“Dear Team Trump: Don’t ‘Spike the Football'”
Rather, Balance the Language and Walk Through the Biggest-Ever Open Door
Below is my latest unsolicited letter to the MAGA/MAHA comms and leadership team.
Yes, it is a new day in America. Yes, President Trump won an historic victory. Millions of citizens with eyes (and cellphone cameras) on the polling station process — and on their own ballots, as we at DailyClout had encouraged — thwarted what was supposed to have been a planned night of systematic cheating. Yes, the trifecta of all three branches of government is secure in the hands of MAGA/MAHA.
Yes, everyone who battled for years for this outcome, and who stood firm for our country, deserves huge credit.
It is human nature to gloat. It is tempting to revel in a partisan, public way. It is human nature to “spike the football.”
Conservative influencers on X are enjoying the victor’s adrenaline surge. They post memes mocking “liberal tears” and “liberal meltdowns.”
“Nyah nyah nyah” has been the winner’s instinctive reflex, ever since we were all eight years old.
It’s human nature. And yet – and yet. This heavy-handed, partisan response to a major victory, carries a risk that this amazing realignment — MAGA and MAHA — will squander the greatest political opportunity of our lifetimes.
It is also strategically unwise. A good friend, who comes from the same world I do, said recently that he too is concerned that MAGA in triumph is “spiking the football’. I asked what that phrase meant. He explained that it is the gesture that victorious football players make, when they reach a goal; it means, celebrating crassly, carelessly and prematurely. He clarified that the gesture represents poor sportsmanship.
I shared that while I felt that the Democrats had obviously descended into a spiral of estrogen-heavy lunacy, the Republicans now risk a testosterone-poisoned, equally blinding overreaction of their own. Psychological and emotional balance are always needed for a movement — and especially a Unity movement — to evolve and thrive.
Even as I feel the demons slithering back into their underground lairs — even as I recognize the sunlight of actual America reappearing behind the metaphysical clouds of the last four years – I have concerns. My concerns are that partisanship and gloating are leading MAGA/MAHA to miss this gigantic, historic open door that has opened right in front of them. It won’t stay open forever.
MAGA/MAHA has the opportunity to solidify the largest potential realignment in American history; to create messaging, events and speeches that would welcome into a new Unity Movement, the majority of Americans, and that would make the rationale for the very existence of the Democratic party, obsolete.
MAGA/MAHA has the the opportunity to unite into one movement, of citizens heading in roughly one aligned direction, millions of people of patriotism and essential goodwill in America, whatever their policy differences. This realignment could radically restore and re-empower America and Americans, and could also unleash untold innovation, public safety and community-mindedness, civic engagement, and cultural and material wealth.
If MAGA/MAHA did this — that is, walked with maturity and grace through this historic, unprecedented, transpartisan open door — it would revitalize and transform the Republican party, making the MAGA/MAHA movement into a big, unbeatable tent whose mission is to promote core American principles. This mission could replace the always-marginal, always-vulnerable status of the Republican party, which has devolved (as has the DNC) into a checklist of ever more extreme policy itemizations.
Some of the things Team MAGA/MAHA is doing are perfect. It is perfect to showcase the extraordinary formerly Democratic talents that are aligning in Mar a Lago. Images of President Trump with RFK Jr, Tulsi Gabbard and Elon Musk, looking like a merry band of superheroes, are fantastic. It is wonderful too to feature what looks like fun: dancing patriotic wrestlers, fast food meals onboard Trump’s private plane. Someone gifted on the comms team — Barron? It is someone young and witty — understands that images that seem to peek informally “behind the curtain”, along with images of a joyful, positive set of events, personalities, and activities, all attract support and are part of a powerful victory lap.
The inner circle aboard President Trump’s jet:
President Trump and entrepreneur Elon Musk at at a UFC event at Madison Square Garden:
We should also applaud the fact that the comms team persuaded President Trump to host (and, as I had urged, to feed) opposition reporters such as Mika Brzezinski and Joe Scarborough of MSNBC’s “Morning Joe”, in Mar a Lago. By speaking directly to the very people whom President Trump had derided as purveyors of “fake news” — even though hosting the “enemy” takes discipline and maturity — President Trump makes it much harder for those commentators to dismiss or mischaracterize him or his administration.
But the glee and the superpower imagery, fun as it is to behold, misses some important facts. Every successful (or failed) candidate lives in an impenetrable information and group-mind bubble; and that bubble creates its own self-reinforcing reality. Outside the cool-looking activities at Mar a Lago, there remains these needs for caution:
1/ Don’t alienate independent and liberal women unnecessarily. You need them for MAGA/MAHA. Liberal women on Tik-Tok are still weeping for a reason. They fear they will continue to lose essential personal choices. Trump surrogates should continue to reach out to America to showcase not only Trump’s powerful women appointees — who are now many and all of whom are impressive — but also to showcase planned policies that will support and sustain women in their family and professional lives, and that will support their range of choices. When conservative male commentators mock these women’s tears, they are torching what could be future support from a decisive swing constituency. And again they are showing little understanding or empathy.
2/ Calm the f— down with the social media DOGE hatchets and the memes about world wars.
Elon Musk is a very cool addition to a mission, Department of Government Efficiency, to issue recommendations to make government more efficient. But his pronouncements, along with those of Vivek Ramaswamy, on X and elsewhere, about all the slashing that they will do, in recommending to President Trump big cuts to the state, are starting to feel like the compulsive one-upmanship of two boys who have been empowered gleefully to tear down someone else’s elaborate Lego village.
This danger is where the “bubble” effect comes in. It may be a lot of fun, in Mar a Lago, to say to a tight, victory-drunk group late at night, “Hey! Let’s destroy whole government departments!” And then to make the equivalent of a list on a napkin.
But the stream of giddy, superficial pronouncements on social media about what is under the chopping block — and all of this from people who are not yet successfully inaugurated, and have not yet met any of the humans on the teams whose lives they are racing to upend — feels to me scattershot, un-strategic, and immature. Indeed, without “mission statements” issued alongside them, a lot of the pronouncements coming out of Mar a Lago right now, as exciting as they can be, feel scattershot and will be easy for citizens to overlook in the media melee.
Ironically, the DOGE pronouncements on socials feel like the same kind of playing with human lives by out-of-touch, privileged elites that rightly lost the Democrats the country.
Slow down; be thoughtful; issue a well-reasoned op ed — or even a position paper along with an op ed and a press release — for each department that you are hoping to destroy.
Issue a detailed policy for dealing with the lives and mortgages of these millions of people, many of whom simply tried to serve their countries as workers, who will be let go; and be adult about it.
People are already scared of an autocratic administration; get some buy-in from the people whose reality you are about entirely to alter. Get some buy-in from the press.
It is good to come into power wielding a Visigothic axe, in some respects, and I recognize the strategic value of shock and even of brutality.
But it is also good, in other ways, to show humanity and empathy and awareness that these people about to be put in the Team Trump cross-hairs are real people, many of whom live paycheck to paycheck even as government workers — many of whom voted for you — many of whom tried and try to this day to do their best, even in the Department of Education or in other targeted agencies; whose lives and families’ livelihoods are about to be upended.
3/ Write and publish your mission statements! I said this above and, being a trained media commentator and consultant, I am repeating it, because repetition is important.
Write the op eds. There is an incredibly laborious and counterproductive media strategy, it seems to me, in play out of Mar a Lago or out of the campaign or transition offices: President Trump himself, or RFK Jr, or VP Vance, are sent out live to make the case for this or that upcoming policy approach.
This is better than not appearing and not taking questions; but it is an incomplete and ultimately burnout-ensuring strategy.
It is exhausting, physically, to go out and give interviews for various policy approaches, for one thing. No human being can sustain the physical effort — along with the unremitting effort of surviving or directing a transition — effectively, day after day.
But also — respectfully — all three of these principals are less effective in-person only, than they would be in person and with some good, well-placed print op eds.
President Trump (though he is getting better, and good video editing is helping) is far too discursive to make a sustained policy argument in a verbal-only format, that can stick.
Vice President Vance is incredibly effective verbally, but he is so occupied with shooting down verbal opposition, that he is not being used to present a strong set of mission statements.
And RFK Jr, whom I respect and admire, is so deeply knowledgeable about his subject matter that he can deliver a doctoral thesis verbally, when a short, tight mission statement supported by op eds, would be much more effective in communicating a specific direction and rationale.
For reasons I can’t understand, the comms teams are not making use of the actual op ed pages of legacy media. These still represent the most powerful real estate in media.
Are you making a list, in Mar a Lago, of DOD officials for possible courts-martial? That is a pretty explosive trial balloon to float on socials or to leak to the networks. Now be disciplined, and send The New York Times a well-written, well-reasoned 1000- word op ed showing why that is de minimis according to our own legal system, rather than being an insanely composited enemies’ list, drawn up, to possibly lethal effect, by vengeful Neanderthals with no respect for our Constitution or rule of law.
Are you opposing President Biden ‘s deranged OK of missile strikes by Ukraine against Russia? President Trump popped up on video in my feed to say in language that a third grader can follow, that he will “stop World War Three.” That is very nice, but only minimally persuasive. How? How will he do that? And this format still gives me the impression of a world in warring states of chaos.
Now be disciplined; be grown-ups. Send The Economist and The Washington Post and The Financial Times a series of well-reasoned op-eds, in language that third graders but also diplomats and international affairs experts can all understand (and yes, that voice is possible to achieve; President Reagan achieved it) — about why President Trump’s foreign policy approach is more likely to stabilize the region and to bring about lasting peace, than is this last-minute Biden-esque escalation.
4/ Lastly, where is the overall mission statement for MAGA/MAHA at all? I see a flurry of activity coming out of Mar a Lago, and it is exciting for sure to the base of each group. But where is the mission-statement appeal to all of America — the explanation of core values and goals? These too should be appearing in speeches and on op ed pages.
I know that now MAGA/MAHA can go around legacy media by simply popping up on socials or on independent podcasts, and that is exciting. But much as I value the new media (and DailyClout is an example of it) — it is not always the right platform for the mission statement essays, or the calm, well-reasoned fireside chats, that ultimately solidify the support and goodwill of all of America, and that the American people deserve.
Podcaster Joe Rogan is great for that spontaneous three-hour interview. But this is not the format provided by an op ed or published speech, that can explain the point of MAGA/MAHA to undecideds or to the defeated.
X is awesome for posting zingy memes or stream-of-consciousness apercus. I love it for that purpose. But there is also a reason you also come to me here on Substack — to understand in (reasoned, well-documented) longer essays – op-ed-page-type essays, if op-ed pages still would publish me — what lies behind my thinking posted in brief formats on social media. You come here to be not punched in the gut or seduced by a slogan, but to reasoned to; and reasoned with.
To be persuaded, the old-fashioned way.
So by all means, President Trump and RFK Jr, go past the legacy media.
But also get your Peggy Noonans, fast, into Mar a Lago.
Get your great speechwriters, who understand domestic and foreign policy — your versions of the Kennedys’ highly educated speechwriter and advisor Ted Sorenson — into Mar a Lago.
Have these folks publish the op eds and essays that are serious, explaining the reasoning and sound policy behind what can now seem like Sesame-Street-type, cartoonish popups of favored insiders dropping what may appear at first to be potentially lethal or economically devastating or militarily rash bombshells in brief clips on social media or in leaked explosive headlines on the networks.
Invite the op ed editor of The Washington Post (disclosure, personal conflict); The Wall Street Journal; and yes, The New York Times; to Mar a Lago. Invite the publishers of The Financial Times, USAToday, The Los Angeles Times.
Give a serious speech about the war, that is brief, and send the text to be reprinted in full in USAToday and The Washington Post.
Give a serious speech about cutting whole departments; and do the same.
Give a serious speech about the planned courts-martial; and do the same.
You get it.
Yes, you won the battle. Yes, you can tell the rest of the world to go to hell. Yes, you can play fun policy games with billionaires and cavort on socials.
Your base will go crazy with the fun of it all.
But will you win the war?
If you don’t send out grownup mission statements and speeches to serious people and places – even to the people and places that you hate – as well as wielding swinging Visigothic hatchets on social media, you risk winning the battle but losing the war.
And you risk losing the peace.
President Kennedy and Ted Sorenson:
President Ronald Reagan and Peggy Noonan:
If the party at Mar a Lago does not bring in some serious nonpartisan grownups, to balance and lastingly articulate the mission of what can at times look a bit like a frat boy esprit de corps popping champaign corks, at this point — you risk losing the biggest opportunity in modern American history to establish a majoritarian movement, that can make the DNC into an afterthought of the history books.
But if you do take my advice and do so — bring in your version of the Peggy Noonans, the Ted Sorensons of this generation, along with a parallel, serious media strategy – you can solidify and move forward with a bought-in, persuaded America.
You can build a majoritarian movement that is humane, and that governs with empathy as well as with strength; that is oriented toward peace and freedom; that can explain itself and its beliefs; that can lastingly illuminate our nation’s ideals; that can draw on the best policies of all, generated from the brightest minds of left, right and center; and that can, not least, also —
Liberate and bring peace to the rest of the struggling, censored, and suffering world.
___________
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