Rick Wilson absolutely scorches Trump and his supporters with the flames of a 1000 suns

[JHB]

23. Just remember he'll turn that against us the moment it suits his purpose

...just as he did before Trump.

Yes, he's witty and funny and (for now) he directs his scorching at Trump.

But, as a Republican strategist, he spent his entire career doing the very things that built Trump's base. He scare-mongered and scandal-mongered and played to all the bigotries and pet peeves, and called it "playing hardball". His job was to get Republicans elected, and there was no part of that job that involved "dialing it back." He was one of the people who painted Democrats as supervillains: utterly-corrupt, moral degenerates out to destroy the nation and all that's good and holy to get their voters all hot-blooded and into the voting booth.

But the drawback is: When you paint the story that way, it's supposed to end with you bringing the bad guys to justice. They rot in jail, or better yet get hanged or fried. Blow up the Death Star. Drop the Ring into the fires of Mount Doom. The Enemy surrenders unconditionally and their symbols get blown up.

Your audience wants this:

But they never get it.


When you tell that story for decades, continually amping it up despite its blatant falsehood, you create an expectation that you can never really deliver on. You can justify decades of investigations and re-investigations and re-re-re-re-re-re-re-investigations, but that's not going to hold up in court. So you put yourself into the position of portraying the other side as unbearably evil and an active threat, and then don't do anything about it. The base still has their hot buttons pushed, still believes every word of it, they just start thinking you're ineffectual at best, or more likely are part of the problem.

That's what Rick Spent his career building, and lo and behold, the Republican voters went for a guy who told them what they wanted to hear. Even the ones who voted for Johnson or stayed home are thanks to Rick and his colleagues, because they would "never vote for THAT woman!!!"


That's part of why he's so entertaining when he speaks: because he'll go right for the hot buttons.


So enjoy the performance, but never think he's a friend. In his eyes he's done nothing wrong. This isn't a "the enemy of my enemy is my friend" situation, it's more like "the temporarily uncomfortable creator of my enemy is the guy who will knife me in the kidneys the moment I've wrangled his hellbeast back into its pen."