Aug
12
2022

Team Trump Thinks Their Prospective Donors are Idiots.

I was going to treat this article from Erick-Woods Erickson in my usual "du jour" fashion, but it really hit home for me: GOP Consultants: Stop Blaming Others For the Problems You Created. Why? Because when recently checking my Spam folder to make sure nothing got put in there accidentally, I noticed a pitch from "Team Trump".

This is no accident. I taught Gmail months ago that mail from any Trump organization should go into Spam. But… holy cow. To what kind of person are they aiming these?

Well, you see the title of this article.

I thought I'd share it with readers. (Yes, my actual e-mail address is in there. I figure if Team Trump knows it, it's not exactly secret.) Here's page one of four (click to go a PDF):

[Page 1]

Observations:

  • There's nothing that says "we can't even guess at your name" like the "Friend" salutation.
  • I'm supposed to be impressed that I am to be an "Official" member?
  • Are there any non-Ultra MAGA teams? Or is it Ultra or nothing?
  • Nice to know that I'm the BEST of the BEST, though. Even though you don't know my name.
  • If you really, truly, won't succeed without me, then… guess what? You won't succeed.

But let's press on to Page Two:

[Page 2]

  • Oooh! A gold crown. And stars!
  • And this mere invitation, aka "unsolicited spam", is the greatest honor I could ever receive? I have to say I'm kind of disappointed by that. (I got some pretty nice Fathers Day cards, and I felt they were pretty great, honor-wise. Was I wrong?)
  • And you might have noticed that I blew through that one-hour deadline already.
  • And (gosh) Trump is gonna look for my name?
  • What kind of moron do you take me for?
  • Let me guess: first class.

There's a lot of whitespace on page three:

[Page 3]

  • Ah, looks like legal boilerplate. Boring…
  • Whoa, wait! An Official 2022 Trump Gold Card?! You gotta be shittin' me!
  • And it's personalized?!
  • And activated?! W00t!?

I wonder what an Official Trump Gold Card could look like? Ah, here it is on page four!

[Page 4]

I strongly suspect that a Trump Gold Card and $7.99 will get me a three-topping pizza at Domino's.

I'd like to think that transparently phony pitches like this are likely to turn off more people than they attract. I could be wrong. I hope not.

I'm not alone in bemoaning the dreadfulness of Trump/GOP marketing mail. Here's Erickson, from that article I mentioned way up at the top:

The New York Times ran a big story last week on how GOP online donations are down 12% even as GOP enthusiasm seems to be surging.

The consultant class of the GOP is pushing the mythology that Google and Apple are flagging their emails because tech companies hate Republicans. I’ve spent a week on the phone with many Republican consultants, including those tied to campaigns whose emails make it to my inbox. They all tell me the same thing — the problem is not Google or Apple, but the GOP consultant class.

I think they are right. Concurrently, I would not be surprised if woke Google employees are trying to disrupt, but the consultants are giving them room to do so by poor email list management. Allow me to show you some screenshots of my junk mail folder. To be clear, I did not sign up for and do no wish to receive any of these emails. I did not consent to be on the email list of any of these campaigns. And yet…

Erickson provides just the intelligence-insulting previews of all the different GOP campaign spam he recently received . It would be sad if the GOP blew the midterm elections simply because their e-mail offended just enough people.


Last Modified 2024-02-15 5:02 PM EDT