Mark Goodman
With tin cup in hand, fully clad in hunting camouflage, and with binoculars for spotting game strapped to his chest, Donald Trump Jr. sits around a fire at “hunting camp.” This image of Trump Jr. as a rugged hunter came compliments of a 2016 presidential campaign ad entitled, “Heartland for Trump.”
“If you don’t start being vocal and show up, and vote your conscience on these things, it’s going to be gone because the other side — their hobby is getting rid of your freedoms and your pastime, especially when it’s hunting,” Trump Jr. proclaims in the video ad.
In this message and others that ran throughout the 2016 election on the internet, in print, and on television, Trump Jr. worked to embody the persona of a hunter and angler, aka a “sportsman” in political advertising vernacular. He also effected this persona at campaign rallies. Altogether, it was an effort to capture critically needed votes for his father, and it’s an effort Trump Jr. continues to this day.
The message during the election was clear: A vote for Hillary Clinton and/or the Democrats is a vote to have your guns taken away as well as your right to hunt and fish on our nation’s public lands.
While such claims were never true, a post mortem of the 2016 presidential election cycle confirms that this false messaging was a powerful component in Donald Trump’s victory.
Trump’s success was significantly aided by the micro-targeting of sportsmen voters in swing states across the country, specifically in the Midwest and West, via the subsidiary of the Trump campaign known as “Sportsmen for Trump.”
What makes this sportsman tactic even more interesting to political observers is that it directly mimics the efforts
