Dave Smith

OK, how many people does this work on?

Not nearly as many.

So, yes, there are diehard Trump supporters who will still go with this.

But I think like you're hitting on a big part of the issue here.

Another part of it is just that, like, you know, there are these techniques that work

in certain situations that don't work in others.

So like there might be something like,

like funny, like an inside joke you have with your wife.

And if she's mad at you because she asked you to do the dishes and you didn't, and then you do the inside joke, it might make her laugh and then the fight falls over.

But if she catches you in bed with another woman, that inside joke probably isn't going to be enough to make you go like, ah, you're kind of cute.

That's funny, you know?

And so Donald Trump does, he used to do these tactics all the time, but they would be in the context of like a journal, like back in 2017,

Donald Trump would be given a spiel about a borders wide open.

We don't have a country.

We don't win anymore.

We're in debt.

We're in stupid wars or whatever.

And then a journalist would be like, but you said something offensive on a bus or something like that.

And he'd go, nobody even thinks that you don't think that you're dumb and you're gay.

Our borders wide open or this is that or that.