George Lakoff, a Professor Emeritus of Cognitive Science and Linguistics at the University of California Berkeley, finds it very frustrating when liberals retweet President Trump. Lakoff has almost made a second career trying to teach Democrats how to communicate the progressive agenda to ordinary Americans.
“When you repeat Trump, you help Trump,” Professor Lakoff wrote in an exasperated post to his friends on the left. “You do this by spreading his message wide and far. Think about it: every time Trump issues a mean tweet or utters a shocking statement, millions of people begin to obsess over his words. Reporters make it the top headline. Cable TV panels talk about it for hours. Horrified Democrats and progressives share the stories online, making sure to repeat the nastiest statements in order to refute them.
“Nobody knows this better than Trump. Trump, as a media master, knows how to frame a debate” wrote the distinguished professor. Democrats and the media strengthen those frames by ensuring that tens of millions of Americans hear them repeated over and over again.
The latest liberal messaging help came as in the form of a picture of children detained in cages – “how horrible of Trump!” Unfortunately for the left, these pictures were from 2014, and showed some of the tens of thousands of unaccompanied alien children (UACs) who flooded across the border under Obama. Most of these UACs were placed with relatives living illegally in the United States, instead of being returned to their parents as they should have been.
President Trump is determined to change the system that allows UACs from countries other than Mexico to remain here indefinitely. When the number of UACs spiked this spring, Trump and Attorney General Jeff Sessions took several steps to stem the flow.
Pro-immigration Republicans are pressuring Trump to cave by extending the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) without building a border wall. President Trump is welcome relief from politicians who care more about donors than voters. Trump should continue to be a “choice, not an echo” on immigration, and stand firm for a border wall.
