It's debatable whether Trump's use of these logical fallacies is anything like a strategy, or it's merely the defensive flailing of a man who has deceived even himself.
Ad hominem attacks have been part of Trump's playbook from the start of his political life, paired with deflection, one of his standard moves is to distract from what he is being accused of by pointing at someone else as a horrible human being, who "hates America".
In the context of the ongoing impeachment inquiry, gaslighting has been especially prevalent. To refresh your memory, the inquiry was initially spurred by a whistle-blower who alleged that Trump had made improper promises to a foreign head of state. The Increasingly-Misnamed Justice Department and the Acting Director of National Intelligence sat on the complaint until the Intelligence Agencies' Inspector General notified Congress of the complaint. The complaint was made public and it indicated that in a phone call with the President of Ukraine, Trump had asked for a political opponent, former Vice President Joe Biden, and his son, be investigated. The White House released a reconstructed transcript of the call, which verified virtually all of the whistle-blower's allegations. Trump's lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, verified that he was working on Trump's behalf to get this investigation opened.
What Trump has been doing, on a daily basis, is claiming that the "transcript" debunked the whistle-blower's allegations. This is manifestly untrue. The only possible point of contention is that the threat to continue withholding aid to Ukraine was implied, rather than explicit. To most observers, the implicit threat was obvious and inarguable. Trump has a history of denying his intentions by pointing out that he did not use specific words. An earlier example is when he asked the White House Counsel to remove the Special Counsel, Trump's defense was that he "never said fire".
This is a classic example of gaslighting. Here we have something that is extremely easy to independently fact-check. You don't have to rely on the White House, or the media or Adam Schiff. The complaint and the "transcript" are both available to be read in their entirety, minus a redaction or two for national security purposes. Read both of these documents and no other conclusion can be reached other than that the whistle-blower was accurate in his complaint. Yet Trump continues to say, and his followers believe and repeat, that the whistle-blower got it all wrong. There are other examples involving the timing of each document's release, but the main point can easily be checked, yet Trump pushes an alternate reality that people believe! A related incident is Acting Chief of Staff Mulvaney admitting that there was a quid pro quo, with reporters asking follow up questions to verify that that's what he was actually saying and the very next day he denies that he said it, even though he is recorded saying it!
One of the things that a serial liar does is to keep telling the same lie over and over until people believe it, it's even better when it's a "big" lie. Adolph Hitler in Mein Kampf wrote that "...in the big lie there is always a certain force of credibility...[they] would not believe that others could have the impudence to distort the truth so infamously". Joseph Goebbels added that to deceive properly, the big lie must be continuously repeated.
What's horrifying is not that a man with so rickety a moral foundation as Trump self-servingly and constantly lies, but that he was convinced a substantial minority of Americans that Lies are Truth.
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