Trump Is Playing 4D Chess

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About

Trump is Playing 4D Chess is an expression used by supporters of the 2016 Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump when speculating that his campaign is using advanced political strategies to manipulate and dominate the news media.

Origin

On September 15th, 2015, Dilbert comic artist Scott Adams published a blog post as part of a series on Donald Trump's persuasion titled "2-D Chess Players Take on a 3-D Chess Master."^[7] On March 24th, 2016, /r/The_Donald^[6] user Fire-Keeper responded to a comment about Trump's image macro tweet mocking the wife of rival Republican presidential candidate Ted Cruz with the statement "God Emperor plays 4D chess while the other candidates and the media play Tic Tac Toe in the sand."

Spread

In May 2016, The Washington Post released a recording of a man named John Miller, who identified himself as a publicist speaking on behalf of Donald Trump in a telephone interview conducted by People magazine reporter Sue Carswell in 1990. Many speculated that the man in the recording was actually Trump himself masquerading as a fictitious publicist. On May 13th, Fox News host Megyn Kelly discussed the tape with Carswell, who denied giving the recording to The Washington Post and suggested Trump leaked the tape himself to generate publicity. That day, the Fox News segment was submitted in a thread on /pol/, where a poster commented "Holy fuck he's playing 4d chess on a 3d chessboard against people playing 2d chess". Shortly after, a screenshot of the post reached the front page of the /r/The_Donald^[1] subreddit, gaining over 4,400 votes (80% upvoted) and 400 comments in 72 hours (shown below).

On May 14th, Redditor Dasidesi submitted a comic titled "The Absolute Madman is Playing 4D Non-Linear Politics" to the /r/The_Donald^[3] subreddit, where it received upwards of 4,200 votes (78% upvoted) and 80 comments within two months.

On May 26th, a two-pane image comparing Hillary Clinton playing Tic-Tac-Toe to Trump playing three stacked chessboards was posted to /r/The_Donald.^[4] Over the next two months, the post gathered more than 3,900 votes (80% upvoted) and 55 comments.

On July 6th, MMO-Champion Forums^[5] member darklift replied to a thread regarding Trump's Star of David tweet controversy, arguing "Trump is playing 4D chess with the idiot media that will report anything he does."

Melania Trump Speech

On July 9th, Redditor realpizzapartyben posted a 4chan screenshot titled "Trump Reminds the World he is Playing 4D Chess on a 3D Chessboard Against People Who Only Know 2D Checkers" to the /r/The_Donald^[2] subreddit, which speculated that Melania Trump's Republican National Convention speech was intentionally plagiarized from Michelle Obama's 2008 Democratic National Convention speech to manipulate the media.