’ reputation, etc etc, ad naseum. It is mostly pointless but it gets them clicks and props up their own social media bona fides even while it changes nothing.
Meanwhile, Trump’s MAGA base laps it up like the good little cultists they are because it strikes an emotional chord in them. It makes them feel strong and powerful just like they perceive Trump to be. It makes them feel superior because they get it, while the “stupid libtards” do not. The chuds1 dutifully (and mindlessly) amplify Trump’s chaos in their X and Facebook echo chambers, unwittingly aiding his scam even when it is to their own detriment.
Example: Trump Tariffs™️
On Saturday February 1st, Trump announced that he was imposting 25% tariffs on nearly all goods imported from Canada, Mexico, and China. Bowing to the realization that energy prices would spike sharply, the Trump Tariff on Canadian energy imports was a lower 10%.
Trump declared a (fake) “national economic emergency” which by law gave him extraordinary powers over the economy. He threatened even higher tariffs if Canada or Mexico retaliated (they did anyway). His (fake) justifications for the tariffs: Canada and China are not doing enough to stop the flow of Chinese fentanyl into the U.S., and Mexico is not doing enough to stop illegal immigration.
Both of these rationales are false red herrings, but that is irrelevant to Trump’s true aims. Trump Tariffs are not about fentanyl or drugs at all. It is a false equivalence tactic that he has used repeatedly on the gullible chuds.
Here is how it works:
Trump ties an emotional heartstring issue (drug overdoses, illegal immigrants, abortion, crime, pedophiles, and so on) to whatever his current scam is so that MAGAs repeat and amplify it for him:
“IF YOU CARE ABOUT STOPPING DRUGS YOU’LL SUPPORT TARIFFS!!!”
“YOU MUST NOT CARE ABOUT THE QUARTER MILLION PEOPLE WHO DIED FROM DRUG OVERDOSES IF YOU’RE AGAINST THE TARIFFS!!!!”
And so on.
In the tariff case, attacking your economic partners and allies is not the way to get them to do more to work harder at stopping drugs or illegal immigrants from crossing into the United States. Canada and Mexico are actually already doing a lot on both of those issues. Trump knows that, he just does not care that it is a lie.
What he really wants is one or both of two things. The first option is more profits for his billionaire scammer buddies which they will get once Canada and Mexico are priced out of our markets.
All U.S. prices will be higher and the billionaires will make more money by selling at just under the tariff-added price. (You think they will keep prices low when there is no foreign competition? Yeah, nope.)
We will all be paying the #TrumpTax which will go straight to the billionaires’ corporate profits and then to the shareholders who are the only winners in this situation.
The second option is a win for Trump’s fragile, thin-skinned ego which is what ultimately happened. Two days after he announced the tariffs, Trump bleated a message that the Trump Tariffs against Mexico would be ended because Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum had agreed to send 10,000 troops to the border.
Trump makes himself out to be the powerful hero while he conveniently does not mention that Biden got the same response from Mexico and all he had to do was ask nicely.
Regardless of what actually transpires, Trump gets to blame Canada and Mexico for starting the whole kerfuffle because if they had only been willing to stop the flow of drugs or illegals across the border, none of this would have happened!
Trump and his followers do this constantly. They will weaponize any issue that sparks an emotional response: illegal immigration (racism); abortion (misogyny); LGBTQ+ and especially trans issues (bigotry); taxes (financial insecurity); saber-rattling (victimization), and on and on.
Normalizing the Abnormal
There is another aspect to Trump’s playbook as well. The sheer volume of lies and chaos is overwhelming and people become exhausted trying to make sense of it or fight it. It is impossible for any single person to keep up with every crazy or illegal thing he or his minions are doing. It wears the opposition down and allows many of his acts to go through without effective opposition. Opponents are not able to discern which things he is serious about and which he is not. The signal-to-noise ratio is very low, but the noise level itself is immense which allows his true agenda to slip through the cracks.
The massive chaos serves another purpose as well: people become desensitized to it. If you are reading this post, you are probably following the latest developments on Twitter (X) and Bluesky and other social media every day because democracy and politics are important to you. Sometimes it is hard to remember that most Americans are not actually paying that much attention.
The billionaire MAGA scammers know this and use it to their advantage. The chaotic noise is so overwhelming that most people tune it out. It has become normalized and that allows Trump to do all kinds of crazy stuff without the majority of the citizens noticing. Sure, a few things will trickle into the mainstream media news stories but a lot of it will slide by unnoticed outside of Twitter.
Additionally, the constantly-changing decisions (like the Mexico tariffs mentioned above) and the resulting instability can cause a subconscious anxiety in the populace, even for people who are not paying attention. Trump does this on purpose. He knows instinctively that a final, permanent decision on any particular issue will be embraced because it finally just ends the chaos and brings stability. It eases people’s anxiety, even if the decision itself is batshit crazy. This is another technique to get everyday Americans to accept abnormal choices.
The Playbook Summarized
To summarize, watch for these techniques from Trump and his acolytes:
Use emotional / cultural issues to rile up the MAGA base and rightwing influencers while tying the issues to their scams.
Sow maximum chaos to distract and normalize the chaotic.
Artificially create anxiety and instability and then come in with permanent policies that feel like a relief just because they are stable.
In Part 2 of this series we will look at how to fight back. We are not helpless, even though we are overwhelmed. We are tens of millions strong. It will take all of us doing what we can, whether that’s big or small.
Part 2, “Legislators” is out now! Subscribe to my Substack so you do not miss Part 3 or future articles on the future of our (already) great country.
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☮️Peace.☮️
Chud (noun): a cannabilistic human underground dweller; a conservative Republican. Someone who is either racist, sexist, homophobic, transphobic, xenophobic, fascist, a boot licker or all of the above.