Trump’s Antifragile Appeal
“So when they continued asking him about the significance of a politician’s gaffes, he lifted up himself, and said unto them, He that is without gaffes among you, let him first cast a Milton Keynes at her.”—John 8:7 (King John Version)
On the night of the last Super Bowl, Trump congratulated the victorious Kansas City Chiefs from “the Great State of Kansas” on Twitter. It was a gaffe. Kansas City is—maddeningly!—in Missouri. There is a Kansas City, Kansas though, across the river from Kansas City, Missouri. These two cities are as close as Montréal and Laval, Minneapolis and St. Paul, El Paso and Juárez. Just as the Montréal Canadiens are your team even if you live in Laval, the Kansas City Chiefs are your team even if you live in Kansas City, Kansas. So the president was technically wrong but not nearly as way off as you might think.
Fox News would of course be having a field day with this if Hillary Clinton made the same mistake. As Jacob T. Levy rightly observed, it would be yet more proof of how utterly ignorant coastal elites are of the American heartland. Trump gets a pass on gaffes like this because, rightly or wrongly, people in the heartland believe that he hears them, cares about them, and, in immortal words of Bill Clinton, “feels their pain”. When we trust someone, as they trust Trump, we tend to interpret everything they do and say in a charitable fashion.
And here’s how I think they’re going to interpret today’s crazy overreaction to this gaffe: I think it’ll make them love him more. Because let’s face it, if you asked the average American where Kansas City is on a multiple-choice test, my guess is at least half of them would choose (c) Kansas. It’s an honest mistake. His supporters feel stupid often. Their college-educated relatives snicker at them during the holidays, as do their childhood friends who come home from time to time—from L.A. or New York. When you make fun of Trump, they feel like you’re making fun of them. They identity with the bumbling, politically-incorrect fool who just doesn’t seem to get it. George W. Bush’s appeal was of a similar stamp. Remember how his poll numbers soared after that “brie and cheese” gaffe.
Eric Weinstein once said that he could win an election for a Republican candidate in any swing district in the country with one simple ruse: He would have his candidate deliberately mispronounce the word “nuclear” in a campaign ad (i.e., “nu-cu-lar” instead of “new-clee-er”). The Democrats would immediately take the bait and call the Republican an idiot for mispronouncing the word. Meanwhile the voters, many of whom mispronounce words all the time, would sympathize with the adorably fallible Republican candidate and feel personally attacked by the Democrats. What’s more, they wouldn’t hear the gaffe; they’d hear the message: “We need to stress the importance of the nuclear family.”
Why do liberals keep falling into this trap? Why do they keep scoring on their own goalie? When English Canadians made fun of Prime Minister Jean Chretien’s thick Québécois accent, his popularity in Québec soared. You’re only helping Trump when you pick on him for petty shit like this. By the way, if you’re running with AOC’s “Milton Keynes” gaffe, you’re just as stupid as those who ran with the “Kansas City, Kansas” gaffe. It was an honest mistake. And you’re helping her by harping on it. We diminish ourselves, as well as our politics, when prate on and on about petty shit like this.
