With Election Day coming near, Trump surrogates are scrambling to do what they think is the best for identifying with potential voters and attempting to motivate voters to go to the polls. There is great diversity when looking at the two main strategies that different surrogates have put on in their attempt to reach voters, but they both will likely generate voters for Trump.

Shifting the Focus 

In her most recent media appearance, Melania Trump stated that one of her big goals would be to work on the current state of social media and help create an atmosphere that is not riddled in bullying. If the campaign wants to help attract millennial voters, it needs to be forward-looking and also needs to heavily integrate social media into the talking points; Melania Trump has done just this. This job of talking about the issue of cyberbullying essentially had to be delegated to a surrogate, as Donald Trump has been accused of cyberbullying of his own and wants to avoid being called a hypocrite. With luck, this can help soften up the Trump campaign while helping it identify with a broader audience. I think that Melania’s attempts at identifying with voters and changing the nature of discourse about the Trump campaign will help pull some independents.

Wishing the Enemy Dead 

Some Trump surrogates have seemingly gone way too far in advocating for the Trump campaign. One such surrogate, Wayne Allyn Root, even went as far as talking about Hillary Clinton and Huma Abedin dying in a car crash during a Trump rally in Las Vegas. This was a clear use of persuasive communication, as he was trying to elicit a very specific response within the audience, which was clearly aimed at what he believed they wanted to hear. While it might be too late in the game for Trump to make such radical statements without losing swing states, he has done a great job of delegating the task of being rash to his surrogates. By doing so, he ensures that if it were to backfire, he could easily disassociate himself from the surrogate and claim Root was a surrogate gone rogue. I believe that this appeal will work to get the people who already support Trump heated and as a result, will push them to the polls on Election Day.

Donald Trump’s surrogate speakers have been put in an awkward situation over the past few weeks as he has begun to assert that the election is rigged against him, slowly turning his election bid into little more than a daytime soap opera. It seems as if he has finally come to terms with the fact that he may lose the election; rather than delegating the task of making an absurd statement to his surrogates, he decided to exclaim that the election was rigged on his own. Many of his surrogates have jumped on the rigged election train alongside him, but many other important Republicans have denounced the notion of a rigged election; if influential Republicans continue to support Trump while he rambles on about rigging and conspiracy, it is likely that it will do some legitimate damage to their political career in the future.

Conspiracy pushing away surrogates  

This creation of a heated conspiracy fits nicely into the framework of the paranoid style that has perpetuated itself over time among right-wing politicians, but not everyone is buying in. Utah’s Lieutenant Governor Spencer Cox was one of the Republicans who has disagreed with Trump and his allegations of a rigged election; “it’s irresponsible and it’s ignorant at best,” Cox recently stated. Trump has stepped up to the plate to try and belittle the opinions of his former surrogates and supporters, however, even going as far as posting a tweet calling them naive. This has led to great pushback against Trump on behalf of former surrogates and will continue to lead to a fracturing of the GOP.

Some surrogates still holding on

Though Trump has seemingly lost a good number of his surrogates, there are a loyal few, namely Rudy Giuliani and Newt Gingrich, who have come out with extreme claims that dead people are voting and that the media has rigged the election against Trump. Even strong surrogates, such as Trump’s running-mate Mike Pence, have begun to use dissociation to refine Trump’s accusations of a rigged election into something less extreme: a claim that the election results will be accepted even if viewed as unfair. Giuliani, Gingrich, and Pence have all put themselves into a position that will cause them distress in future elections, when more stock Republican candidates come into play and they were the people who supported the rogue Republican until the very end.

Donald Trump’s campaign has been struggling to maintain a chance at winning the presidential election in the last few weeks. Not only has his support begun failing among the common American people, he has started to lose a lot of his support within the GOP, which can very well cost him the election. Many of those whose support he has lost have had the potential to be powerful and influential surrogates for his campaign, such as John McCain and Condoleezza Rice. What he has been left with is a group of extremists whose support for him is borderline becoming a cult. If someone in his campaign does not come forward as a voice of reason and find a way to reconcile the widening gaps within the Republican Party, Trump will lose this election.

What is Left: The Conspiracy Theorists 

Now that Trump has completely abandoned the idea of acting like a respectable candidate, it seems that all he has left to support him are people like Congresswoman Renee Ellmers. She has backed the “rigged campaign” conspiracy, though she seems to be willing to offer no defensible reason as to why it may be rigged. When interviewed by CNN, she pushed back against Chris Cuomo’s requests for proof, making statements such as “You want proof? I’ll give you proof,” then going on to give nothing to substantiate her claim. She is devaluing herself as a reputable public speaker, which is a red flag for someone who is supposed to be a surrogate and will likely be costly to the campaign, as many Republicans now feel there is no surrogate that they can relate to.

Family Sticks Together… Kinda 

If there is one group of people that a candidate should be able to depend on, it is their family. While Melania and the Trump children have not denounced their support for Trump, they have in many ways taken a step back. Most recently, Ivanka has come out saying that she is not a surrogate for Trump’s campaign… she is just his daughter. While this might seem innocent, this statement could be condemning for the campaign. Throughout the entirety of the campaign, she has never stated her opposition to being referred to as a surrogate until now. This may cause many people in the GOP to jump ship, considering Trump’s own daughter has begun to disassociate herself from the impeding political loss.

The “October Surprise”  

Donald Trump’s disrespectful attitude toward women has been a hot topic for a while. Recent tapes that have come out in which Trump talks about having sex with married women and grabbing women by their genitalia may very well be the kiss of death for the Trump campaign. If Trump surrogates such as Scottie Nell Hughes and Betsy McCaughey do not stop trying to normalize his behavior by attributing it to the culture created by Fifty Shades of Grey, Magic Mike, and Beyoncé rather than addressing the underlying issues, Trump will become further alienated from his supporters and can say goodbye to his shot at the presidency.

Framing, Framing, Framing 

Many of Trump’s surrogates are trying to blame the backlash that came alongside the recent video on the ability of liberal media to set the agenda and then frame issues the way they want them to be seen. Donald Trump Jr. has attempted to claim that Trump’s statements were taken out of context by liberal media and are actually part of what “makes him a human.” Whether this “makes him a human” or not, if Trump cannot win over the moderate Republican women, he will not win the election; rising accusations of sexual assault and incriminating videos will not help him with his attempts at winning over the female electorate.

Fueling the Fire 

Hillary Clinton’s campaign has already utilized attack ads that displayed Trump’s cruel comments about women [ad]. She has so far been very successful at one of the main strategies of attack ads: labeling Trump and defining him as a misogynist. Amidst this ad, recent allegations of sexual assault, being accused of calling a former Miss Universe “miss piggy,” and now the Trump tapes, Trump is in a downward spiral in support of Republican women. He seems to be failing at responding to the attacks, as little to no attention has been taken away from his controversies. Even statements of support from strong Trump surrogates such as Minnesota state Senator Carrie Rudd (citing “more important issues” as her reason for retaining support) do not seem to be enough to help save his chances among women. Trump and his surrogates have two options at this point: find a way to show women that he does not think they are inferior to him or lose the election.

 

Trump as the “genius” 

Donald Trump has had a media frenzy surrounding the issue of whether or not he paid his taxes in the preceding 20 years. It would be expected for him to lose support as information has recently come out indicating that he has not paid taxes, yet
it seems as though the opposite is true. Surrogates who are prominent Republican figures, such as Chris Christie and Rudy Giuliani, have been at the front of the movement to bring up the “brilliance” in evading tax payment. Christie went as far as stating “there’s no one who’s shown more genius in their way to maneuver around the tax code.” [Politico] Christie has used this as an example of the ways in which the tax code is extremely messed up and Trump’s ability to maneuver the tax code shows precisely why he should be the one to fix it while he tries to “Make America Great Again.”

Two Wrongs Definitely Make a Right 

In an article by the Washington Post, Giuliani is quoted talking about how poor people also do not pay their taxes (ignoring entirely that many of them do not make enough to pay taxes). Even if the poor had chosen not to pay taxes, how does this justify Trump not paying his? One major issue that has yet to be addressed by Trump’s surrogate speakers is the following: if it was “no big deal” and was a “genius move” on Trump’s part, then why keep it a secret for so long? It seems evident that Trump saw the wrong in his actions and was afraid that it would hurt his political prospects, so he tried to hide the documentation. Instead, they default to “the poor people did it, so he can do it too,” making it pretty evident that they never learned a basic childhood lesson: two wrongs do not make a right.

Why not just apologize? 

Rather than going with the traditional ways of giving speeches of apologia when faced with a divisive issue (as Clinton has on multiple occasions with her emails), it seems like Trump and his surrogate speakers have gone with a much different route of apologia; one in which they try to make the action seem legitimate rather than controversial. This should not come as a surprise, however, given Trump’s attempts to paint himself as a bold, unapologetic figure.

 

 

 

[Fact Check]