The Economist interview with Donald Trump isn’t as woeful as the Maureen Dowd one for the New York Times, but it still isn’t very good. There are precious few follow-up questions to counter the subject’s usual nonsense about race, global politics and his biography and nothing at all about how consistently and drastically wrong this self-styled economic genius has been about money matters in recent years. It seems the publication was happy to have a Q&A with someone so prominently in the news and performed like a matador, stepping aside to let the bull rush on through. When someone’s made the type of odious racist and xenophobic statements Trump has, sounding deeply fascistic in the process, either do a thorough job or don’t do it at all. 

Two exchanges follow.

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The Economist:

If the terms of trade can be changed, as you say, why haven’t today’s politicians of either party done it?

Donald Trump:

Because they’re grossly incompetent. And they are not negotiators. And they are grossly incompetent. And I have friends from China – by the way I love China. I love Japan. I have people that buy my apartments, I have people that work for me from China. I love Mexico. I mean, Mexico, I have thousands of people from Mexico that work for me. Thousands. Hispanics. In fact a poll just came out, Public Policy Polling, where I am leading with Hispanics, can you believe that, after what you have been hearing? I’m leading, I’m number one with Hispanics.

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The Economist:

You use the phrase “silent majority” that Nixon used in 1969. Do you hear echoes of that time now?

Donald Trump:

No, it doesn’t echo. I’ll tell you what. I’ve heard the term, but for the last 20 years I really haven’t heard the term. But I went to a rally in Alabama, and there were 31,000 people there, you’ve seen it, you’ve read about it. It was the largest, the most amount of people – a lot of people say in the history of primaries, because you know, I mean, you are talking about…certainly in the history of early primaries. Because 31,000 people. It was going to be in a hotel, 500 people, and then it turned out to be 10,000 people and then it turned… so we went from a hotel to a convention centre to a football stadium. So we had 31,000 people and it was amazing. And I looked and I said, this is the silent majority. Though they weren’t silent, because they want to see proper change, not Obama change. And what happened is, I thought of that term, I just said the words silent majority. Now, it hasn’t been used in a long time because I guess it is associated somewhat with Nixon. But honestly it’s two words, that when you put together describe what is happening very well. There’s a group of people, great people in this country that have been disenfranchised. Their country has been taken away from them. Things have happened, having to do with many things including political correctness, where people are so worried about being politically correct that they are unable to function. And with me, hey, look I’m politically correct, I went to a great school, I was a good student, look, I’m a smart guy. I built a great company. I did The Art of the Deal which is the number one selling business book of all time, I did many other best-sellers. You know, I did 12 best-sellers. I did The Apprentice, which was one of the most successful television shows of the last 25 years. You know, all that stuff. But the words “silent majority”, the words “silent majority” are very descriptive of what is happening with me.•

When Newt Gingrich and Karl Rove and their ilk appealed to white Americans based on “family values” and other such clean-sounding exclusionary terms, they cultivated a voting bloc on issues they didn’t sincerely care about but found useful. The GOP power brokers were merely playing with the dreams of the blindly faithful to help themselves consolidate power. 

But the dreams were not dashed, just deferred. The Trump candidacy and its copious anger and name-calling, which dispenses with the coded language of bigotry for the real deal, is aimed as much at Republicans who let these folks down as the Democrats whom they believe have upended their prosperity. The GOP’s bedrock, from the Bush family to Fox News, is at long last meeting the piledriver of its own design. The Tea Party was the first wave of the ungodly energy unloosed. Trump is the next phase, the anarchic spirit visited upon the most important national political campaign. The controls have been commandeered, the mutiny complete.

From the Economist:

On one domestic issue, to be fair, he has staked out a clear, bold position. Alas, it is an odious one. He wants to build a wall on the Mexican border and somehow make Mexico pay for it. He would deport all 11m immigrants currently thought to be in America illegally. Apart from the misery this would cause, it would also cost $285 billion, by one estimate—roughly $900 in new taxes for every man, woman and child left in Mr Trump’s America. This is necessary, he argues, because Mexican illegal immigrants are “bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists.” Not only would he round them all up; he would also round up and expel their children who were born on American soil and are therefore American citizens. That this would be illegal does not bother him.

His approach to foreign affairs is equally crude. He would crush Islamic State and send American troops to “take the oil”. He would “Make America great again”, both militarily and economically, by being a better negotiator than all the “dummies” who represent the country today. Leave aside, for a moment, the vanity of a man who thinks that geopolitics is no harder than selling property. Ignore his constant reminders that he wrote The Art of the Deal, which he falsely claims is “the number-one-selling business book of all time.” Instead, pay attention to the paranoia of his worldview. “[E]very single country that does business with us” is ripping America off, he says. “The money [China] took out of the United States is the greatest theft in the history of our country.” He is referring to the fact that Americans sometimes buy Chinese products. He blames currency manipulation by Beijing, and would slap tariffs on many imported goods. He would also, in some unspecified way, rethink how America protects allies such as South Korea and Japan, because “if we step back they will protect themselves very well. Remember when Japan used to beat China routinely in wars?”

Towering populism

Mr Trump’s secret sauce has two spices. First, he has a genius for self-promotion, unmoored from reality (“I play to people’s fantasies. I call it truthful hyperbole,” he once said). Second, he says things that no politician would, so people think he is not a politician. Sticklers for politeness might object when he calls someone a “fat pig” or suggests that a challenging female interviewer has “blood coming out of her wherever”. His supporters, however, think his boorishness is a sign of authenticity—of a leader who can channel the rage of those who feel betrayed by the elite or left behind by social change. It turns out that there are tens of millions of such people in America.•