The Democratic National Committee has yet to confirm whether the document is real, but the Donald Trump opposition research file, supposedly stolen by Russian hackers last week, has turned up in its entirety on the Smoking Gun.
And either all of Trump’s obvious flaws are already known, or the DNC needs to hire some new researchers. The document, which is 240 pages long, is mostly a collection of Trump quotes about women, minorities, business and the like. The confidential “top narratives” center on two major points, neither of which is really earth-shattering knowledge.
First, Trump loves Trump!
One thing is clear about Donald Trump, there is only one person he has ever looked out for and that’s himself. Whether it’s American workers, the Republican Party, or his wives, Trump’s only fidelity has been to himself and with that he has shown that he has no problem lying to the American people. Trump will say anything and do anything to get what he wants without regard for those he harms.
Second, Trump often takes creative license with the truth. The dossier also states that Trump hates women, and is “divisive” and “offensive. The DNC further claims he’s a bad businessman and that he’s dependably un-serious as a candidate.
One thing that the report does hit on—and which sources inside other Republican campaigns have told Heat Street before—is that Trump is most vulnerable when the opposition is talking about how his actions have impacted “working class” Americans. In early primaries like Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina, that was the best performing anti-Trump narrative in advertising.
Other than that, though, Trump is pretty safe from the DNC’s groundbreaking revelations. They’re so average, Trump accused the DNC of “hacking” itself.
NEW – Trump statement on Gawker report of alleged DNC oppo file – "we believe DNC did the 'hacking" pic.twitter.com/Euwlko9Fex
— John Santucci (@JTSantucci) June 15, 2016
Where the leak does get interesting is in the ancillary documents, mostly pertaining to Hillary Clinton. It seems the DNC was working on her announcement speech months in advance and had, probably to no one’s surprise, decided around May of 2015 that Hillary Clinton would be the likely nominee.
It certainly looks like Bernie Sanders never even stood a chance. The memo, dated May 26, 2015, reads:
Our Goals& Strategy
Our goals in the coming months will be to frame the Republican field and the eventual nominee early and to provide a contrast between the GOP field and HRC. Over the long-term, these efforts will be aimed at getting us the best match-up in the general election, and weakening the eventual nominee through the course of the primary. We have outlined three strategies to obtain our goal:
1) Highlight when GOP candidates are outside of the mainstream on key issues, ideally driving the rest of the field to follow with positions that will hurt them in a general election;
2) Damage Republican presidential candidates’ credibility with voters by looking for targeted opportunities to undermine their specific messaging;
3) Use specific hits to muddy the waters around ethics, transparency and campaign finance attacks on HRC
Sanders had informally announced his presidential run about a month earlier. He formally announced with a video on his website, the exact day this memo came out.
Now that’s just cruel.
It’s not clear whether the whole DNC felt this way or just the person drafting the memo, but it does seem to fit into the larger narrative Sanders has been pushing regarding the DNC—and it explains why his campaign has become an internal insurgency against the DNC.
Not only were they willing to marshal superdelegates and handicap Bernie at every turn, they’d counted him out of the race within four weeks of his first event—or, at least important members charged with drafting memos about the upcoming primary did.
