Trump Fear Stoking Playbook

Edgar Towers:

I think as long as Trump plays to their fears and racial grievances they will stand by him. Play any of his speeches, any at all and if you distill them to their basic messages it would go as follows:

  1. Trump is the greatest
  2. Anything bad that happens to him is always someone else’s fault and there is always someone out to get him
  3. They (white Americans) are the “real” Americans
  4. “Real” Americans are the real victims of a government and liberal left that wants to punish them for being conservative/ christian/ white
  5. They (minorities and non white immigrants) are mostly criminals who want to take the America you know and change it forever into something worse
  6. Only Trump can protect the “real” Americans and keep the “others” at bay

That is basically every Trump speech ever in a nutshell. He knows his target audience well and plays on their grievances and fears constantly. Trump knows he doesn’t need to control the whole Republican base but just enough to play kingmaker in the primaries and he has control of the party.