Donald Trump's Spin Has Reached Even Further Levels of Desperation
Trump wants us to believe he's setting records and uniting the party like never before
Ludicrous claims are not exactly new to Donald Trump, but some recent ones are notable because in the context they were uttered, they reflect desperation from someone who is supposed to be the Anointed One for the Republican Party's presidential nomination. Remember, since he can’t control his ego, you can gauge where Trump stands politically by what he says and how he behaves. It is one strength of his to be uncannily tuned into political sentiment towards himself in real time, even if he does show this in public so obviously, to his own detriment.
There’s been plenty of analysis about how the South Carolina Republican Primary results show weakness when you really delve into the numbers. And these analyses are largely true. Winning 60-40 would be considered a landslide in most contexts, but in this context, where he is essentially the Republican incumbent and the apparent divinely anointed nominee for president, it shows his relative weakness within the party. Essentially, almost half of his party doesn’t want him as the nominee. That alone is telling, but when you go further in and see that roughly a quarter of the SC primary voters said in exit polls that they would not vote for him if he was the nominee….well, ouch.
All of this would have been known at the time of his victory speech—by someone, at least, even if they didn’t have the bravery to express these findings to Trump himself. But I wonder if they did, because you could smell the desperation as you watched him talk (along with the other smells that allegedly emanate from him).
In his victory speech following his South Carolina primary win, prior to the haphazard and long-winded rattling off of people to thank and bring up to the podium to speak for literally less than 30 seconds (Tim Scott and Lindsay Graham, for example), he made a couple of easily disproven claims in order to aggrandize his victory:
He got more than double the previous record number of votes
The Republican Party has never been so united
Let’s examine these claims, shall we?
“Record times two”
Trump claimed that he received a record number of votes that was more than double the previous record. Here’s Trump’s exact quote: “We got double the number of votes that has ever been received in the Great State of South Carolina….so it’s a record times two” and “We’ve set a record so far, in every single — in Iowa, we got the most votes in history times two, just like this, the biggest margin ever”.
Let’s assume, since it wasn’t stated clearly, that he’s talking about just the voting totals of Republican primary votes in South Carolina history, which would be the best-case scenario for this claim to be remotely true. In short, his statement is unsurprisingly very false.
It is correct that he did get the most votes ever in the history of the South Carolina Republican primary. He could have just stopped here and gotten his point across, even if that claim doesn’t look quite as good in the context of the number of primary candidates and the recent population growth in the state. There were only two candidates in this race, compared to the historical norm of roughly 4-6 viable candidates that participate in the SC primary. Since SC is one of the early decisive primaries, they tend to field more candidates than subsequent states’ primaries, when candidates start dropping out as they see how things are trending against them.
So the number of absolute votes compared to history was going to be heavily tilted to the winner of this primary. In fact, it was also going to be heavily tilted towards the loser as well for the same reason, and Haley did almost break the previous record of votes garnered even in her losing effort. Trump got 452,000 votes, which broke the previous record of 306,000 that George W. Bush got in 2000 (which interestingly was the last time there were essentially 2 viable candidates). Haley tallied 299,000, almost reaching the record set by Bush. Trump did beat the record by the large margin, but it wasn’t really close to the 600,000 that would be needed to claim he broke the record, times two.
Also, while the turnout was decent, also breaking the previous record, set in 2016, when you account for population growth, it was actually kind of “meh”. South Carolina is one of the fastest growing states in the county. In fact, from 2022-2023, it is the fastest growing. From 2016 to 2024, its population grew at a rate of 18%. The total number of primary voters only grew 1.9% in the same time period. From 2000, the year of the previous vote total record, the state population increased by almost 50% (47.5%), which is essentially the same rate by which the winning vote total increased. So, any power that a claim of absolute voting total records would hold is diminished by basic facts of population growth in the state, even if the claims are true and not wildly off the mark, as they were in this case.
“Never seen the Republican Party so unified”
Here’s Trump’s exact quote: “I’ve never seen the Republican Party so unified as it is right now.”
This is definitely an interesting statement to make, as, by any measure, it’s actually one of the most divided times in the party’s recent history. One only needs to look at the primary results so far this year to see a pattern. About 40% of the primary voters are voting for someone other than Trump. Sure, some of these voters are not actual Republicans, some are independents, and a small portion are even Democrats. But even accounting for that, there is a very sizable minority of the party electorate that does not want Trump.
In addition to the voters, the party itself, in the form of the Republican National Committee (RNC), is also facing divisive issues, and is apparently not in lockstep about how to move the party forward. Just hours before Trump’s victory speech in SC, a prominent RNC member, Haley Barbour, the former governor of Mississippi, introduced a resolution to limit what the RNC can spend its money on. Trump has a strong preference about who is in control of the RNC, and thus their financial coffers, as he has a lot of legal bills that he needs assistance with. But this move by Barbour is a blatant attempt to prevent the RNC from becoming Trump’s legal defense fund, which is an opposition move that would have been unthinkable a few years ago, or even several months ago.
If this resolution passes, it would at least delay the complete Trump takeover of the RNC for the purposes of paying his legal bills. And it is likely that it will fail. But just the fact that the resolution was proposed is interesting and shows significant palpable divisions within the party. And if the resolution happens to pass it will completely expose these divisions on a monumental level.
Therefore, the statement that this is the “most unified” the party has ever been is laughably false. There’s no way it’s more unified than it was in 2020 when there was no viable challenger in the Republican primaries (William Weld was the Republican version of Dean Phillips then, although quite a bit more likeable and realistic about his chances), many primaries were simply cancelled, and the party platform was literally discarded to be replaced by a statement that the party was essentially a vehicle for whatever Trump wanted at any given time. It was the most absolute takeover by one person that an American political party had likely ever seen. It has definitely been more unified than now.
Other nonsensical and humorous quotes to support my point
Also in his S.C. victory speech, Trump made this statement: “They made a very strong play for the Virgin Islands and we got 100% of the Virgin Islands”.
“They” made a very “strong” play? For the Virgin Islands? Really? This would imply that Nikki Haley spent a decent amount of money on ads or visited the islands to work the crowds and help build enthusiasm. In reality, they did do something in the Virgin Islands; they did not concede it. But according to Haley campaign surrogate and current S.C. Representative Ralph Norman, the campaign did not spend any money there, and just held one virtual campaign event where she took some questions.
There were four delegates at stake in this primary, which was actually a caucus, which is a delegate-assigning procedure that favors a candidate like Trump. Generally, this should not be on the leading candidate’s mind enough to mention at a victory speech, and the fact that he had to propagandize it as a big accomplishment and brag about getting 100% of 4 delegates (he actually got 75% of the vote; it wasn’t clear if he was referring to delegates or votes, however) shows that his weakness is weighing on his mind.
Also, a recent popular refrain regarding Trump is he’s conducting the “biggest political comeback in American history”. Lindsay Graham said this in his short-but-sour speech at the S.C. victory rally. It’s been recently echoed by surrogates and conservative media figures recently as well. This is probably going to continue to be pushed as a narrative to help build enthusiasm for Trump and Republicans, since “1776 all over again” didn’t go so well last time, and probably will turn most voters off in this cycle.
The funny thing about this concept is that it implies that there was a time when he hit rock bottom from which he is “coming back”. I presume this would have to be the time period circa Jan-Feb 2021? Hmmm, why would I assume this? What happened around then? So, are they acknowledging that a time existed when he was weak and practically unelectable? And if they are acknowledging this, why was he so down on his luck? What happened and why was it bad? I hope some reporters or interviewers ask this repeatedly if this sentiment becomes more widespread, as I’d love to hear their explanations on this this.
And, finally, below is an actual quote from the speech where he is bragging, or trying to brag at least, about his victory in Nevada (see my article about his here, where I explain how this was totally rigged, literally, in his favor). Let this incoherent mess sink in and fester in your brain for a bit.
“And then of course Nevada, as you know, we went to Nevada, we got 99.6% of the vote. And then they had a primary, and the—this is no candidate—you know, it’s called ‘this is’—in various forms—‘unknown candidate’….they all….but ‘this is no candidate’ got 65% of the vote, and they think I was the ‘no candidate’, because it was a caucus, it wasn’t a primary, and you have to know what you’re doing, you have to go into the caucus, not the primary, but without going into it, I think we won by 50 points or something like that.”
He’s referring to the fact that Haley lost in the Nevada primary to “None of these candidates”, which is accepted as a referendum in favor of Trump. But the primary was pointless, as it didn’t assign any delegates; the Republican party bucked the state and set up a separate caucus which assigned all of the delegates. It was such a blatantly odd manipulation of the system that it confused Trump to the point that he couldn’t explain it. Plus, Haley spent literally no money or energy in the state due to this manipulation in his favor, essentially conceding it to Trump. But his attempted braggadocio about this was cringe-worthy in an otherwise mostly coherent speech, assisted largely by notes listing people to thank, including his own family members.
The bottom line is that all of this bluster and promotion of exaggerated narratives is a sign of a weak and desperate man, trying to distract people from the reality of a party and campaign very much in turmoil. This behavior tells the same tale as the numbers underlying the vote breakdowns: Trump is in trouble.