The two illustrations above on top best describe the primary reasons which assured that Trump would win the election. Add to this a third reason, the coining of the term "Trump derangement syndrome" which has a Wikipedia page here. Trump and his supporters would say George Conway had a serious case of this. With these three added together there was no way he was going to loose.
All the of the legal cases against him, but especially the E. Jean Carroll trial, and then the bullet whizzing by him and somehow causing a bloody ear, enabling him to raising his fist for what was, pun intended, the triumphant money shot, which made him a shoo-in to win.
The first assassination attempt made him out to be the hero he claimed to be. The raised fist and defiant look was a genius move. After that the time someone was caught supposedly wanted to assassinate him second was only icing on the cake.
Before this the scowling mugshot taken during his arrest prior to the E. Jean Carroll set him up to be seen as a victim of the deep state, of all that was wrong with the country. It was soon on t-shirts and pro-Trump posters. Any publicity about his criminal activity proved to his supporters that he was being victimized by his enemies in the so-called deep state.
His snoozing through part of the trial only added to the image he wanted to convey that it was all too ridiculous to bother him. As if this wasn't enough, even if there were people in the country that thought he was a misogynistic moral reprobate, there were many men who admired him for treating women as mere objects for their sexual gratification and some women who'd welcome his sexual advances.
Not enough people cared about all the other laws Trump was credibly charged with breaking and the pending cases against him.
These elements alone would have assured that he'd win the election. However, add to that the coining of the psuedo-psychiatric diagnosis of "Trump derangement syndrome" to describe anyone who used negative hyperbole to describe Trump. The most well known exemplar for someone who has this so-called mental disease is George Conway who started the Anti-Psychopath PAC and used his own money plus donations to set up billboards and have trucks at Trump events (see Newsweek article and image on top of this page).
According to Trumpers, as someone who signed George Conway's full page New York Times ad, I am also suffering from a bad case of Trump derangement syndrome. (See HUFFPOST article). I suppose in a way I do have a mental disease of a kind caused by Trump since I woke up with the idea for this blog at 2:00 AM, couldn't fall asleep so I got up, and as I finished writing this it was already past 4:00 AM.
Trump and his defenders used the Trump derangement syndrome comeback the way kids use "I'm rubber, you're glue, anything bad you say about me bounces off me and sticks to you" as an all purpose comeback when someone hits them with an unpleasant truth about themselves.
We see that Trump managed to do the rope-a-dope and come back with stinging one-two punches as well in the ring he was fighting in as well as Muhammad Ali did in his ring.
"The rope-a-dope is a boxing fighting technique in which one contender leans against the ropes of the boxing ring to draw non-injuring offensive punches in an effort to tire their opponent out and, while they are on the ropes, try to execute devastating offensive punches." Wikipedia
Add to all of this the fact that he had a fan club - some call it a cult - that the Democrats could never come close to putting together for Biden or Harris. These people didn't care that he was putting on a calculated show for them from his perfomances in a literal ring at WWE (below) to his last rally featuring the likes of Kid Rock and Hulk Hogan as well as a comedian who made a joke about Puerto Rico that only offended anti-Trumpers and people from Puerto Rico.
His final rally before Election Day, which was held at Madison Square Garden, was mocked by many but it thrilled his fans. He gave all his critics the finger by returning there a few weeks later with none other then Kid Rock and Elon Musk to watch an Ultimate Fighter event.Here's a telling excerpt from the article (shown above) After controversial rally, Trump returns to Madison Square Garden for UFC event.Trump is a longtime UFC enthusiast and frequent attendee of major fights. He made promoting hypermasculine tones a signature of his campaign — as he looked to further widen the gap among male voters between himself and his Democratic opponent, Vice President Kamala Harris.Trump and his top supporters embraced alpha-male terms and often accentuated them with vulgar and demeaning language.
Trump knows that he discovered a way persuade people and communicate effectively his message of lies and gross distortions of the truth to low, or virtually no, information people who are among the aproximately 65% of people eligible to vote who will actually bother to vote.
Trump may not know the actual statistics of literacy in the United States, but 54% of adults have a literacy below a 6th-grade level (20% are below 5th-grade level). Of all countries the United States ranks at 36. (Reference) Nobody knows what Trump's reading level is although people like former Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, Defense Secretary Jim Mattis, White House Chief of Staff John Kelly have their own opinions. (See article in Politico) This doesn't matter. In fact it may work in Trump's favor because his low-level literacy supporters may like this about him.
Reporters have stopped counting Trump's lies because they realized that it didn't matter once the number hit the tens of thousands. What they could have been counting is his major missteps, the ones that lost him a significant number of votes. That would have been far easier. This number would have been zero.
Addendum:
Excerpts:When he takes the oath of office in January, Donald J. Trump will make history as the first court-adjudicated sexual abuser to assume the presidency. But if he gets the team of his choice, he will not be the only one in the room whose conduct has been called into question.
Mr. Trump, who was found liable in a civil trial last year of sexually abusing and defaming the writer E. Jean Carroll, has selected a defense secretary, an attorney general, a secretary of health and human services and an efficiency czar, all of whom have been accused of variations of sexual misconduct and, like the president-elect, deny them.
The rise of the accused to positions of power raises new questions about the future of the #MeToo movement that swept through the country and upended societal expectations in recent years. The kind of accusations that took down titans of Hollywood, Wall Street, Silicon Valley, Washington, the news media, sports and state capitals have proved no obstacle in Mr. Trump’s selection process.
..
Mr. Trump’s ascension comes at a delicate moment for the movement against sexual harassment amid a backlash from those who argue that it has gone too far in tarring some men without sufficient due process. Mr. Trump ran a campaign aimed at tapping into male grievance, punctuated by expressions of machismo and disdain for “woke” sensitivity. Hulk Hogan roared and ripped off his shirt at the Republican National Convention while other surrogates mocked Democrats for not being able to define what a woman is in an era of transgender rights.
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