Trump’s Convention Strategy: “The Fix Is In”
Roger Stone, Donald Trump’s on-again, off-again consigliore, has delivered the campaign equivalent of a severed horse head to delegates who might consider denying Trump the nomination. Trump’s supporters will find you in your sleep, he merrily informed them this week. He did not mean it metaphorically.
“We will disclose the hotels and the room numbers of those delegates who are directly involved in the steal,” Stone said Monday on Freedomain Radio. “If you’re from Pennsylvania, we’ll tell you who the culprits are.
.. Speaking to the Times editorial board, in January, he said, “You know, if it gets a little boring, if I see people starting to sort of, maybe, thinking about leaving, I can sort of tell the audience, I just say, ‘We will build the wall!’ and they go nuts.”
The symbiotic exchange between a leader and his mob can thrive on what social psychologists call “emotional contagion,” a hot-blooded feedback loop that science writer Maggie Koerth-Baker describes as “our tendency to unconsciously mimic the outward expression of other people’s emotions (smiles, furrowed brows, leaning forward, etc.) until, inevitably, we begin to feel what they’re feeling.”