Politics

TIME Magazine Calls Trump Campaign ‘Kind Of A Perpetual Outrage Machine’

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• TIME Magazine released its 29th cover featuring Donald Trump Thursday.
• The profile calls Trump’s 2020 campaign “political machine designed to inflame supporters” and “a kind of a perpetual outrage machine.”
• Political strategist Jim Messina argues that the campaign lacks “any sort of general-election messaging.”

TIME Magazine released its 29th cover of President Donald Trump Thursday and called his 2020 reelection campaign “a kind of a perpetual outrage machine.”

The profile, authored by Brian Bennett, focuses on the president’s confidence ahead of his impending battle with a huge Democratic nominee field of over 20 candidates.

It also highlights gaudy photos of Trump supporters decked out in flag colors and calls Trump’s campaign a “political machine designed to inflame supporters” and “a kind of a perpetual outrage machine.”

WATCH:

TIME’s new cover: “My whole life is a bet.” Inside President Trump’s gamble on an untested re-election strategy https://t.co/xhQo6cuZWi pic.twitter.com/iUbIcWBijA

— TIME (@TIME) June 20, 2019

“Cranking the outrage machine for so long may make it hard for voters to hear a subtler frequency,” Bennett wrote.

The article notes that Trump campaign advertisements encourage people to buy “Trump hats, yard signs, beer coolers and WITCH HUNT decals from the campaign online store,” much like the gear seen in photos of Trump supporters featured throughout the piece.

Political strategist Jim Messina, who organized former President Barack Obama’s reelection campaign, told Bennett that Trump’s reelection campaign lacks “any sort of general-election messaging.” He argues the campaign’s message is focused completely on Trump’s base.

“The thing they are not doing, which I think is really odd, is doing any sort of general-election messaging,” Messina said. “By this point [in the 2012 election], we were in the Midwest trying to tell the economic-recovery story, which you would kind of expect them to be doing right now. Instead, every single thing they’re doing is about the base.”

“If you just do a base strategy, then you’re not going to be able to expand to any states,” he added. “And I think that is where this election is going.” 

Trump told Bennett in the interview that he thinks a “progressive” will most likely win the primary, which may include former Vice President Joe Biden, who “is not the same Biden” as he once was. The front-runner has flipped his more traditional stances on many popular progressive issues such as the Hyde Amendment, Roe v. Wade, immigration, civil rights and whether China poses a threat to the U.S.

Trump also said California Sen. Kamala Harris “has not surged,” Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren is “doing pretty well” and South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Pete Buttigieg “never” had a chance.

Nearly all of the president’s 20-something Democratic opponents have framed their campaigns, at least in part, on pushing Trump out of office.

Most recently, Biden said Trump “embraces dictators like Kim Jong Un, who’s a damn murderer and a thug” after the president called Biden “a loser” and “a sleepy guy” with “the weakest mentality” on June 11 during their respective Iowa rallies. Biden also said Trump’s policies go against the country’s “core values — what we stand for, who we are, what we believe in.”

By the time 2020 rolls around, “Trump may not even be president. In fact, he may not even be a free person,” Warren said during her first full-day campaign stop in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, in February. She also suggested White House officials invoke the 25th Amendment to remove the president from office later in February.

Other candidates including Harris, Independent Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, Sens. Cory Booker of New Jersey and Kirsten Gillibrand of New York, former Texas Rep. Beto O’Rourke, former Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper and several others have expressed their support for impeachment proceedings.

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