Trump has been employing logical fallacies to further his campaign since the beginning. A logical fallacy is when someone uses logic incorrectly to make a point, and the specific logical fallacy Trump is a master of is Ad Hominem. Ad Hominem is when during an argument one person decides to attack the other verbally, ignoring the argument.
Trump uses Ad Hominem very often, most notably with quotes like, "If Jeb Bush is president we will never be great again" said at the Las Vegas debate 2015 and “We have a president who doesn’t have a clue. I would say he’s incompetent, but I don’t want to do that because that’s not nice,” Targeted at president Obama. Trump understands that he is seen as a bad person to many Americans, therefore he uses Ad Hominem to seem like he is the lesser of the two evils. This is a genius campaign strategy, and it is working very well for Trump Who is still leading in the polls by a large majority. Trumps methods have gotten other candidates on his Ad Hominem bandwagon because they are noticing their effectiveness. Ted Cruz at the latest republican debate began with Ad Hominem poking fun at his fellow candidates and Trump alike,"Now, secondly, let me say I'm a maniac and everyone on this stage is stupid, fat, and ugly. And Ben, you're a terrible surgeon... Now that we've gotten the Donald Trump portion out of the way." but without a similar impact, only receiving an small awkward laugh from the audience. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iZ66eG_aQZI
Trump's entire campaign has been unlike any other, with his use of logical fallacies being the foundation of his strength. This campaign strategy is extremely affective; moving forward it will be interesting to see how this will change future elections.
I like the opening to your argument-- I've been somewhat bewildered as to how Trump has gotten so far in the campaign, but I haven't taken a step back and noticed how his use of logical fallacies is what's keeping him afloat. It's interesting to see it from this perspective! Your post was very easy to follow and flowed well! Good job!
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