The political world has continued to turn nasty as the coming election draws near. With just a few weeks left, both campaigns are fighting to draw every last vote that they can. On Hillary’s side we have Michelle Obama speaking out about sexual assault, hyping on Trump’s derogatory comments made against women, while Trump’s campaign continues to try to diminish the affects of his words from years passed. By Donald Trump’s side, there is Melania Trump, who outside of the past couple of weeks, has been quiet for most of his campaign. Now she is using the recent events as a platform to continue to try to convince voters of Trump as an “innocent man”.
Melania Trump, in a televised interview by Anderson Cooper from CNN, stated that Trump was led into “boy talk” and that he was simply egged on to say “dirty and bad things”. She then further supported this statement by saying that she knows this to be true because the comments made were not a true reflection of the Donald Trump she knows. Trump’s campaign is again using Melania as a source of female support in his campaign in order to appeal to the female voters, but much more than that, also trying to maintain the voters he already has by convincing them that he is in fact the Trump he appears to be, not what has been released over the past couple of weeks. Her use of the words “boy talk” was very much so a strategic rhetorical strategy trying to downplay the gravity of what was said, but also appealing to the male audience. That simple statement in and of itself largely dismissed the claims that have been brought against him over previous weeks.
Over the next couple of weeks it will be interesting to see what each campaign chooses to focus their attention on. Hillary’s campaign has done a good job of continuously bringing up Trump’s past and if they are smart, they will continue to try to dig up what they can find to present to the public. However, this is only going to go so far with the Trump audience. They need to target voters who are still undecided. As for the Trump campaign, they may want to consider a different approach rather than just being dismissive.
Sources:
http://www.cnn.com/2016/10/17/politics/melania-trump-interview/index.html