The Trump Believability Gap
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The paradox of running a campaign against Donald Trump is that you have to convince voters that he is both a liar and deadly serious.
On the one hand, much of what the Republican presidential nominee says is patently false. Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, are not eating cats and dogs; President Joe Biden is not dodging calls from the governor of hurricane-stricken Georgia; crime is not, in fact, on the rise.
And yet, when it comes to his plans to radically shift the federal government and change the fabric of American life. These include a huge expansion in political-patronage jobs, campaigns of retribution against political adversaries, and mass deportation of undocumented immigrants—all things that Trump has placed at the center of his campaign and that he tried to do in his first term. Trump’s critics talk about these plans not just because of an abstract commitment to democracy—it’s also good politics. Many of these ideas are deeply unpopular, and will motivate voters to oppose Trump.
