Donald Trump frequently describes things as “like never seen before” and “the best” and “the worst”.
He pairs it with fabrications—that he’s responsible for the best something in our nation’s history (when he’s neither responsible, nor is it the best).
Recently, Senator Ron Johnson, who just oozes untrustworthiness, referred to President Biden as “a liberal, progressive, socialist Marxist.”
I think these are two parts of the same technique.
Repetition reinforces connotations, and misuse diminishes denotation. So, among some group of people, Biden has been made much worse. And among those same group of people, rational defense of him is harder. Likewise, reducing the impact of superlatives makes Donald Trump’s fabrication easier to defend….repetition makes this less of an exaggeration.
Do I believe Donald Trump and Ron Johnson came up with this on their own? Certainly not the former.
Someone expert in propaganda has encouraged him to continue to repeat claims of election fraud. In 2023, when he’s again campaigning for the presidency, he’ll repeat the claims again, and many voters will think “yeah, I’ve been hearing about that for years!”.
(And then the GOP-led congress will claim, without evidence, that fraud occurred in states Trump lost. And the GOP-led legislatures in those states will choose GOP electors.)