Donald Trump

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“He Will Feel Provoked And Do Self Destructive Things”

June 9, 2016 in Excerpts, Politics | Permalink

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Donald Trump, the Dumpster fire of American politics, is sad despite all the Happy Meals. His immense psychological wounds and elephantine ego cause him to receive concerns about ISIS terrorism and needling about his defunct line of steaks with equal gravity. He’s incapable of staying on message, and since he will be besieged about his dicey business practices between now and November–just read the new USA Today article about all the working people he’s allegedly stiffed–his campaign will be scattershot in an unprecedented way. 

Michael D’Antonio, author of The Truth About Trump, has spent a good deal of time interviewing Bull Connor as a condo salesman as well as his family members, with Donald Jr.’s comments about his “genetic superiority” particularly telling. The journalist shared his findings in an Ask Me Anything at Reddit. A few exchanges follow.

Question:

Do you think Trump has a sense of morality?

Michael D’Antonio:

Good question. He understand right and wrong on a basic level, but he doesn’t have a lot of empathy for other people. He judges every situation on the basis of how it affects him.he also will take things to extremes…to places where others won’t go…in order to get what he wants. Related to this is an exchange I had with him about his criticism of a famous elderly actress. Kim Novak. He tweeted horrible stuff about her. I asked him about it and his reply was “I don’t think I got into a lot of trouble for that.” He didn’t understand that he hurt her and that was what I was asking about.

Question:

In your opinion, how much of the Trump persona that the average person sees is authentically him and how much of it is an act?

Michael D’Antonio:

It’s weird…much of what we see on the campaign trial is authentic. He is very opinionated and believes very strongly that he is one of the most intelligent and talented people in the world. Seriously, in the world. So all the bluster is real.

Question:

What about that casino? How did he fail to take money from suckers on that one?

Michael D’Antonio:

Strange isn’t it that he was in a business where the “house” always wins, and somehow he lost. The big problem there was that he got overextended with construction. He ran up huge debt he couldn’t service. Also, Trump is a good deal maker but a so-so operator of businesses. He gets bored with managing complex service industries and doesn’t do well.

Question:

What’s the secret to stopping him?

Michael D’Antonio:

I think the key to stopping him is gentle mockery. It would be a bad idea to get down in the gutter with him. Nicknames and wild accusations wouldn’t work. But if a candidate points out his deficiencies, and keeps reminding voters of his failures including Trump U and the bankruptcies, he will feel provoked and do self destructive things.

Question:

How was it meeting and interviewing all of his family members? Any big surprises there?

Michael D’Antonio: 

His kids are smart, and well spoken. I was pretty shocked, though, when Donald Jr. told me that the family believes that people are like “racehorses” and that breeding is what matters. he said he was the product of the breeding of a high quality mother and a high quality father so he was genetically destined to succeed at a high level. Very weird stuff to say on the record. His wife Ivana was interesting. She started to tell me she thought that Donald could be explained as a guy who was never loved and sought to make up for it by seeking attention from the world. Then she stopped and said, “You know, I don’t really understand him at all.” She’s known him for forty years and still doesn’t get him.

Question:

What is the truth about Trump in one sentence?

Michael D’Antonio:

The Truth About Trump is that he is a damaged man, with an enormous ego, who wants the prize of the Presidency because it’s the biggest thing he could possibly go for.•

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“Huh?”

June 6, 2016 in Excerpts, Politics | Permalink

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Imagine Michael Wolff was seated in a Beverly Hills mansion with another person and the media reporter was only the second most evil one in the room. Who could the other dickwad be? Mussolini? Coach Knight? Justin Bieber? A combination of all three, in a sense. It was Donald Trump, the GOP nominee, who answered Wolff’s questions while scarfing down a pint of Haagen-Dazs—vanilla, of course–desperate to add some bulk to his delicate frame.

During the conversation for a Hollywood Reporter profile, Trump acknowledged he’s proud there are machine-gun-toting police surrounding his home and is ebullient about being told by his son-in-law that he might now be the world’s most famous person. That could be true because let’s face it, whether you love or hate Trump, you must admit his Q rating is approaching Hitler territory.

It’s brisk and well-written, as all Wolff pieces are, with Trump coming across particularly badly when unfamiliar with the term “Brexit,” but in all fairness, he was busy all afternoon measuring his penis. Of course, revealing the hideous hotelier as provincial, uninformed and poorly read is like exposing the Pope as male, Catholic and big-hatted.

Two excerpts follow.

I ask if he sees himself as having similarities with leaders of the growing anti-immigrant (some would say outright racist) European nativist movements, like Marine Le Pen in France and Matteo Salvini in Italy, whom The Wall Street Journal reported Trump had met with and endorsed in Philadelphia. (“Matteo, I wish you become the next Italian premier soon,” Trump was quoted as saying.) In fact, he insists he didn’t meet Salvini. “I didn’t want to meet him.” And, in sum, he doesn’t particularly see similarities — or at least isn’t interested in them — between those movements and the anti-immigrant nationalism he is promoting in this country.

“And Brexit? Your position?” I ask.

“Huh?”

“Brexit.”

“Hmm.”

“The Brits leaving the EU,” I prompt, realizing that his lack of familiarity with one of the most pressing issues in Europe is for him no concern nor liability at all.

“Oh yeah, I think they should leave.”

It is hard not to feel that Trump understands himself, and that we’re all in on this kind of spectacular joke.•

I ask that de rigeur presidential question, which does not seem yet to have been asked of him. “What books are you reading?”

He knows he’s caught (it’s a question that all politicians are prepped on, but who among his not-bookish coterie would have prepped him even with the standard GOP politician answer: the Bible?). But he goes for it.

“I’m reading the Ed Klein book on Hillary Clinton” — a particular hatchet job, which at the very least has certainly been digested for him. “And I’m reading the book on Richard Nixon that was, well, I’ll get you the exact information on it. I’m reading a book that I’ve read before, it’s one of my favorite books, All Quiet on the Western Front, which is one of the greatest books of all time.” And one I suspect he’s suddenly remembering from high school. But what the hell.•

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“A Sense Of Paranoia Is Growing Among His Campaign Staff Members”

May 27, 2016 in Excerpts, Politics | Permalink

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Donald Trump, Chairman Mao with a Big Mac, celebrated his GOP nomination by shoveling heart-clogging comfort food into his Sad Clown face, but winning can’t placate a truly miserable person for more than a few minutes. Despite the victory, the candidate’s inner circle is engaged in a Hunger Games-esque contest for power within the campaign while fearing conspiracy from the outside. The ugliness has taken on the paranoia of a cult, not surprising for a campaign based on Identity Politics ugly enough to make Mussolini blush.

From Ashley Parker and Maggie Haberman of the New York Times:

BISMARCK, N.D. — A constant stream of changes and scuffles are roiling Donald J. Trump’s campaign team, including the abrupt dismissal this week of his national political director.

A sense of paranoia is growing among his campaign staff members, including some who have told associates they believe that their Trump Tower offices may be bugged.

And there is confusion among his donors, who want to give money to a “super PAC” supporting Mr. Trump, but have received conflicting signals from top aides about which one to support.

On Thursday, Mr. Trump secured the Republican Party’s nomination for president, a remarkable achievement for a political newcomer. But inside his campaign, the limits of the real estate mogul’s managerial style — reliant on his gut and built around his unpredictable personality — are vividly on display, according to interviews with nearly a dozen Republicans inside and outside of the operation.

Two months after assurances that was the candidate would become “more presidential” and transition to a more unifying phase of his campaign, Mr. Trump continues to act as if the primary is still underway.•

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“The Entire Trump Phenomenon Has Nothing To Do With Policy Or Ideology”

May 19, 2016 in Excerpts, Politics | Permalink

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My argument throughout the worst political season in modern U.S. history has been that as desperate as many Americans may be in the aftermath of the 2008 economic collapse, the rise of Trump has less to do with the fear of falling than the fear of other. From the first crude utterances about Mexicans during his campaign announcement in June, the hideous hotelier been selling an embrace of white privilege, an angry rebuttal to the election of our first African-American President. The methods and madness behind realizing this promise of making American white again change daily–only the supremacy is consistent. When Trump encouraged Mitt Romney in 2012 to attack Obama with the racist Birther garbage, he clearly wasn’t the only one who felt this way. Perhaps Thomas Frank and others believe that if only Kansans had been whispered to just so that none of this would have happened, but the hate speech Trump offers seems to be precisely what a surprising number of Americans want to hear.

The opening of “This Is How Fascism Comes to America,” Robert Kagan’s blistering Washington Post editorial:

The Republican Party’s attempt to treat Donald Trump as a normal political candidate would be laughable were it not so perilous to the republic. If only he would mouth the party’s “conservative” principles, all would be well.

But of course the entire Trump phenomenon has nothing to do with policy or ideology. It has nothing to do with the Republican Party, either, except in its historic role as incubator of this singular threat to our democracy. Trump has transcended the party that produced him. His growing army of supporters no longer cares about the party. Because it did not immediately and fully embrace Trump, because a dwindling number of its political and intellectual leaders still resist him, the party is regarded with suspicion and even hostility by his followers. Their allegiance is to him and him alone.

And the source of allegiance? We’re supposed to believe that Trump’s support stems from economic stagnation or dislocation. Maybe some of it does. But what Trump offers his followers are not economic remedies — his proposals change daily. What he offers is an attitude, an aura of crude strength and machismo, a boasting disrespect for the niceties of the democratic culture that he claims, and his followers believe, has produced national weakness and incompetence. His incoherent and contradictory utterances have one thing in common: They provoke and play on feelings of resentment and disdain, intermingled with bits of fear, hatred and anger. His public discourse consists of attacking or ridiculing a wide range of “others” — Muslims, Hispanics, women, Chinese, Mexicans, Europeans, Arabs, immigrants, refugees — whom he depicts either as threats or as objects of derision. His program, such as it is, consists chiefly of promises to get tough with foreigners and people of nonwhite complexion. He will deport them, bar them, get them to knuckle under, make them pay up or make them shut up.•

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“Social Media Shines A Big, Bright Spotlight On Donald”

May 9, 2016 in Excerpts, Politics, Science/Tech | Permalink

Donald Trump, the dunce cap on America’s pointy head, has been enabled by traditional media, new media and a besieged American middle class, as he’s attempted to become our first Twitter President. Mostly, though, I think he’s been abetted by the large minority of racist citizens who want someone to blame, especially in the wake of our first African-American President and recent myriad examples of social progress.

Trump is no mastermind. He seems to have gotten into the race impetuously to burnish his idiotic brand–you know, Mussolini as an insult comic. His main asset in this campaign season has been an utter shamelessness, a willingness to stoop as low as he needs to go. Whether that’s a prescription for general-election victory, we’ll soon see.

It’s true that in a more centralized media and political climate, the hideous hotelier would have likely been squeezed from the process by gatekeepers, but the more unfettered new normal only gave him opportunity, not the nomination. I don’t think dumb tweets and smartphones made the troll a realistic contender for king. It was we the people.

In a pair of pieces, Nick Bilton of Vanity Fair and Rory Cellan-Jones of the BBC see technology as the main cause for the rise of Trump, if in different ways. Excerpts from each follow.

From Bilton:

I’ve heard people say that if it wasn’t for CNN, FOX, and a dozen other television outlets that have “handed Trump the microphone,” there would be no Trump. But with all due respect to the television media, they’re just not that important anymore. Perhaps his popularity is a result of a broken political system, others suggest. But let’s be realistic, people have always believed the system is broken. (It’s that same broken system, it should be noted, that has helped create many of the disruptive unicorns in Silicon Valley.)

The only thing that’s really changed between Trump’s other attempts to run for office and now is the advent of social media. And Trump, who has spent his life offending people, knows exactly how to bend it to his will. Just look at what happens if someone says something even remotely politically incorrect today: the online immune system, known famously as a Twitter mob, sets in to hold that person accountable. These mobs demand results, like seeing someone fired, making them shamefully apologize, or even seeing their life torn to shreds.

Yet someone like Donald Trump doesn’t get fired, or apologize, which only makes the mobs grow more fervent and voluble. And the louder they get, the more the news media covers the backlash. The more the TV shows talk about him, the more we all talk about him. If you want to truly comprehend why Trump is so popular, you just have to behold what people are saying in 140 characters or less. It’s the same thing Kim Kardashian and Kanye West, and anyone else who wants attention, understand. If we’re talking about them, they’re winning the war for attention. No one knows this better than Trump. Prod the social-media tiger, you get attention: say Mexicans are rapists, make fun of the disabled, pick a fight with the Pope, attack women, call the media dumb, and social media shines a big, bright spotlight on Donald.

Arianna Huffington may have once famously decided to cover Trump in the entertainment section of the Huffington Post, but the reality is we now live in a world where there is no line between entertainment, politics, and media. And I know Silicon Valley knows this, because they are the ones that helped eviscerate it.•

From Cellan-Jones:

Over the past year we have seen plenty of warnings about the potential impact of robots and artificial intelligence on jobs.

Now one of the leading prophets of this robot revolution has told the BBC he is already seeing another side-effect of automation – the rise of politicians such as Donald Trump and the Democratic presidential hopeful Bernie Sanders.

Martin Ford’s Rise of the Robots won all sorts of awards for its compelling account of a wave of automation sweeping through every area of our lives, posing a serious threat to our economic well-being. But there has also been plenty of pushback from economists who reckon his conclusion is wrong and that, as in previous industrial revolutions, the overall impact on jobs will be positive.

In London to speak at a conference on robots held by the Bank of America, he told me that he didn’t think this latest technology upheaval would be as benign as in the past: “The thing is that this time machines are now in some sense beginning to think. And what that means is we’re seeing machines encroach on the kind of capabilities that set humans apart.”

He sees the robots moving up the value chain, threatening any jobs which involve humans sitting in front of screens dealing with information – the kind of work which we used to think offered security to middle-class people with average skills.•

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“If It Was Up To Me We’d Bring Back Public Execution”

May 6, 2016 in Excerpts, Politics | Permalink

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The Trump campaign, the moral equivalent of Hitler using the N-word, stopped to take a leak in West Virginia. Some locals eagerly drank from that bowl because the hideous hotelier’s lies sound less polished than the ones they’ve heard before, because the promises he would break are different than other politicians’ broken promises. His words have an unfamiliar and angrier and more accusatory tone, placing the blame elsewhere, allowing the worst of our citizens to feel relieved of their flaws and failings.

This election season has shown us there are a surprising number of damaged, racist Americans who want to hold non-white people accountable for their problems, and the idea that all of them are poor, struggling folks is a falsehood. They come from all manner of background and financial situation and are united in that they look at Trump’s ugliness and see themselves.

Ben Jacobs’ of the Guardian has written an excellent account of rockhead visiting coal country. I will only say that I hope to never have Greg Bonecutter Jr. as my nurse. An excerpt:

The rally at the Charleston Civic Center, a brutalist hunk of concrete, started to fill up hours before Trump arrived and an orderly line outside dissolved into a horde of people desperate to make it into the event.

Greg Bonecutter Jr, a former nurse on disability from Letart, West Virginia, was an avid Trump supporter wearing a Make America Great Again hat and a shirt that proclaimed “Hillary sucks but not like Monica”.

He was a longtime Trump supporter who backed the nominee because he was someone with whom “you knew where you stood” and was sick “of politicians, big money scams and cover-up lies”. A registered independent, he said he thought Obama was “sucking Muslim tail and an apologist to terrorist actions” and “if it was up to me we’d bring back public execution and there’d be several trap doors on the White House lawn.” Bonecutter warned darkly that if Clinton was elected there might be another civil war.

Sandra Riddle of North Charleston shared his pessimism. She was worried about the supreme court and that if Clinton was elected “we might lose freedom of speech and assembly” as well as the second amendment. She wasn’t a gun owner but noted “we have to protect guns … because of people coming from Isis”.

Yet others simply liked Trump for his populist appeal.•

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“I Found Myself More And More Having To Look The Other Way”

May 3, 2016 in Excerpts, Politics | Permalink

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The original American revolutionaries sometimes resembled a torch-carrying mob, but they were mostly crazy like foxes. The Tea Party born in 2009 is just plain crazy. A chemtrail of a political movement, it was steeped from the start in extreme paranoia and prejudice.

Many of those Republicans who thought they were creating a big tent when welcoming this sideshow into the center ring are now disgruntled that Donald Trump is their candidate. Funny thing is, Trump is really no different than traditional bigotry merchants Atwater and Rove, who gained power by more subtly selling racism and sexism. The hideous hotelier has merely replaced the dog whistles with dog bites, trading the soft, coded language of Gingrich for graphic soundbites about rape, assassination and genitalia. Funnier still (though not in a ha-ha way), the end result would remain the same should he become President, as Trump would use, as predecessors did, the greatest seat of U.S. power to tilt the game further in favor of the wealthiest.

Ben Howe is just such a conservative Rip Van Winkle, awakened too late to find that his complicity with Birthers and Truthers has ultimately unloosed his nightmare. From his Red State essay:

Allies aren’t friends. They may not even be colleagues. They are simply people that you find enough agreement with on enough issues to not go after each other. You don’t have to overtly support one another but you certainly don’t try to hurt each other.

As more and more people knew who I was and I fostered relationships and allies, I found myself more and more having to look the other way. Moments where I would cringe at something someone said, or quietly roll my eyes at a post they wrote, thinking “Gosh, I can’t believe they think that way” or “I swear that person is one tweet away from saying Obama is from Kenya.”

I justified it quietly to myself the way we had at the beginning of the tea party when such things would happen. People would say outlandish things and I would find myself nodding my head and awkwardly walking away, not calling them out for their silliness.

After all, there were more pressing matters.

And so, as I said, I kept quiet about these allies in new media and in Washington. People who I thought I agreed with only 70% of the time. Which normally is a great reason to consider someone an ally, but not when the other 30% is cringe-inducing paranoia and vapid stupidity.

I chose peace over principle. I chose to go along with those I disagreed with on core matters because I believed we were jointly fighting for other things that were more important.  I ignored my gut and my moral compass.

The result is that, almost to a man, every single person I cringed at or thought twice about, is now a supporter and cheerleader of Donald Trump.

I looked the other way, and I’m sure many others did too, as these people rose to prominence and their microphones got louder.  I ignored it at times because I hate self-righteous liberals who tell anyone they disagree with that they don’t want to be around them and I didn’t want to be like that. At other times because, well, it was easier than standing against foolishness.

I’m done with that now. Albeit a bit too late.•

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“Trump Reminds Me Of Viktor”

April 29, 2016 in Excerpts, Politics | Permalink

Oh good, I can fit both hands.

Julia Ioffe of GQ wrote a very reasonable and well-researched profile of Melania Trump, somehow making the former middling model interesting, no mean feat if you’ve ever heard the QVC peddler speak. The candidate’s spouse is a sun-addled Stepford Wife, her frozen face always staring off into the distance as if she were a statue of a feral cat, seemingly convinced that at any given moment a Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue photographer might emerge from the sea in need of an expression that could pass for vaguely erotic.

Melania voiced her displeasure over the piece, and some Trump supporters reacted to the journalist with anti-Semitic threats. That’s no surprise because the hideous hotelier’s campaign, for the all the theorizing of Thomas Frank and his ilk, has always been about identity politics, not concerns over trade deals or technological unemployment. The identity happens to be a bigoted, white male. When it comes to Trump’s appeal, which is not mainly socioeconomic, the writing has always been on the wall, the wall he insists Mexico will pay for.

Perhaps the most interesting part of the piece reveals the Slovenian immigrant might have something of a father complex, her dad a portlier, lower-case version of her god-awful groom. An excerpt:

Jelančič remembers Melania’s father, Viktor, spending every Saturday lovingly washing his antique Mercedes, another rarity. “It was like a ritual,” Jelančič tells me. After leaving his job working for the mayor of Hrastnik, Viktor, then a member of the Slovenian Communist Party, became a salesman at a state-owned car company. Police files from the time indicate Viktor aroused suspicion for illicit trade and tax evasion in 1976. (He was charged with a tax offense, though his record was later cleared on account of Slovenia’s statute of limitations, a process the courts described to me as “legal rehabilitations.”) Melania blocked my efforts to speak to Viktor, and she denies that any such investigation took place. “He was never under any investigation, he was never in trouble,” she snaps. “We have a clean past. I don’t have nothing to hide.”

While working for the car company in Ljubljana, Viktor had an apartment there, in one of the city’s first residential high-rises. It was a prestigious address and provided the girls a place to stay in the capital so that they could attend design school—another luxury. Meanwhile, in Sevnica, a place where most people still lived in drab apartments doled out to them by their factories, Viktor managed to build a house situated in what was considered the toniest part of town.

“Trump reminds me of Viktor,” Viktor’s friend and neighbor Tomaž Jeraj tells me. “He’s a salesman. He has business in his veins.” It’s a sentiment unanimous in Sevnica, where Viktor and Amalija still own their house and visit two or three times a year.

Indeed, if you look at photos of Viktor Knavs and Donald Trump side by side, you wouldn’t be surprised at the comparison. Donald is just five years younger than his father-in-law. Both are tall, portly men with blond hair and sharp suits; they’re brash men who like the finer things in life. “He likes quality,” says Melania. “Viki”—as Viktor is known to his friends here—“likes good food,” Jeraj tells me. “He loves cars.” He was one of the many people who would tell me about Viktor’s extensive collection of Mercedes. “You’ll never see him in another car.”

Those who know the Knavses say that Viktor is boisterous and strong-willed. “Jokes come naturally to him,” Ana Jelančič, a neighbor and friend of the Knavses’, tells me. “If he goes into a bar, people pay attention.” Viktor sucks the air out of a room, she says. “He is the strong one in the relationship. Amalija supports him. She is a wonderful mother and wife.”•

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“The Idea That It Is Mostly Poor, Less-Educated Voters Who Are Drawn To Mr. Trump Is A Bit Of A Myth”

April 24, 2016 in Excerpts, Politics | Permalink

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Donald Trump, America’s resting bitch face, has been elevated to GOP frontrunner status by struggling, uneducated white Americans who’ve been ignored by the “elites.” Pat Buchanan and Thomas Frank alike will tell you that. But is it so?

If the Economist numbers are correct, that narrative has been profoundly overplayed. The hideous hotelier has seemed to me from the start to be buoyed mainly by his white-power salute and cult of personality, qualities which apparently have appealed across financial and educational categories.

An excerpt:

On average, voters with a high-school education or less have made up 16% of the Republican electorate overall and a fifth of Mr Trump’s voting base; but college graduates and postgraduates account for 43% of his support. Looking at income: voters earning under $50,000 have made up 29% of the electorate and 32% of Mr Trump’s support. Those earning over $100,000 have accounted for 37% of the electorate and 34% of his base. In Illinois, for example, he took 46% of the vote among low earners, but they made up only a quarter of the electorate, whereas he attracted 39% of the highest earners, who made up two-fifths of that primary’s voters. 

He does not have a majority of the “rich vote”. The race is split. But the idea that it is mostly poor, less-educated voters who are drawn to Mr Trump is a bit of a myth.•

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“His Careful Manipulation Of Negative Attention Is Something That Trump Noticed Immediately”

April 20, 2016 in Excerpts, Politics | Permalink

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Roy Cohn, who slithered his way through 20th-century American history, had the worst friends.

Senator Joseph McCarthy, who brought the fire and the stake to America’s latter-day Salem Witch Trials during the 1950s, was chief among them. The lawyer was pals with the notorious gossip columnist Walter Winchell, a one-man lynch mob of the media, who enjoyed enormous influence until he didn’t. In his dotage, Cohn also befriended another deeply damaged power seeker, Donald Trump, sharing with the then-young builder his lifetime learning of the dark arts of character assassination and skullduggery. The lessons stuck.

In a Guardian article, Michelle Dean recalls the latter union, an unholy one by any measure. The opening:

Donald Trump is a man who likes to think he has few equals. But once upon a time, he had a mentor: Roy Cohn, a notoriously harsh lawyer who rose to prominence in the mid-1950s alongside the communist-baiting senator Joseph McCarthy. His tactics would often land him in the papers, but Cohn was unafraid of being slimed by the press – he used it to his advantage. A devil-may-care-as-long-as-it-gets-a-headline attitude was Cohn’s trademark in life. Trump, in our time, has made it his.

His careful manipulation of negative attention is something that Trump noticed immediately when the two met in 1973. Trump and his father had just been sued for allegedly discriminating against black people in Trump’s built-and-managed houses in Brooklyn, and sought out Cohn’s counsel. Among other things, Cohn advised that Trump should “tell them to go to hell”. Cohn was hired, and one of his first acts as Trump’s new lawyer was to file a $100m countersuit that was quickly dismissed by the court. But it made the papers.

This was the beginning of a long and close relationship. Trump relied on Cohn for most of the legal matters during a particularly tricky decade. Cohn drew up the pre-nuptial contract between Donald and Ivana when they married in 1977 – a famously stingy contract that only gave Ivana $20,000 a year. Cohn also filed a suit brought by the United States Football League in 1984 against the NFL, seeking to break up the monopoly held over American football. Trump owned a USFL team and was widely seen as the force behind the suit; the initial press conference about it was a tag-team show performed by Cohn and Trump.

“I don’t kid myself about Roy. He was no Boy Scout. He once told me that he’d spent more than two-thirds of his adult life under indictment on one charge or another. That amazed me,” Trump wrote in The Art of the Deal. The unabashed pursuit of power, quick resort to threats, a love of being in the tabloid spotlight – all of these are things Trump took from his mentor.

In fact, if you’re familiar with Cohn’s history at all, their friendship starts to seem an even greater influence on Trump than any other.•

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“When He Goes Away, They Will Disappear Again”

April 18, 2016 in Books, Excerpts, Politics | Permalink

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John Grisham once dreamed of being a literary novelist, but realizing he would only be so-so, he turned his pen instead to legal thrillers, made a mint and entertained the masses. He succeeded brilliantly because he was self-aware enough to know what he lacked just as acutely as what he had.

Donald Trump, Bull Connor as a condo salesman, long ago sealed himself within a bubble of ego and possesses almost know self-knowledge. He’s as clueless about his many serious flaws as he is of the GOP delegate process. The hideous hotelier won’t be able to “Make America White Again,” but he has aggravated racist wounds during his odious campaign. 

In a smart Spiegel Online Q&A Marc Pitzke conducted with Grisham, the novelist argues the repercussions of Trump’s hateful pandering will be short-lived. Perhaps. Turning his attention to the other side of the aisle, the writer opines that “Bernie is a fluke.” The opening:

Question: 

Mr. Grisham, you’ve always been politically outspoken, in your books and in the world. Please explain Donald Trump to us. 

John Grisham:

Donald Trump appeals to the angry white people. Angry, mostly uneducated white people who feel left out. Who could have seen it coming? He’s been a buffoon for 30 years, nothing new. And he’s the most unqualified person to run for office in the history of this country.

Question: 

Are you worried he could win?

John Grisham:

I’m not worried about Trump. As a Democrat, I hope he gets the nomination. Because if he gets it, I don’t think there’s any way he can win. To win as a Republican, you have to win all the Republican core, you have to win a fair number of the Hispanic vote, and you have to win a fair number of the undecideds. There’s no way he can do that. I grew up in the world of fundamental Southern Baptist conservative Christians, and I know some people there who are simply not going to vote for Trump. Period. They despise him, third wife and all. And they would never vote for Hillary.

Question:

So they’d rather stay home?

John Grisham:

They would stay home. Trump is not going to get all his Republicans out, and he’s going to scare off a lot of the female voters, and he’s going to scare off every single Hispanic voter because of his outrageous statements about immigration.

Question:

But these angry white folks, they may be here to stay even if Trump goes away.

John Grisham:

Some will go away. They won’t be happy, but there’s no other place for them to go. Trump is appealing to a lot of voters who haven’t voted in a long time, they gave up on the system. He’s attracting a lot of people who’ve been out of the system for a long time. When he goes away, they will disappear again, too. If they don’t get a chance to vote for him in November, they’re probably not going to vote at all.•

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“Trump Is So Hugely Ignorant, Especially About Global Politics”

April 14, 2016 in Excerpts, Politics | Permalink

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Donald Trump, equal parts Slobodan Milosevic and Simon Cowell, has run his half-assed campaign on the slogan, “Make America Great Again.” You don’t have to read too far between the lines to realize this actually means “Make America White Again.” It’s about turning back the clock to a time when there was even more privilege for some in the country. Many other pronouncements haven’t been so subtle; they’ve been more dog bites than dog whistles.

The time-machine promises extend beyond our borders, with Trump claiming he can magically get the whole world to do America’s bidding, one area where he’s completely in sync with nation-building neocons, who dream of winning hearts and minds. That’s not happening. That reality has changed, as other countries have become richer and more competitive, and the U.S. isn’t the center of the world. That’s good for the most part, as tens of millions have been lifted from poverty in China and Brazil and other patches on the globe, which makes for a stabler planet, even if the news headlines don’t always reflect that. America has a prime seat at the table, but we don’t hold all the cards. Slogans and slurs won’t change that.

From a Quora Q&A with Rice Psychology Professor David Schneider, an exchange that reflects the new world order:

Question:

If Donald Trump won the election, could he destroy civilization?

David Schneider:

Not in the normal course of things. Depends on what you mean by civilization, but the best part of it would be destroyed in an all out nuclear war. Possible? It’s always possible, and it could happen in a number of ways. One possibility would be an attack on Israel by say any number of countries unless the new POTUS works very hard to keep such weapons limited to the present few states. If Israel is attacked then it would retaliate, and there are lots of scenarios that get the US, then Russia involved. India and Pakistan? At the end of the day most Western countries really don’t care enough to risk getting involved. China? Not likely given their emphasis on economic growth and their need for Western countries to buy their goods. North Korea? They are just crazy enough to launch a nuclear device but they would be obliterated and no one would really care (except their people of course).

The most likely is a war between Russia and the U.S (maybe backed by Europe). Putin and Trump are both bullies and having them go toe to toe would be bad, bad, bad. I don’t think that Trump has the discipline or the skill to do the kind of negotiations required. Business negotiations are not the same as international ones for a lot of reasons. Putin has made it clear that he regards most of the former Soviet Union as his possessions and that his chief aim is to restore Russia to its formal power. Bullies with inferiority complexes are dangerous opponents.  I’m quite sure that he’s smart enough to realize that an atomic war would mean that there is no Russian left to restore itself to former glory. Still when people get angry or feel they are backed into a corner, they sometimes become irrational. It’s highly unlikely that any country would set out to wage such a war, but people are not always rational and escalation remains a constant danger. Some people seem to think that we ought to stand up to Russia whatever that means. But we have very little leverage and Putin is exactly the kind of leader you don’t want to bully.

Likely? No. Easy to imagine a scenario? Yes. Trump is so hugely ignorant (well, about most things) but especially about global politics. The days are over when the US, by itself, could dictate what other countries do. Conservatives, especially the neo-cons need to get over it. There are lots of reasons to think Trump would be a disaster as President, but the most important is that  he doesn’t have the right temperament not knowledge to conduct a reasonable foreign policy.•

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“He Proved Himself To Be A Maestro Of The Mob Mentality”

April 10, 2016 in Excerpts, Politics, Science/Tech | Permalink

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At this point, the best Donald Trump can hope for is that his campaign goes down ingloriously in flames. The fire may not be metaphorical, however.

Remarkably unprepared–unwilling, even–to lead, the troll can only dream of the appearance of the Republican nomination being “stolen” from him should he not secure a majority of delegates. His thuggish Presidential bid, a crude and racist joke that got out of hand, may yet ball itself into a big fist that’s unleashed at the GOP convention, the misdemeanors of the trail escalating into felonies.

Among the uniformly irresponsible members of the rogues’ gallery who serve as the hideous hotelier’s braintrust, the gutter-level political hack Roger Stone has already turned prepper for an End of Days scenario in Cleveland, unveiling the threats, only further reducing Trump to the appearance of John Gotti with a Southern strategy.

In a New Yorker piece by Evan Osnos, one of my favorite contemporary nonfiction writers, the journalist reminds that when it comes to this ugly campaign season, Trump didn’t build it alone. It took a village. But how was the mob activated? An excerpt:

It’s easy to mock Trump for his thin-skinned fixation on the size of his audiences, but that misses a deeper point: you can’t have a riot without a mob. Even before he was a candidate, Trump displayed a rare gift for cultivating the dark power of a crowd. In his role as the primary advocate of the “birther” fiction, he proved himself to be a maestro of the mob mentality, capable of conducting his fans through crescendos of rage and self-pity and suspicion. Speaking to the Times editorial board, in January, he said, “You know, if it gets a little boring, if I see people starting to sort of, maybe, thinking about leaving, I can sort of tell the audience, I just say, ‘We will build the wall!,’ and they go nuts.”

The symbiotic exchange between a leader and his mob can thrive on what social psychologists call “emotional contagion,” a hot-blooded feedback loop that the science writer Maggie Koerth-Baker describes as “our tendency to unconsciously mimic the outward expression of other people’s emotions (smiles, furrowed brows, leaning forward, etc.) until, inevitably, we begin to feel what they’re feeling.”

When we are exposed to the right energy, even those of us who are not inclined to cross the boundaries from politics to force will do things that we would ordinarily consider reprehensible. Stephen David Reicher, a sociologist and psychologist at the University of St. Andrews, in Scotland, who has studied soccer mobs and race riots, told Wired last month, “People don’t lose control, but they begin to act with collective values.” Recently, he has turned his attention to studying Trump’s crowds. “It’s not your individual fate that becomes important but the fate of the group.”

And therein lies the key to Trump’s ability to introduce menace into the convention: he does not need to call upon his supporters to do anything but protect their newfound sense of identity and purpose.•

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“They Are Wheelers And Dealers”

April 5, 2016 in Excerpts, Politics | Permalink

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Gary Silverman’s excellent Financial Times article includes passages about repossessed monkeys and Ukrainian trophy wives, as all good stories about the odious Trump campaign must.

The piece is about the corrosive candidate’s political point man in Vegas, his billionaire business partner Phil Ruffin, who would be a wonderfully entertaining Horatio Alger figure if he wasn’t working his damndest to elect an American Mussolini. A “Cadillac-and-redhead man” is how the journalist describes his subject, who in the ’50s repossessed a surly simian for a Texas department store and in the Aughts acquired a second wife, an Eastern European beauty queen 46 years his junior.

Ruffin hated the monkey and loves his bride but lacks any kind of passion for politics. He promised his buddy he’d back him, however, and a deal’s a deal.

An excerpt:

A wiry, wily Wichita, Kansas, native who was 147 pounds when he was winning titles as a high school wrestler, Mr Ruffin is the stylistic opposite of his brash buddy from New York. He wears wire-rim glasses. His thinning hair, dyed a deep orange, falls haphazardly across his scalp, unlike Mr Trump’s structured coiffure.

They are the kind of Americans who inspired historian Walter McDougall’s description of the US as a nation of “hustlers”, by which he meant “builders, doers, go-getters, dreamers, hard workers, inventors, organisers (and) engineers” as well as “self-promoters, scofflaws, occasional frauds and peripatetic self-reinventors”.

Both trace their family histories in the US to the frontier. Mr Trump is the grandson of a German immigrant who took part in the Alaska gold rush before settling in New York. Mr Ruffin’s paternal grandfather left Lebanon for Oklahoma, where Mr Ruffin’s father recalled witnessing the 1924 gunfight that took the life of Bill Tilghman, the legendary gunslinger and marshal of Dodge City, Kansas.

Neither Mr Trump nor Mr Ruffin has created a smartphone app or commanded an enterprise of the complexity of a General Electric, a Goldman Sachs or a Google. They are wheelers and dealers in real estate, hotels, casinos and whatever else comes their way. Theirs is a milieu where money is made by seizing moments, squeezing contractors, battling creditors, and “pushing and pushing and pushing,” as Mr Trump put it in The Art of the Deal, his 1987 book.

“We negotiate all the time,” says Mr Ruffin. “We negotiate something every week.”•

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“Where Do You Start The Movie?”

April 3, 2016 in Excerpts, Politics | Permalink

Donald Trump, equal parts George Steinbrenner and George Wallace, has made it clear that there will be riots if he doesn’t get the GOP nomination. There will likely be riots even if he does. There’ll be riots.

The cancerous candidate sat for an interview with Bob Woodward and Robert Costa of the Washington Post, and while it doesn’t make Trump answer for his racist and xenophobic comments and peculiar policy positions, it is fascinating as a psychological portrait of a delusional megalomaniac who doesn’t even understand his own motivations. His extremely logorrheic explanation of why he entered politics isn’t exactly analogous to Ted Kennedy’s famous waterloo when he was unable to express why he wanted to be President during his 1979 joust with Jimmy Carter, but I think it does confirm suspicions that Trump impetuously entered the race because he’s an unhappy man whose need for attention can’t be sated. Thanks to a perfect storm of GOP craziness, he wound up the clear frontrunner, even if his path to delegate majority is increasingly difficult to find.

If it succeeds as a personality profile, the interview fails on other grounds. One passage that’s somehow making news is a Trump prediction the Post reporters were remiss in not effectively addressing. It’s this:

“I’m talking about a bubble where you go into a very massive recession. Hopefully not worse than that, but a very massive recession.”•

If it sounds familiar, that’s because Trump periodically releases such sky-is-falling mouthfarts which almost always turn out to be wrong. Here’s another one from 2012:

Billionaire Donald Trump says the U.S. economy is poised for “massive inflation” and is warning investors to take steps now to protect themselves.•

Someday the hideous hotelier will be correct in a stopped-clock-being-right-twice-a-day fashion, but it won’t be because of any knowledge. Woodward and Costa should have pushed back at this proclamation.

The opening:

Bob Woodward: 

And the real first question is, where do you start the movie of your decision to run for president? Because that is a big deal. A lot of internal/external stuff, and we’d love to hear your monologue on how you did it.  

Donald Trump: 

Where do you start the movie? I think it’s actually — and very interesting question — but I think the start was standing on top of the escalator at Trump Tower on June 16, which is the day — Bob, you were there, and you know what I mean, because there has. . . . I mean, it looked like the Academy Awards. I talk about it. There were so many cameras. So many — it was packed. The atrium of Trump Tower, which is a very big place, was packed. It literally looked like the Academy Awards. And . . .  .

Bob Woodward: 

But we want to go before that moment.

Donald Trump:   

Before that? Okay, because that was really . . .  .

Bob Woodward: 

Because, other words, there’s an internal Donald with Donald.

Robert Costa:

Maybe late 2014 or before you started hiring people?

Donald Trump: 

Well, but that was — okay, but I will tell you, until the very end. . . . You know, I have a good life. I built a great company. It’s been amazingly — I’m sure you looked at the numbers. I have very little debt, tremendous assets. And great cash flows. I have a wonderful family. Ivanka just had a baby. Doing this is not the easiest thing in the world to do. People have — many of my friends, very successful people, have said, “Why would you do this?”

Bob Woodward: 

So is there a linchpin moment, Mr. Trump, where it went from maybe to yes, I’m going to do this? And when was that?

Donald Trump:

Yeah. I would really say it was at the beginning of last year, like in January of last year. And there were a couple of times. One was, I was doing a lot of deals. I was looking at very seriously one time, not — they say, oh, he looked at it for many — I really, no. I made a speech at the end of the ’80s in New Hampshire, but it was really a speech that was, it was not a political speech. But because it happened to be in New Hampshire . . .  .

Bob Woodward: 

And that guy was trying to draft you.

Donald Trump: 

And he was a very nice guy. But he asked me. And he was so intent, and I made a speech. It was not a political speech, anyway, and I forgot about it.

Bob Woodward: 

And that was the real possibility? Or the first . . .  .

Donald Trump: 

Well no, the real possibility was the Romney time, or the Romney term. This last one four years ago. I looked at that, really. I never looked at it seriously then. I was building my business, I was doing well. And I went up to New Hampshire, made a speech. And because it was in New Hampshire, it was sort of like, Trump is going to run. And since then people have said, Trump is going to run. I never was interested. I could almost say at all, gave it very little thought, other than the last time, where Romney was running.•

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“Trump Never Intended To Be The Candidate”

March 29, 2016 in Excerpts, Politics | Permalink

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Donald Trump, a classy individual who may soon be taking leaks in White House terlets, never actually wanted to be President.

David Remnick recently scolded himself for not believing that the Trump campaign would be anything more than a couple of months of brand-building before quickly burning out. He shouldn’t be so tough on himself, since that’s all the hideous hotelier himself was planning. He threw lots of shit at the wall–the wall Mexico will be paying for, I suppose–and some of it, shockingly, stuck. If at the conclusion of his campaign announcement speech you told Trump that his “Mexicans are rapists” remark was a winner, he would have been stunned. He’s actually occasionally acknowledged during the campaign that he knew he was making ridiculous comments that should not be taken seriously. But the fascist poseur became a frontrunner and is now in it to win it. 

Former Trump strategist Stephanie Cegielski, who’s left the campaign, writes of her former boss in XO Jane. An excerpt:

I don’t think even Trump thought he would get this far. And I don’t even know that he wanted to, which is perhaps the scariest prospect of all.

He certainly was never prepared or equipped to go all the way to the White House, but his ego has now taken over the driver’s seat, and nothing else matters. The Donald does not fail. The Donald does not have any weakness. The Donald is his own biggest enemy.

A devastating terrorist attack in Pakistan targeting Christians occurred on Easter Sunday, and Trump’s response was to tweet, “Another radical Islamic attack, this time in Pakistan, targeting Christian women & children. At least 67 dead, 400 injured. I alone can solve.”

Ignoring the fact that at the time Trump tweeted this (time-stamped 4:37 p.m.) the latest news reports had already placed the number differently at 70 dead, 300 injured, take a moment to appreciate the ridiculous, cartoonish, almost childish arrogance of saying that he alone can solve. Does Trump think that he is making a cameo on Wrestlemania (yes, one of his actual credits)?

This is not how foreign policy works. For anyone. Ever.

Superhero powers where “I alone can solve” problems are not real. They do not exist for Batman, for Superman, for Wrestlemania and definitely not for Donald Trump.
 
What was once Trump’s desire to rank second place to send a message to America and to increase his power as a businessman has nightmarishly morphed into a charade that is poised to do irreparable damage to this country if we do not stop this campaign in its tracks.

I’ll say it again: Trump never intended to be the candidate. But his pride is too out of control to stop him now.•

 

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“He Will Change What It Means To Be A Republican”

March 28, 2016 in Excerpts, Politics | Permalink

2/11/1985 President Reagan shaking hands with Donald Trump and Ivana trump during the State Visit of King Fahd of Saudi Arabia at the state dinner in the Blue Room

Nicholas Confessore is one of the amazingly talented and dedicated group of New York Times political reporters who’ve covered the 2016 American Presidential election better than I think any national election in this country has ever been covered by any news organization. In “How the G.O.P. Elite Lost Its Voters to Donald Trump,” Confessore writes about the Republican power structure having the candidate selection process torn from its grip. There’s a lot of good stuff about how the party lost touch with its working-class base, but I think the article–like almost all articles this odd season–misses one valuable point: Donald Trump is essentially a modern Republican, the substance the same even if the style is markedly different. 

Trump uses unvarnished, hateful language, substituting dog bites for dog whistles, and his wedge issues are married to populism more than social issues, but he’s still a wealthy person trying to pick the pockets of lower-income people and shift the money to those who already have plenty. His tax schemes and health-care plans assuredly would send the U.S. in that direction. Trump may seem like a different thing because he wasn’t anointed from on high, but he’s the new boss, same as the old boss.

From Confessore:

As the Republican Party collapses on itself, conservative leaders struggling to explain Mr. Trump’s appeal have largely seized on his unique qualities as a candidate: his larger-than-life persona, his ability to dominate the airwaves, his tough-sounding if unrealistic policy proposals. Others ascribe Mr. Trump’s rise to the xenophobia and racism of Americans angry over their declining power.
 
But the story is also one of a party elite that abandoned its most faithful voters, blue-collar white Americans, who faced economic pain and uncertainty over the past decade as the party’s donors, lawmakers and lobbyists prospered. From mobile home parks in Florida and factory towns in Michigan, to Virginia’s coal country, where as many as one in five adults live on Social Security disability payments, disenchanted Republican voters lost faith in the agenda of their party’s leaders.

In dozens of interviews, Republican lawmakers, donors, activists and others described — some with resignation, some with anger — a party that paved the way for a Trump-like figure to steal its base, as it lost touch with less affluent voters and misunderstood their growing anguish.

“This is absolutely a crisis for the party elite — and beyond the party elite, for elected officials, and for the way people have been raised as Republicans in the power structure for a generation,” said Ari Fleischer, who served as press secretary for President George W. Bush. “If Donald Trump wins, he will change what it means to be a Republican.”•

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“Look Closer, However, And Russia’s Victory Rings Hollow”

March 17, 2016 in Excerpts, Politics | Permalink

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Historically, Mussolini may be the template for the odious Donald Trump, but on the contemporary world stage, he most resembles Vladimir Putin. Russia’s swaggering, macho coward makes loud noises to drown out the death rattle of outdated foreign and domestic policies lifted from the twentieth century. The American idiot may be a make-believe mafioso as opposed to Putin’s very real murderous thug, but the similarities are still disconcerting. Of course, in addition to not realizing Putin a poisoner and pistolman by proxy, Trump seems to not have noticed the Russian president is on increasingly shaky ground. 

From the Economist:

JUBILANT crowds waved Russian flags; homecoming pilots were given fresh-baked bread by women in traditional dress. Judging by the pictures on television, Vladimir Putin won a famous victory in Syria this week. After his unexpected declaration that the campaign is over, Mr Putin is claiming credit for a ceasefire and the start of peace talks. He has shown off his forces and, heedless of civilian lives, saved the regime of his ally, Bashar al-Assad (though Mr Assad himself may yet prove dispensable). He has “weaponised” refugees by scattering Syrians among his foes in the European Union. And he has outmanoeuvred Barack Obama, who has consistently failed to grasp the enormity of the Syrian civil war and the threat it poses to America’s allies in the Middle East and Europe.

Look closer, however, and Russia’s victory rings hollow. Islamic State (IS) remains. The peace is brittle. Even optimists doubt that diplomacy in Geneva will prosper (see article). Most important, Mr Putin has exhausted an important tool of propaganda. As our briefing explains, Russia’s president has generated stirring images of war to persuade his anxious citizens that their ailing country is once again a great power, first in Ukraine and recently over the skies of Aleppo. The big question for the West is where he will stage his next drama.

Make Russia great again

Mr Putin’s Russia is more fragile than he pretends. •

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“Today We Appear To Be Going Further And Further Into Uncharted Territory”

March 13, 2016 in Excerpts, Politics | Permalink

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Donald Trump, Bull Connor with a spray tan, has turned the American electoral process into a bumfight.

His violence-stoking rhetoric is being condemned even by fellow GOP hopefuls, including the rudderless Marco Rubio. Of course, the Florida Senator simultaneously tried to lay blame for the Trump campaign fracases on the divisiveness of Barack Obama, when the President’s chief sin seems to be that he’s black. It was never Obama’s tan suit that outraged those on the right but his tan skin.

Watching Trump yesterday, sweaty and frightened, ducking from a protestor who charged the stage, reminds that he trolled the President relentlessly with his Birther garbage, charging him with the phantom crime of occupying the White House illegally, which could have easily incited some unstable person into a reckless act. Trump clearly didn’t care nor has he been worried about encouraging his supporters to inflict violence on peaceful protesters during his disgusting campaign. Shaun King of the NYDN was the first to point out that someone is going to get killed at one of the rallies, and now John Marshall of the Talking Points Memo has published similar sentiments. An excerpt:

Today we appear to be going further and further into uncharted territory. After the cancellation of Trump’s event yesterday in Chicago, we had the incident at the rally in Dayton, Ohio in which a protestor, Thomas Dimassimo, jumped the security perimeter surrounding Trump and tried to rush the speaking platform. Dimassimo was charged with disorderly conduct and inducing panic and later released on bail. At a subsequent event and on Twitter, Trump claimed that Dimassimo was tied to ISIS, apparently on the basis of a hoax video his staff found on Youtube. At yet another event this evening Trump called for the mass arrest of protestors, noting that arrest records would leave an “arrest mark” and “ruin the rest of their lives.” Trump also repeatedly blamed “communist” Bernie Sanders for what now appear to be the almost constant protests and disruptions at his rallies.

This evening at an event in Kansas City there were numerous protest interruptions inside the rally and a chaotic scene outside in which, according to a report on MSNBC, police used pepper spray on at least one group of protestors.

For all the talk about Mussolini, let alone Hitler, George Wallace is the best analog in the last century of American politics – the mix of class politics and racist incitement, the same sort of orchestrated ratcheting up of conflict between supporters and protestors. As all of this has unfolded over the course of the day there have been numerous instances of Trump supporters calling for protestors to “go back to Africa” and another on video calling on them to “go to fucking Auschwitz.”

Is the man invoking Nazi concentration camps in that video an anti-Semite or just a ramped hater in a frenzy of provocation? I’m not sure we know. And as I’ll argue in a moment, in a climate of incitement and crowd action, it doesn’t necessarily matter.

It may sound like hyperbole. But this is the kind of climate of agitation and violence where someone will end up getting severely injured or killed. I do not say that lightly.•

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“Trump Might Be Reading From A Script Prepared In 1854”

March 11, 2016 in Excerpts, Politics | Permalink

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Donald Trump, equal parts Chairman Mao and Vince McMahon, knows nothing, but is he a Know Nothing?

The Stalin of steaks has flourished thanks to virulent anti-immigrant speech in a country that’s grown rich on the backs of immigrants (and forced immigrants known as slaves). That might sound strange, but as disconcerting as it is, it’s not a new thing. The strain against the Other always lurks in the underbelly of the country, sometimes rearing to the surface.

In a New Statesman article, Ben Wilson recalls an unhappy time much like our own: the 1850s. An excerpt:

Trump would certainly have found the 1850s a congenial time. This was one of the most explosive periods in modern history, with proliferating technologies, shifting patterns of trade and migration on a colossal scale. At a time when the US was entering the global economy, many saw themselves as victims of the new world order. As cities were rapidly reshaped by new industries and tens of thousands of newcomers, many native-born Americans believed their wages, their way of life and even their country were being taken from them. And there were plenty of politicians ready to egg on their discontent, provoking racial prejudices to garner votes.

Today, Trump might be reading from a script prepared in 1854. The American political establishment was shocked in that year when a new political movement known as the Know Nothings sensationally won a series of local and Congressional elections. Started in secret as the Order of the Star Spangled Banner (it got its memorable moniker from the instruction given members to deny any involvement), the movement had prepared the ground well. Look at your cities, the Know Nothings told voters, with its squalor and drunkenness; look at your falling wages. Who was to blame? The answer was simple. The Know Nothings alleged that immigrants, many of them Irish Catholics, were responsible for an upsurge in crime, particularly sexual and violent crime. And as Catholics who supposedly owed their allegiance to the Pope, the migrants would fundamentally alter the character of the Protestant United States. Sound familiar?

The parallels between the Know Nothings and Trump are a reminder that populist nationalism lies close to the surface of American politics, remaining dormant most of the time.•

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“Trade May Be His Single Biggest Concern – Not White Supremacy”

March 9, 2016 in Excerpts, Politics | Permalink

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While I agree with Thomas Frank that few things are more out of touch than New York Times editorials–remember Maureen Dowd’s awful, cackling Donald Trump interview?–I can’t support his contention in the Guardian that the average Trump supporter isn’t chiefly and deeply racist. The first thing you hear from his voters isn’t that the fascist condo salesman is strong on trade but rather that “he isn’t politically correct.” Or that “he speaks the truth.” Those lines seem a dog whistle for bigotry considering the statements he’s made. His nativist blame game is the exploitation of not only economic fears but also of racial ones. Mostly the latter, I believe. Maybe the trouble with Kansas is, at long last, Kansans.

From Frank:

Stories marveling at the stupidity of Trump voters are published nearly every day. Articles that accuse Trump’s followers of being bigots have appeared by the hundreds, if not the thousands. Conservatives have written them; liberals have written them; impartial professionals have written them. The headline of a recent Huffington Post column announced, bluntly, that “Trump Won Super Tuesday Because America is Racist.” A New York Times reporter proved that Trump’s followers were bigots by coordinating a map of Trump support with a map of racist Google searches. Everyone knows it: Trump’s followers’ passions are nothing more than the ignorant blurtings of the white American id, driven to madness by the presence of a black man in the White House. The Trump movement is a one-note phenomenon, a vast surge of race-hate. Its partisans are not only incomprehensible, they are not really worth comprehending.

* * *
Or so we’re told. Last week, I decided to watch several hours of Trump speeches for myself. I saw the man ramble and boast and threaten and even seem to gloat when protesters were ejected from the arenas in which he spoke. I was disgusted by these things, as I have been disgusted by Trump for 20 years. But I also noticed something surprising. In each of the speeches I watched, Trump spent a good part of his time talking about an entirely legitimate issue, one that could even be called leftwing.

Yes, Donald Trump talked about trade. In fact, to judge by how much time he spent talking about it, trade may be his single biggest concern – not white supremacy. Not even his plan to build a wall along the Mexican border, the issue that first won him political fame. He did it again during the debate on 3 March: asked about his political excommunication by Mitt Romney, he chose to pivot and talk about … trade.•

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“It Is An Uprising Borne By The White Lower And Middle Classes”

March 8, 2016 in Excerpts, Politics | Permalink

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I asked this question last September: If Donald Trump grew a small, square mustache above his lip, would his poll numbers increase yet again?

We know the sad answer now. A candidacy that began with a bigoted proclamation accusing Mexicans of being rapists has grown into a full-fledged racist, nativist campaign that ejects African-Americans at stump speeches and vows to ban all 1.6 billion Muslims in the world from entering our immigrant country. It’s the ugliest, saddest face America has to show, and a surprising one since even those who doubted the election of President Obama signaled a post-racial nation never could have guessed that this many white citizens missed using ethnic slurs without consequence. Trump followers explain their adoration for the bully by exclaiming, “He says what I wish I could say,” and considering the words he’s chosen, it’s clear where their minds are at. Since his politics are often at odds with true conservatism, it’s revealed the GOP has long been about prejudice, not policy. “Make America Great Again” can easily be read as “Make America White Again.”

If Trump’s ascension marks the end of the modern Republican Party, it’s a death in the gutter. If he were to actually become President, America itself will have fallen from the curb.

From Holger Stark at Spiegel:

Trump’s unexpected success is part of a political revolt that has taken hold in America in recent months, and is shifting all known parameters. It is an uprising borne by the white lower and middle classes, and it is directed against the liberal establishment, President Barack Obama and the political correctness of the post-modern age — but also against a Republican Party, which the party rebels believe is part of the ailing system. Deeply religious Christians, the so-called Evangelicals, whose ancestors came from Europe and who helped create the United States, are the core of this uprising.

At the beginning of this election campaign, there were several things that were considered inalienable truths in political America. One of those was the recognition that the United States is a land of immigration, that its population is becoming more colorful, multicultural and multiethnic.

Bucking Convention

The lesson seemed clear: Those who hope to win elections must absolutely win the support of these groups of voters. The structure of the American population has changed radically. Blacks make up 12.9 percent of the population today and Hispanics more than 17 percent, with their share steadily increasing. Whites are predicted to become a minority by 2050. This democratic shift contributed significantly to President Barack Obama’s election victory in 2012. His challenger, Mitt Romney, managed to win just a quarter of Latino votes. A mere 6 percent of African-Americans voted for him.

Trump has studied these numbers carefully and drawn his conclusions, albeit against all the conventional rules of Washington political advisers. His campaign targets white, overwhelmingly Christian voters, who have felt marginalized and threatened for some time. Trump calls them “the silent majority.”

Some 70 percent of Americans are still Christians, and one in four US citizens, or about 80 million, are Evangelical Christians. However, only 27 million Evangelicals voted in the last presidential election, while the rest stayed home.

“Trump and Cruz both aim to energize this white, Christian core group, which is why they are not seeking compromise on issues, but have adopted harsh rhetoric instead,” says David Brody, chief Washington correspondent for the Christian Broadcasting Network (CBN). “If one of them manages to convince only five to 10 million Evangelical non-voters to go to the polls, he’ll be able to take over the Republican Party and defeat the Democrats.”•

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“Trump Launched A Political Campaign That Tore Into Reagan’s Record”

March 6, 2016 in Excerpts, Politics | Permalink

Donald Trump, who hopes to have a long and thick political career, is less chameleon than outright liar.

It’s no surprise the GOP frontrunner dropped to his knees before the memory of our 40th President as soon as it was announced Nancy Reagan died. After all, Beefsteak Charlie is a person without a shred of honesty or shame. While the hideous hotelier today trolls President Obama and claims China is destroying America, he behaved similarly in the 1980s toward Reagan and Japan. Trump could claim he’s changed his opinion as he’s matured, but clearly this is a man who hasn’t grown an inch (not a penis joke).

From Michael D’Antonio at Politico Magazine:

In 2016, there are 14 Republican presidential candidates for whom Ronald Reagan is both the benchmark for conservative values and the lodestar of conservative ideas. There’s also one who wrote, in the second to last year of Reagan’s presidency, that he had been “so smooth, so effective a performer” that “only now, seven years later, are people beginning to question whether there’s anything beneath that smile.”

The gadfly was Donald Trump, writing in his book The Art of the Deal. But it wasn’t just a glancing blow; to promote the book, Trump launched a political campaign that tore into Reagan’s record, including his willingness to stand up to the Soviet Union. Advised by the notorious Roger Stone, a Nixon-era GOP trickster, in 1987 Trump took out full-page ads in the New York Times, the Boston Globe and the Washington Post blasting Reagan and his team.

In the text, which was addressed “To the American people,” Trump declared, “There’s nothing wrong with America’s Foreign Defense Policy that a little backbone can’t cure.” The problem was America’s leading role in defending democracy, which had been fulfilled by Republicans and Democrats all the way back to FDR. Foreshadowing his 2015 argument that would have Mexico pay for an American-built border wall, Trump then said that the United States should present its allies with a bill for defense services rendered.

The ads, which cost more than $90,000, came after Trump had visited the Soviet Union and met with Mikhail Gorbachev. (A few years earlier, Trump had offered himself as a replacement for Reagan’s nuclear arms control negotiators, whom he considered too soft.) Trump followed his letter to America with a trip to Portsmouth, New Hampshire, where voters were eyeing the candidates in the 1988 primary. There he spoke to the Rotary Club, which met at Yoken’s restaurant, where the sign out front featured a spouting whale and the slogan, “Thar she blows!” In his talk, Trump sounded some of the same themes he offers today, except for the fact that the bad guys who were laughing at the United States were the Japanese and not the Mexicans or Chinese.•

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“What Will A Demagogue With A Platform Like Trump’s Who Ascends To The Presidency Do With Control Over The NSA, FBI And IRS?”

March 2, 2016 in Excerpts, Politics | Permalink

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At Gizmodo, Matt Novak poses an interesting question: “Has Donald Trump Ever Used a Computer?” 

My best guess would be “yes,” that he Googles himself in the wee hours of the morning when too bloated on bacon cheeseburgers too sleep, growing furious at blogs that mock him. And is it really possible this man is unfamiliar with Internet porn?

I think the better query might be this one: “Has Donald Trump Ever Read a Book?” I’m more worried about his ignorance in regard to this much earlier tool. He certainly doesn’t have any in his home, and he’s paid other people to write ones published under his name. I feel fairly certain that this man has no paper cuts on his freakishly stubby fingers. 

Two excerpts follow, the first from Novak’s post and the second from Lawrence Summers’ essay about the specter of a Trump Presidency.

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From Novak:

There is no technological test for the presidency in the United States. A hypothetical President Trump would not be required to use a computer nor a smartphone. But it’s 2016. The future president of the United States will confront myriad issues involving the average American’s use of technology. And if you’ve never touched a computer in your life, it seems hard to imagine how Trump might relate to things as trivial as “information overload” or as important as mass government surveillance.

We have documentary evidence of Bernie Sanders, Ted Cruz, Hillary Clinton, and Marco Rubio all using tablets, smartphones, and PCs. Somehow Trump has mastered the high-tech demands of running a 21st century presidential campaign without ever using those technologies first-hand. He’s on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter—all set up for him and controlled by his lackeys. Frankly, I’m not sure whether to be impressed or horrified.

I guess, of all the things to be horrified over regarding our future president, his technological prowess might be the least of our worries.•

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From Summers:

The possible election of Donald Trump as President is the greatest present threat to the prosperity and security of the United States.  I have had a strong point of view on each of the last ten presidential elections, but never before had I feared that what I regarded as the wrong outcome would in the long sweep of history risk grave damage to the American project.

The problem is not with Trump’s policies, though they are wacky in the few areas where they are not indecipherable. It is that he is running as modern day man on a horseback—demagogically offering the power of his personality as a magic solution to all problems—and making clear that he is prepared to run roughshod over anything or anyone who stands in his way.

Trump has already flirted with the Ku Klux Klan and disparaged and demeaned the female half of our population. He vowed to kill the families of terrorists, use extreme forms of torture, and forbid Muslims from coming into our country. Time and again, he has claimed he will crush those who stand in his way; his promised rewrite of libel laws, permitting the punishment of The New York Times and Washington Post for articles he does not like, will allow him to make good on this threat.

Lyndon Johnson’s celebrated biographer, Robert Caro, has written that while “power doesn’t always corrupt…[it] always reveals.” What will a demagogue with a platform like Trump’s who ascends to the presidency do with control over the NSA, FBI and IRS?  What commitment will he manifest to the rule of law? Already Trump has proposed that protesters at his rallies “should have been roughed up.”

Nothing in the way he campaigned gave Richard Nixon a mandate for keeping an enemies list or engaging in dirty tricks.  If he is elected, Donald Trump may think he has such a mandate.  What is the basis for doubting that it will be used?•

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“Mr. Trump Is A Promoter Of Paranoid Fantasies, A Xenophobe And An Ignoramus”

March 1, 2016 in Excerpts, Politics | Permalink

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Donald Trump, the political offspring of Mayor McCheese and Benito Mussolini, isn’t so singular among Republican politicians for the things he thinks but for saying them in such a brazen manner. The Gingrich-Atwater-Rove soft, coded language of bigotry helped GOP politicians to victory in a whiter America, but it never returned the nation to a mythical past as it had promised. The party leaders never intended to. Family values and the other hokum they were selling wasn’t important to the power brokers. It was just a useful means to fire up the base and gain control for the financial good of a sliver of the country.

Tired of being disappointed, the bedrock of the party has turned to a vulgar clown reluctant to disavow the KKK. But Trump stands on the shoulders of many of those very conservatives who express shock and disbelief at his rise. They were the ones who’ve spent decades cultivating anti-government attitudes and racial divisiveness and obstructionism and conspiracy theories. The question now is whether the hideous hotelier’s rise will be the party’s comeuppance or all of America’s.

From Martin Wolf at the Financial Times:

What is one to make of the rise of Donald Trump? It is natural to think of comparisons with populist demagogues past and present. It is natural, too, to ask why the Republican party might choose a narcissistic bully as its candidate for president. But this is not just about a party, but about a great country. The US is the greatest republic since Rome, the bastion of democracy, the guarantor of the liberal global order. It would be a global disaster if Mr Trump were to become president. Even if he fails, he has rendered the unthinkable sayable.

Mr Trump is a promoter of paranoid fantasies, a xenophobe and an ignoramus. His business consists of the erection of ugly monuments to his own vanity. He has no experience of political office. Some compare him to Latin American populists. He might also be considered an American Silvio Berlusconi, albeit without the charm or business acumen. But Mr Berlusconi, unlike Mr Trump, never threatened to round up and expel millions of people. Mr Trump is grossly unqualified for the world’s most important political office.

Yet, as Robert Kagan, a neoconservative intellectual, argues in a powerful column in The Washington Post, Mr Trump is also “the GOP’s Frankenstein monster.” He is, says Mr Kagan, the monstrous result of the party’s “wild obstructionism,” its demonisation of political institutions, its flirtation with bigotry and its “racially tinged derangement syndrome” over President Barack Obama. He continues: “We are supposed to believe that Trump’s legion of ‘angry’ people are angry about wage stagnation. No, they are angry about all the things Republicans have told them to be angry about these past seven-and-a-half years”.

Mr Kagan is right, but does not go far enough.•

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