Thank you for reading Message Box. This is a community of more than 160,000 activists, organizers, political junkies, and others who care about our democracy. I’m privileged to write for such an incredible group. Special thanks to our paid subscribers, who make it all possible. If you’re not yet one, I hope you’ll consider upgrading to support one of the few outlets not owned by a MAGA billionaire. Voters Finally Care About Trump’s CorruptionFor years, the data said this message didn’t move swing voters. Now it’s fueling a Blue Wave in Red America.
Back in 2020, I spent a lot of time arguing on Pod Save America, and to any operative who would listen, that the message against Trump should center on the twin pillars of Chaos and Corruption. At the time, corruption seemed like an obvious hit against Trump. He had promised to drain the swamp, and yet foreign governments were trying to curry favor by spending exorbitant amounts at his hotel; he was fleecing taxpayers by charging the Secret Service to stay at his properties; and Jared and Ivanka were using their government positions to line their pockets. Trump won, in part, because people thought he would take on a broken system, and now he was profiting off of it. Not so fast. I eventually got a call from someone high up in the party telling me they had tested the corruption message six ways from Sunday, and it just didn’t work with swing voters. It’s not that voters didn’t think Trump was at least vaguely corrupt or that he wasn’t periodically dipping his beak; they just didn’t care. Trump’s corruption was baked into the baseline. It wasn’t new information that would move them away from Trump and toward a Democrat. Besides, they didn’t really believe Democrats would do much to clean up Washington. I had some quibbles with the argument, but the numbers are the numbers, and I had clearly lost. Even at the beginning of Trump 2.0, when he was brazenly enriching himself through crypto scams and taking bribes in the form of private jets, some polling showed that voters still weren’t buying it. Well, that’s changed. A Fox News poll from last week found that government corruption was voters’ top concern, even outpacing the cost of living. This is not an outlier; corruption has been creeping up the list of concerns in public and internal polling. With two weeks to go until the election, corruption is now front and center. Trump’s corruption is weighing down Republican candidates and helping fuel a Blue Wave that threatens to wash across Red America. Here’s what changed. It’s the Economy, StupidTwo things are different from Trump’s first term. First, Trump’s corruption is more egregious. He and the Republicans aren’t even trying to hide it anymore. It’s a smash-and-grab job. Trump’s net worth has gone up nearly $3 billion since the 2024 election. The second change is even more important... Continue reading this post for free in the Substack app
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