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Notes -
A bit of heat generated by Trump dubbing Nikki Haley "Nimbra", a butchering of her Indian birth name:
https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/4420434-trump-on-mocking-haleys-birth-name-its-just-something-that-came/
I'm not sure who the media controversy is aimed at. His base is absolutely going to love it, the normal Repubs have no choice but to vote for him, and his enemies can't hate him more than they already do.
I predict if her numbers continue to climb, he's gonna mention her daughter's married to a black guy. Way too tempting for a guy like Trump.
On that, a surprising number of the establishment Republicans have kids married to black people. Haley, McCain, Boehner, etc. What's with that?
I think it's very unlikely he will do this, simply because neither Trump nor most of his supporters care about this. I think you are making the same mistake as the media by assuming "Nimra" is a racist dogwhistle. It's not, it's serving a different set of purposes:
It calls attention to the fact that she doesn't use her real name, which makes her seem fake and insecure.
Like all Trump nicknames, it's a power play. If you can give someone a nickname and make it stick, it reveals a kind of power you have over them. And I think it's clear that Haley could not do the same to Trump in reverse -- all prior attempts at nicknames (Drumpf, Cheeto, etc.) have failed to stick.
Yeah, it is interesting. I think it’s that most attempts (which, to be fair, often did stick amongst Democrats; you still see plenty of Drumpf/Cheeto mentions in Reddit and Facebook/IG comments) on Trump weren’t really insults, just kind of babyish name stuff. ‘Crooked Hillary’ at least kind of implies why you don’t like her, ‘Cheeto’ doesn’t.
I think if I was an opposing politician and had to pick some kind of insult for Trump it would just be calling him “fatty” or something. Just go ultra-low, “shut up fatty” in the debates tier. People might laugh, who knows? The second you go from “moron” to “orange moron” you become le epic cheeto cringe etc.
Rule 1 of fighting nationalists - don’t let them become proxies for their supporters. Lots of Americans are fat, lots of them have bad tans.
Nicola Sturgeon, erstwhile head of the Scottish Nationalist Party, withered away very quickly when it became known that she was embezzling donated funds. Attacking her for being too left-wing, too vague on the details of separation, or anti-English did nothing, because so are her supporters.
Likewise, Boris Johnson collapsed because he lied and went to parties during lockdown. For a populace which considers fairness and playing by the rules one of its defining traits, that immediately re designated him from “one of us” to “other”.
Exactly. You can't call him "fatty" because that's endearing and relatable to many Americans. You have to call him "gold toilet" or "Epstein island" or something. Something that makes him seem out of touch and elitist.
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It's like saying "DEMONcrats" or "RepubliKKKans". People who say such things, unironically, show they have such bad taste they cannot be taken seriously. People who say "Drumpf" or "Cheeto" or "Mango Mussolini" look ridiculous. This doesn't happen with names that do stick, to name a few: "The Iron Lady," "Slick Willie," "Dubya," "Governor Moonbeam," "Tricky Dick," "Old Hickory," "Honest Abe," "Landslide Lyndon," "Papa Doc," "BoJo," "The Gipper".
Consider the following comparison: "Moscow Mitch"; "Cocaine Mitch". Both of those names are in use, but only one has "stuck". The other makes the speaker sound like a hack. I need hardly say which.
Trump himself is pretty good at this. His epithets stick. It helps that he comes up with so many of them and most of them aren't very good. But consider: "Little Adam Schiff," "Sleepy Joe," "Little Marco," "Rocket Man," "Pocahontas," "Ron DeSanctimonious". "Lyin' Ted" was has never gone away. "Low Energy Jeb" was so powerful it effectively ended Jeb's political career. "Crooked Hillary," however cornball and unserious it is, worked.
I've often thought Trump could have ended the primary months ago and cornered the Zoomer vote by decisively calling DeSantis "No Rizz Ron".
In all serious DeSadness would've been way better than DeSanctimonious, that was one of his weakest yet.
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It doesn’t stick because they came directly from comedy TV. It’s not organic it’s something that they heard on TV and repeated. Drumpf came directly from Last Week Tonight and is the last name that the Trump family had from immigration to America from Germany. It’s not only uncreative but it’s astroturfed.
It's not really funny, the only insult in it is that it vaguely sounds a little like 'Dumb' (but not much).
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Because Trump is willing to repeat them ad nauseum as a supposedly serious candidate. He has zero shame. Democrats and Haley fail for the same reason: they're in the wrong genre.
They try for gravitas and authority - "when they go low"...- instead of just being funny and hammering the joke in. It's Head of State, not House of Cards.
I get your point. At the same time, it’s hard to imagine any Democrat pol would’ve been able to make “Drumpf” stick no matter how many times he repeated it.
"Drumpf" has the additional constraint that it's not as good as any of Trump's bangers in terms of playground insult succinctness and is pretty weird for the pro-migrant Democrats to try to make happen.
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The problem is that most Americans are fat.
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I would go for "Deadbeat Don". Four bankruptcies and all that. "Deadbeat Donnie" if I was taller than him.
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Look, Fat
Natural hilarity overshadowed by Trump’s, but still a regularly entertaining fellow.
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