Message judo.
Down is up. No is yes.
Trump is a master at switching the polarity of political messages. It works, and it is happening right before our eyes.
Earlier this week political pundits noticed what Michael Pence had done. How dare Democrats insult Republicans! His actual words, spoken on Hannity's show on Fox were this:
I know the media wants to distract from the Biden administration's failed agenda by focusing on one day in January. They want to use that one day to try and demean the -- the character and intentions of 74 million Americans who believe we could be strong again and prosperous again and supported our administration in 2016 and 2020."
Pence took the energy of an opponent's condemnation of Trump's plan of insurrection and replaced Trump as the target. This was done in dead seriousness, but its boldness and audacity have a comedic predecessor in the 1970s movie Animal House. It was the "Otter" gambit, named after the character who used it in the college dean's disciplinary hearing.
Otter: Ladies and gentlemen, I'll be brief. The issue here is not whether we broke a few rules, or took a few liberties with our female party guests. We did. But you can't hold a whole fraternity responsible for the behavior of a few twisted individuals. For if you do, then should we blame the whole fraternity system? And if the whole fraternity system is guilty, then isn't this indictment of our educational institutions in general? I put it to you, Greg--isn't this an indictment of our entire American society? Well, you can do whatever you want to us, but we are not going to sit here and listen to you badmouth the United States of America!
And with that, the fraternity members parade out of the hearing humming the Star Spangled Banner.
In the movie the ploy did not work. Who would fall for that? In real life in America, it works pretty well. Polls show a majority of Republican voters fall for it when Trump does it. The Fox News network employs the technique nearly every hour. Fox says that when Democrats talk about racial justice or income inequality they are badmouthing the United States of America and the opinion host is outraged about it.
Trump is in the news again, doing the judo substitution trick himself. Trump said that Mike Pence' statement "during his interview with the great Sean Hannity very much destroys and discredits the "Unselect Committee[']s Witch Hunt on the events of January 6th." In a statement from Trump's Save America website, he wrote:
The Unselect Committee of partisan Democrats, and two very weak and pathetic RNOs, should come to the conclusion after spending many millions of dollars, that the real insurrection happened on November 3rd, the Presidential Election, not on January 6th--which was a day of protesting the Fake Election results.
The power of message judo is that it does not deny the opponent's argument that something big happened and that Americans should be angry about it. It accepts that thrust, and redirects it. The video of battles at the Capitol creates a high hurdle for convincing people nothing happened. People can see something big did happen. Trump said it was a big protest in response to a big event, "the crime of the century."
Trump's substitution will not satisfy everybody and likely not even a majority of Americans. But it will satisfy a majority of Republicans and Republicans are at the knife-edge of having a governing majority in the Congress, and in 2024 the Presidency. The judo gives Republican partisans a mental fig leaf, a basis for feeling comfortable in their understanding of Trump's effort to overthrow the election. Yes January 6 was violent and ugly, but Trump and good old-fashioned Americans are the good guys righting a wrong. The real insurrection was the election.
Trump runs a risk of looking mono-maniacal, the Captain Ahab of politics. He keeps saying it; the Arizona audit did not discourage him. A lot of Republicans wish he would keep quiet and go away, but he has a crazy insistence. If a few more Republican officeholders spoke out and told Trump to "cut it out, you lost, so quit claiming you won." Then the Trump spell on the Republican electorate might be broken. So far, though, nearly all Republican officeholders are keeping mum. Trump demands it; otherwise one is a RINO. Republican voters believe Trump, or at least they think he is maybe right or partly right, and that, certainly, there are questions raised. Besides, Democrats are terrible. Who cares about process when the alternative is a Democrat? Republican voters don't need to pretend they didn't see January 6. Now they get to interpret what they saw as rough justice being done. The people scaling the walls are the good guys.