Donald Trump’s Playbook for Smearing
“This is a classic example of where Trump begins to demonstrate something he talks about all the time today, which is he’s a counterpuncher. So somebody comes after him and says that he’s done something nefarious and horrible, and he just goes back at them with all guns blazing — you know, boom, boom, boom. And admits nothing, never admit anything, never say you made a mistake, just keep coming.
And if you lose, declare victory. And that’s exactly what happened there. He lost as clearly as you could lose but he loudly proclaimed his victory.”
.. But of course the description also applies to so much else — including Trump’s support for the Iraq War, his “birther” conspiracy theory, his refusal to release tax returns and, most recently, his history of sexual assault.
.. “His lawyer said to me, ‘Donald is a believer that if you repeat something enough, people will start to believe it,’” the journalist Marie Brenner says in the same episode of Frontline that includes the Schwartz interview I quote above.
.. When Trump is feeling cornered, in business or politics, he has a go-to strategy: He lies, and he just keeps lying.