As Trump surrogates continue to stumble their way towards the election finish line, a recent debacle on a CNN panel perpetuates the head scratching by many as to why and what Trump surrogates are doing. If you scratch your head long enough and analyze what theses surrogates are doing in terms of a rhetorical situation focusing on identification and audience, the fog of confusion lifts (slightly) enough, and you are able to put yourselves in the shoes of the primary audience (if you don’t already accept the Trump worldview) and receive it through their lens.
As the Trump supporters in this interview are called out on live TV, we see a crumbling Trump surrogate base confused and scrambling to find anything to try and stick on Hillary. The primary audience (Trump supporters) for these surrogates agree that Trump is ahead and they will win in a landslide. John LaValle goes so far as to make up facts on the spot and is fact-checked live. When LaValle is called out for his inaccurate information, he turns and the whole panel becomes a childish yelling match. His reaction though was important to Trump fans…
Looking beneath the hood rhetorically of this yelling match is a challenge from LaValle against the CNN anchors. It fits a subliminal argument of a surrogate being able to say more specifics about how Trump is in the lead than Trump can. It also feeds into the rigged liberal media argument. His attempts to fight back is a more direct attack back at the media than Trump can do feeding the fire on that rigged election and media story. He looks like the hero for the Trump Republicans standing up to the “crooked” media firing back with claiming unchecked facts and Hillary’s e-mail issues (which nobody knows anything about fully). So again, while it might seem strange what Trump supporters like John LaValle are doing, they are continuing to double down on the Trump base with anything and everything. Sometimes even sporting the tinfoil hat for good measure.