Trump and his Tweets

There was an article on WSJ today about how President Trump tweeted that he asked China to reduce the US-China trade deficit by $1B, while others report that the request was actually $100B. Every week I am stupefied again and again with the ridiculousness of Trump's tweets.

Apparently Trump posts his own tweets, some are of his own authorship and others are written by/with the help of aids. I am struck by the continuity of false, offensive, and silly tweets - it seemed that if Trump wasn't thought credible before, he is only injuring himself further. And then I had an epiphany.

Trump has never had the general support of the establishment, and let's be honest, if he did a turnaround today and became the man we wish he were, the establishment would probably still reject him. He built his election on the blue-collar attitude, and it worked. He HAS to maintain that support of the blue-collar culture, otherwise he will have no support at all. How can he do that? By being controversial in the news. When people (like me) are repeatedly critical of him, those who originally supported him are always on edge to support him, to argue, to be angry and defensive. If Trump were to lie low for a few months, he'd go to the back of everyone's mind, including his supporters, then when he did something that was generally criticized, his supporters wouldn't be prepared to resist on his behalf, they wouldn't have the fire welling up within them.

I'm still unsure whether Trump's election success was a fascinatingly calculated scheme of victory, or just dumb luck, but my opinion is that Trump's current trend of "Get in the news by saying something stupid" is absolutely purposeful. It continually maintains his image in the forefront of his supporters' minds, and keeps them with their hand on the hilt, ready at a moment's notice to ward off the foe (and honestly, prevents them from giving cool, collected consideration to Trump's really bad policies and personal shortcomings).

If we would stop talking about Trump it would likely be his downfall, and he and his staff know it. For Trump, maintaining presence by any means is a political technique, even a political weapon.