Donald Trump first has to realize he’s dealing with a weak opponent. He’s not competing with a rich businessman in Manhattan for a prime piece of real estate. He’s competing with Hillary Clinton and the liberal ‘basket-cases’ that run her campaign.
They are arrogant and conceited. In the last debate Clinton baited Trump into discussing former Miss Universe, Alicia Machado for five days (following) instead of promoting his winning policy. Clinton will appear at Sunday’s town-hall debate armed with a host of insults and twenty-year-old controversies expecting Trump to take the bait. If he doesn’t, she’ll be dumfounded and ill-prepared to handle an the unexpected rebuttals propagated by Trump’s running mate, Mike Pence, in the vice-presidential debate this week.
Her campaign truly believes Trump is not capable of being successful. This is evidence of their inability to understand business success. Liberals like Clinton see everything through the lens of politics with virtually no business acumen.
When Trump is attacked by Clinton, his best option is to limit himself to a twenty-second explanation followed by the assertion that she is lying and pivot to the audience speaking directly about Clinton’s record of illicit behavior and his own policies to repair the economy while creating more jobs.
If Trump attacks Bill Clinton’s affairs, it will be received by voters as hypocritical. After all, Trump has been married three times himself resulting in two high-profile and contentious divorces. By contrast, I do not believe it’s off limits to discuss Hillary’s ‘war on Bill’s women’ as a defense to character attacks.
Trump would be well served to litigate the foreign policy failures of Clinton while Secretary of State: Benghazi, Lybia, Syria, Russian ‘reset,’ Iraq and the ridiculous Iran nuclear deal (which she instigated). Expect her defense to be the old and tired line of “I am proud to be part of the team that killed Osama bin Laden.” It’s hardly foreign policy experience to sit in the corner of the situation room and watch a television as our military men and women risk their lives. Trump might be well served to point out that fact.
Since killing bin Laden, a far worse enemy has emerged as a direct result of the Obama-Clinton foreign policy: ISIS.
Trump performs better when speaking to crowds. Clinton does not. She will not have a script even if she’s prepared for tough questions. And, unlike the town-halls she’s participated, she will have Trump fact-checking and refuting her many lies and distortions.
He will face the typical claims of being racist, xenophobic, et. al. He should not dignify petulant, liberal attacks with a single answer. Just talk to the voters and ignore the lady yelling to your left. He should try the line, “I love my protesters” (referring to Clinton) and then speak to the voters (ignoring Clinton as if she doesn’t matter).
Trump campaign manager, Kelly Anne Conway should confiscate Trump’s phone for 24 hours following the debate: No Tweets! However, if any accusation made by Clinton is still circulating in the media 24 hours after the debate, I do believe Trump has to answer it and set the record straight. That’s his style and that is what unifies his base.
Many ‘experts’ say Trump should stop discussing these negative attacks by the Left. They are wrong. Trump should stop giving life to them. He should only respond to issues that won’t ‘die’ in the media such as his leaked tax return.
Trump benefited from a nearly 100 year-old tax code that allowed him to carry over real estate losses and depreciation to escape taxes for a period of unknown years in the 1990’s. He should admit it, explain it and then offer the solution that every American should be able to invest in properties, depreciate them and apply any losses toward their income (regardless of which industry they work).
It would be hard for Clinton to battle that solution other than to claim people in poverty (who pay zero taxes anyway) can’t afford those investments and wouldn’t benefit from those deductions. In such a response, Trump could simply assert she has been in national politics for forty years, has yet to make any progress on poverty, has gotten incredibly rich and took a $699,000 deduction in 2015 on the same tax return line-item. He should say, “I didn’t get rich manipulating voters; I got rich running a business and employing tens-of-thousands of people. How many people have you employed?”
“The American people are too stupid to understand the difference.” Those words were uttered by professor Jonathan Gruber who was the architect of ‘Obamacare.’ Instead of taxing people with ‘cadillac health-care plans’ his ‘think-tank’ decided to tax the insurance companies. These ‘stupid people’ were excited that the ‘bad insurance companies’ are being punished not realizing they would eventually pay the costs in insurance-premium increases.
Liberals, including Clinton, think they are better, smarter and more important than you. They prey on Americans’ ignorance regarding complex matters in order to gain power. Our citizens simply don’t have time to investigate the complexities of our weak economy and stagnant wages. As a result, it’s much easier for liberals like Clinton to blame it on the greed of ‘the top one percent.”
The silver bullet to winning this next debate is pointing to the policies and behavior of liberals (like Clinton) and speaking directly to Americans about their most pressing issues while completely ignoring her petulant personal-insults and distortions.
Trump must enlighten voters and expose Clinton while introducing policies to solve our challenges and divisions. If he does, Clinton doesn’t have a chance.