How he beat them? By understanding that there's no such thing as bad publicity. By changing the game. Donald Trump, being the narcissist that he is, got everybody to talk about him, all the time. It didn't even matter if it was positive. He would constantly say crazy bullshit to get attention.
He sucked all the air out of the room. The other candidates were serious politicians. They were the type that thought "if I just say crazy bullshit all the time, people won't vote for me." Trump realized that if everyone was always talking about the crazy bullshit he said, the other candidates wouldn't get ANY airtime.
That's how he won the nomination. Not by understanding politics, or understanding what voters wanted. But by understanding the power of celebrity, and exploiting it while all the other candidates were playing by normal political rules.
It's one reason why I didn't bring up Trump's statements about 2 weeks ago where he told a Christian group that they just need to vote for him one more time, and after that they won't ever have to vote again. It'll be fixed so good that nobody will have to vote.
There are a LOT of very bad ways to take that statement. Which IMHO is what Trump wanted, but not for the reason one might think. It was said when Harris' poll numbers were rising, when her ascending to be the presumptive nominee was dominating the news cycle, and nobody was talking about him. So he had to say the craziest thing he could think of, to get attention back on him. Because he doesn't want anyone talking about Harris. He wants them talking about him.
Again, how he did it is irrelevant. The fact remains: he did it. He dethroned the Bush and Clinton dynasties in one election. That is flat out incredible. Improbable or impossible isn't even the correct word to describe what he did if you had asked me before the election what were the chances he could actually win.
The main reason why he won had much less to do with his celebrity and much more to do with the anti-establishment draining the swamp ending the pointless illegal foreign wars getting tough on trade message he preached and the abject failures that were the Bush II & Obama administration. We had 16 years of complete failure and incompetence by any objective measure you want to use to judge either of those two clown show Presidents. The American people were itching for an anti-establishment message, they were craving change to the status quo. That's why Bernie was so popular as well, and you couldn't find a complete opposite personality to Trump's- and Bernie much like Trump in 2016 was all grassroots, small donation, self-funded. Bernie probably would've beat Trump and won the 2016 election, but he got cheated out of the Democrat party primary nomination by the DNC which was completely controlled by the Clinton campaign dating back to 2015- before there ever even was a nominee- and the Hillary Clinton controlled DNC rigged the 2016 primary in....shockingly....Hillary Clinton's favor. DNC operative Donna Brazile talks about this openly in her 2017 book. You should read it. Might learn a thing or two.
There is no Republican Party. There is the Trump Party. The Republican Party is "what Trump says, we follow".
Yeah, so I know you're a card carrying Democrat type and the Democrats don't actually believe in democracy, but there is in fact a Republican party, and the way the Republican party nominates it's Presidential candidates is that it holds these things called
primary elections- and the winner of said primary elections secures the Republican party nomination for President. And the Republican establishment and it's mega-donors never wanted Trump. They got stuck with him. Just. Follow. The. Money. The Republican establishments mega-donors all tried to back/fund Jeb Bush to the hilt and
desperately wanted him to be the guy in the 2016 primaries. Didn't work. They then tried the same thing in 2024 with Ron DeSantis and then Nikki Haley- and they lost. Again. They were hoping for anyone but Trump, but their big money donations to Bush, DeSantis, and Haley didn't work and all- since Trump
keeps getting the most votes in said Republican primary elections- he therefore keeps getting nominated to be the Republican party candidate for President. You know, democracy. No clue what you're blathering on about, but that is just the objective reality of the situation.
Oh and can we say there is no Democrat Party as well then going by your logic, and that there is only the Obama Party? Cause it sure as shit seems like the Democrat party has become the "what Obama says, we follow" party. Cause it was Obama that told Joe to sit this one out and picked Clinton over Biden in 2016 because Obama thought she was a better candidate. Let's not forget that it was Obama that got all the other candidates to drop out in the 2020 primaries before super Tuesday and line up and support Biden against Bernie- who was leading at the time- and it was Obama that pressured Joe to pick Harris as his VP even though Joe never wanted her. Oh yeah, and it was Obama with help from Nancy Pelosi that pressured the absolute f*ck out of Biden to step down in 2024. #Democracy.
