http://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/17/opinion/campaign-stops/donald-trumps-playbook-for-smearing.html 2016-10-17 15:35:10 Donald Trump’s Playbook for Smearing When Trump is feeling cornered, in business or politics, he has a go-to strategy: He lies, and he just keeps lying. === This article is part of the Opinion Today newsletter. You can “This is a classic example of where Trump begins to demonstrate something he talks about all the time today, which is he’s a counterpuncher. So somebody comes after him and says that he’s done something nefarious and horrible, and he just goes back at them with all guns blazing And if you lose, declare victory. And that’s exactly what happened there. He lost as clearly as you could lose but he loudly proclaimed his victory.” This quotation comes from Tony Schwartz, the ghostwriter of Donald Trump’s book, “The Art of the Deal.” Schwartz is talking about Trump’s response to a 1970s lawsuit against his company for refusing to rent apartments to African-Americans. But of course the description also applies to so much else — including Trump’s support for the Over the past week, multiple women have come forward with stories of Trump’s kissing, touching and grabbing them against their will. Trump has responded by calling them liars and insulting them (even though he had previously It’s the classic Trump strategy. “His lawyer said to me, ‘Donald is a believer that if you repeat something enough, people will start to believe it,’” the journalist Marie Brenner says in the same episode of Frontline that includes the Schwartz interview I quote above. Marc Fisher, another writer, similarly described a lesson that Trump had learned from a mentor: “You need to fight back harder than they ever hit you.” Keep in mind that all of the Frontline interviews took place before Trump’s sexual accusers came forward — and yet the descriptions capture Trump’s response to a T. When Trump is feeling cornered, in business or politics, he has a go-to strategy: He lies, and he just keeps lying.