Trump's Pre-Super Tuesday Message: 'We Like To Troll'
President Donald Trump is making no secret of the fact that his 2020 campaign strategy relies in no small part on his ability to successfully play the role of the antagonizer.
Trump has not neglected to make the rounds in recent weeks, opting to travel the nation for numerous high-profile re-election rallies, despite already drawing nearly 90 percent support in 2020 Republican primaries and being nearly unchallenged for the nomination, according to RealClearPolitics.
Rallying supporters Monday night in Charlotte, North Carolina, the president admitted — to raucous applause from a sold-out Bojangles’ Coliseum — that part of the rationale behind those rallies is that Team Trump simply enjoys “trolling” the 2020 Democratic presidential primary field as they continue to duke it out.
“In case you haven’t heard, we’ve got it made in the primaries” Trump said, “For us, we’re really not even into political season — and we’re getting crowds like this. We were all over, over the last couple weeks.”
Trump: We like to troll, we do a little trolling pic.twitter.com/kADi4xNJNl
— Jack Posobiec ?? (@JackPosobiec) March 3, 2020
“We like to troll,” the president added. “We like to go the night before one of their primaries and we just, we do a little trolling.”
A popular slang term, particularly on the internet, “trolling” is the act of intentionally antagonizing a person or a group, often in hopes of provoking an aggravated response.
Hardly strangers to controversy, those within the Trump campaign’s public relations circle have made a clear habit of trolling since first stopping on the political scene in 2015, frequently making light of Democratic and Republican opposition alike with cutting nicknames, quips and widely viewed social media memes.
Team Trump has actively stepped up those efforts, however, in the early stages of the 2020 election cycle, intentionally rallying in key Democratic primary states just days, and even hours, before polling stations open.
The same was true for North Carolina, where Trump took aim at every Democratic mainstay, from former Vice President Joe Biden to radical Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders on the eve of a tense Super Tuesday.
As low-polling candidates Pete Buttigieg, Amy Klobuchar and Tom Steyer all terminated their candidacies within 72 hours of a Biden blowout Saturday in South Carolina, the race was the closest it had ever been headed in Tuesday’s 14-state primaries.
Biden and Sanders roughly split the majority of pledged delegates coming out of the four first-to-vote states, with Sanders leading by a small 60-54 margin.
Of course, with 1,931 more delegates still necessary for Sanders to secure the nomination and the moderate wing of the party seeming to coalesce around Biden in light of the weekend’s three departures, the primary is far from decided.
Why doesn’t the MSM show ALL the people at President @realdonaldtrump‘s rallies? If Pocahontas, Crazy Bernie Sanders, or Sleepy Joe Biden had crowds 1/10th the size, that’s all they’d talk about.#trump2020 #americasvoicenews #keepamericagreat pic.twitter.com/iAHkrH6GCl
— America’s Voice News (Text MAGA to 888111) (@AVoiceNews) March 3, 2020
Mini Mike Bloomberg will never recover from this pic.twitter.com/PWdXLSAWTp
— Caleb Hull (@CalebJHull) March 3, 2020
In fact, renowned political prediction tool FiveThirtyEight reported a roughly 61 percent likelihood the Democratic primary would end in a contested convention in Milwaukee come July.
And, never one to waste an opportunity, Trump got his licks Monday night, capitalizing on the Democratic uncertainty.
Starting with Biden, according to Breitbart News, the president mocked a series of weekend video clips which revealed the “sleepy” former vice president misquoting the Declaration of Independence and mistakenly referring to the following day’s primary battle as “Super Thursday.”
“Tomorrow voters in states across our nation will head to the polls for Super Tuesday, not Super Thursday,” Trump said.
Black conservative campaign surrogates “Diamond” Lynnette Hardaway and “Silk” Rochelle Richardson would also take the stage Monday night, poking fun at billionaire moderate Mike Bloomberg‘s less-than-towering stature.
Returning to the microphone, Trump would later take swings at radical, and largely nonviable, Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren for poor polling numbers in her home state, as well as Klobuchar and Buttigieg, playfully insinuating their ensuing Biden endorsements constituted a “quid pro quo” — one that would unfairly hurt Sanders’ chances of being nominated.
“They made a deal,” Trump said. “You know why? Quid pro quo, that is why. Quid pro quo. … Impeach them, they should be impeached!”
“It’s sad, it is being rigged against Crazy Bernie,” he added. “Crazy Bernie is going to go crazy, crazy, I think Crazy Bernie is going to be more crazy when they see what they are doing.”
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