This is a quote from Donald Trump in December of 2013:

“‘I’m going to walk away with it and win it outright,’” a long-time New York political consultant recalled. “Trump told us, ‘I’m going to get in and all the polls are going to go crazy. I’m going to suck all the oxygen out of the room. I know how to work the media in a way that they will never take the lights off of me.'”

Trump laid out his plans more than 25 months before announcing his candidacy. All that truth Trump says he speaks? It’s a political con job aimed at attracting the largest GOP base: angry white racists who blame people of color and immigrants for their woes. Not only did Trump attract that demographic while trying to impress them by bragging that he was “self-funding” his campaign, he intended to do so while spending as little of his money as possible.

Notoriously frugal, Trump insisted he wouldn’t need to spend much money on paid advertising, drawing disbelief from the professionals gathered around his table. “You can’t run for president on earned media,” one attendee recalled telling Trump. The billionaire looked up, and paused for a long moment. “I think you’re wrong,” Trump said.

How has Trump earned that media? By saying outlandishly racist, sexist, and misogynistic things so that the media will continue to blast his face and his message, which is completely acceptable and echoes the voices of angry white racists, whether or not the statements are true. Facts don’t seem to mean much to his voters.

Trump nailed this point. He hasn’t needed to spend much at all to stay in the limelight. He can simply say horrible things and the media blasts his face everywhere. That doesn’t necessarily mean he believes the things he says, just that he knows what his base believes and will express those beliefs publicly, even if they’re horrible.

Although his advisers wanted him to wait until late in the game, perhaps skipping Iowa altogether, to enter the race, Trump knows media. It’s what he seems to do best.

“In the months before he entered the race, Trump’s then-advisers, Roger Stone and his young associate Sam Nunberg, proposed that the real estate developer and celebrity enter as late as possible, perhaps even skipping Iowa, and storm to the nomination a la Richard Nixon, who declared his candidacy for the 1968 Republican nomination on February 1 of that year. Trump nixed that strategy in favor of a June entrance for two reasons. The first was that it would allow him to test the waters long enough to exit the race in time for the fall season of his reality show The Apprentice in case his campaign flopped. The second was that Trump, an astute observer of the television industry, saw a news void he wanted to fill during the summer doldrums of the campaign — when most candidates are busy fundraising and building ground organizations.”

Hello, Trump supporters: you are being duped. Trump is not now and has never been a conservative or a Republican. He doesn’t hate our president or his healthcare plan. He isn’t pro-life. He isn’t against Hillary. He simply knows exactly what to say to you to keep you riled up, on his side, and to keep you watching him on television.

Congratulations, GOP. You’ve been had.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rcUCLwWCihE