Category: Trump

A couple of days ago I read about Trump taking on some reporters in an event where he was confronting the press over whether he had raised a bunch of money for veterans.

Now there was a big dispute over whether he had waited until the reporters had dug into the facts before donating the money that he said he’d raised several months ago. The reporters were breathlessly announcing their gotcha moment and preparing for the trillionth time to bring down Trump with the scandal to end all scandals. And apparently for the trillionth time Trump performed the verbal jujitsu that ends with him looking smart and them looking dumb. Or actually not dumb but dishonest.

So I’ve heard about these confrontations before but until recently I never bothered to go to the video tape, as it were, to get the full effect. But I’d heard several commentators (including Rush Limbaugh) extolling Trump’s performance. So I decided to give it a listen. And that was no small investment. The full event was over forty minutes long. And listening to Trump go over a relatively simple sequence of events and list the facts of his donations should have taken about four minutes. So his rhetorical style is far from laconic. And in fact I found it quite annoying. He dangled the facts of the case and the list of donations as if it were catnip on a string and we were the desperate felines being tantalized as the bait kept being bounced out of reach at the last second. I felt like grabbing him by the shoulders and shaking him until he relented. So you can tell that I’m not bewitched by the siren song of The Donald’s shtick.

But it is undeniable that every time he rounded on the assembled media and called them sleazy and dishonest and “not-good” I inwardly cheered. His ability to call them out and take them to task for their biased treatment of republican candidates and the complete pass they give to the democrats is like a breath of fresh air. By the time the event was over I was almost giddy. I felt like I had watched a rousing western where in the last reel our hero wins the girl and the gold and the villain is led off to jail or worse.

So why do I find this interesting? Definitely not because I think it such a victory for Trump. In fact it wasn’t completely clear that he hadn’t neglected to expedite the disbursal to the veterans groups of the funds he had raised.

What I think makes it so exciting is that Trump fully understands how to counteract the various media strategies. This particular attack is part of the “death by a thousand paper cuts” method. Each attack is relatively minor but by means of a steady drumbeat of bad news they drag down the victim and surround him in a cloud of negative energy. The best example of this was the Iraq
war reporting where every single day featured several pieces of bad news that inevitably went unanswered by the president and his administration. A less intense example was the skewering of Mitt Romney. An attack was put together that for the most part consisted of trivial items or out of context statements that added together was meant to portray him as uncaring and out of touch with average people.

And it worked.

Trump doesn’t let this happen. He recognizes when he needs to answer criticism and then he answers it in a devastating direct manner that doesn’t so much present a defense of his own actions but rather attacks the methods and motives of the press.

And it works!

Trump has recognized that before you can storm the castle where the democrats hide you first have to kill the Loch Ness Monster they have defending the moat. And whenever he attacks the press he not only helps his own case but he gives hope to all the conservative voters who have watched for twenty five years as the hapless Bushes and Doles and McCains and Romneys have cowered in front of the press and slipped on the endless banana peels that the press tosses in front of them. Instead of being stuck with a candidate who is like Charlie Brown being hung out to dry by Lucy and her football, we get Popeye Doyle from the French Connection, kicking in doors and punching out lights. Or to make a simpler entertainment metaphor we finally get to win with the Roadrunner instead of lose with Wile E. Coyote.

Finally someone who can fight fire with fire.

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So I have been parodying the rise of Trump for the last few months and no one who has read these posts would accuse me of being subtle. I use a sledgehammer rather than a sculptor’s chisel on my creations. But comparing the reality to the art (such as it is) isn’t really much of a contrast. Trying to exaggerate the words and deeds of Trump and Clinton and Sanders is a frustrating exercise. Every time I have one of them say something absurd in my joke, in reality he comes back the next day with something even more outrageous.

And just as amazing is the reactions of the world to these bomb shells. The opposition shrieks and the home team declares them gospel. When Trump joked that he could shoot someone in the street and his numbers would still go up, he wasn’t exaggerating by much.

Let’s talk about this.

Why are we where we are?

Because we’re out of time.

The regular people have been waiting for a raise since 1989. And they’ve been waiting for someone to care about their problems. In fact they’re waiting for someone to even notice that they’re in desperate shape. For the last 25 years they’ve been told that they were gonna reap the reward that came with winning the Cold War and making the world safe for capitalism. Instead the Bushes and the Clintons gave their jobs to the Chinese and the Mexicans and put the Cold War peace dividend in the stock market for the rich. And now they have no jobs and their kids have no jobs and they’re being told that they’re no longer needed by the Democrats because they’ve been replaced by immigrants.

So why aren’t they flocking to the Establishment Republican candidates?

Because they only talk about balancing the budget and lowering taxes and reforming entitlements.

What the hell do any of those things mean if you don’t have a job?

So guess who is talking about jobs? Trump and Sanders. The two craziest bastards to ever run for the job of POTUS are the only ones in a field of over twenty who remembered that you can’t have life, liberty or the pursuit of happiness if you don’t have a job. When a ship is sinking a drowning man wants a life preserver not a blueprint for a new sturdier hull design.

So these people aren’t looking to see if Trump or Sanders has checked off all the boxes in the presidential scorecard or if he’s a good husband or if he’s even human. At this point, they’d vote for Godzilla if he were promising to get them jobs.

So whoever is elected better manufacture about twenty million jobs. Because if he doesn’t, the next time these people vote it will be for someone a lot uglier than Trump or Sanders. Or maybe they won’t wait for a vote.

Time’s up.

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So it’s late and I’m going to bed but it’s worth reviewing some of the headlines.

CBS; “Donald Trump, Candidate of Change.”

Washington Post; “Even Supporters Agree: Clinton Has Weaknesses as a Candidate. What Can She Do?”

NY Times; “Social Conservatives, However Reluctant, Are Warming to the Idea of Trump.” and  “Little Is Off Limits as Donald Trump Plans Attacks on Hillary Clinton’s Character.”

And these are Trump’s Nemeses and Hillary’s Guardian Angels.

It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas every where I go. I think the reality is starting to infect the progressives that they’ve hitched their star to a dead horse (nag?). My greatest wish is that the next five months are excruciating for them. And it wouldn’t hurt if Trump spends some of that time actually figuring out what in God’s Name he’s going to do once he has this tiger by the tail. After all, audacity may get him elected but after that people are gonna want action and results. Otherwise the mob will works its way around to him. Wouldn’t hurt him to actually start calling up the CEOs of the Fortune 500 and see if they can hire a few million new rust belt republicans at tax break prices. That would go a long way to making The Donald look a little less like Ronald McDonald and a little more like Ronald Reagan.

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In this strangest of election years, it is hard to know exactly what the smartest or the safest or the best plan is. One of the strangest things is how wrong everybody has been about everything. The wise men on the left and the right were completely blind-sided by both Trump and Sanders. And in what alternate universe is Donald Trump the champion of the forgotten working class man?

But after the fact, some things become almost obvious and maybe we can start piecing together what the hell is going on.

Facts:

1) Donald Trump figured out that both the Democrats and the Republicans had written off the votes and the interests of working class white people. The Democrats didn’t want them because they didn’t share the new values and replaced them with professional class white people and immigrants. The Republicans claimed they wanted their votes but stopped attracting them by ignoring their plight. Both sides were complicit in the destruction of the working class by exporting all the good manufacturing jobs abroad through global free trade initiatives and importing virtually limitless numbers of immigrants to undercut them on any jobs that were left.

2) Nobody else but Trump was willing to speak plainly enough about how to address these problems:
a) Stop further illegal immigration.
b) Deport the current illegals.
c) Institute a trade policy that puts American workers before global capitalism.

3) Trump energized these working class voters to propel him to the Republican Presidential Nominee.

4) Trump either is or acts as if he were some crazy combination of P T Barnum and Caligula. His rhetoric is completely unconnected to truth or even reality. He literally will not hesitate to say whatever he thinks will convince people.

5) He probably has the best chance of any of the 2016 crop of republican presidential candidates of beating Hillary Clinton in the general election. I’d say his odds are better than 50%.

6) No one has any idea what he will do if he gets elected. It’s a straight up mystery.

Conclusions:

1) Anyone who doesn’t want America to become a wholly owned subsidiary of the Global Corporate New World Order owes Donald Trump a debt of gratitude. He single-handedly slew the politically correct gatekeepers who silenced all attempts at questioning illegal immigration or outsourcing American jobs. He demonstrated how you talk to the media scolds; confidently. He hit back and the people loved it.

2) If we don’t want Hillary Clinton to be president then we had better back up Trump to the hilt.

3) The general election is going to be like a fireworks display launched from a roller coaster. I fully expect that the campaign ads and debates will include laughter, tears, lies, insults, threats, physical confrontation, nudity and several of the seven words you formerly couldn’t say on tv. My greatest hope is that during a debate Hillary will become incoherent and start barking like a dog.

4) Trump proves that a strong leader isn’t necessarily a nice guy. The man acts as if he thinks we’re idiots. He is boorish, self-centered and annoying. He is inconsistent, petty and vindictive.
But he saw how we were being manipulated. And he wasn’t afraid to say unpleasant truths.

5) The rest of the Republican field proves that when the ship is sinking you don’t want a social worker or a debate team. You want someone with a loud voice and a clear plan.

5) I hope that the rank and file of the republican party now realize that the elites of both parties are not our friends. They want to surrender this country to the hive. Their goal is an international corporate feudalism. Guess who the serfs are gonna be. Hint: It won’t be the Bushes and the Clintons.

Predictions:

Prediction is a perilous pursuit but here goes.

1) I predict Trump will win the presidency and both pleasantly surprise and sorely disappoint conservatives.

2) With Melania as the First Lady, I predict the millenials will be inspired to abandon metrosexual hipsterism for the pursuit of old fashioned binary cis-heterosexuality and sterotypical gender roles in the home and workplace.

3) I predict that failing to be added to Mount Rushmore, The Donald will build his own personal monument to himself which will be mockingly referred to as Mount Trumpmore. Upon hearing the nickname his only comment will be “That’s what she said.”

4) I predict that Mitt Romney’s dog will write a tell-all book about that time he was forced to ride on the roof of the family car. Mitt will then be taken hostage by PETA and the Animal Liberation Front and subsequently eaten.

5) During the Inauguration ceremony, I predict Joe Biden will attempt to stand behind Melania’s chair and rub her shoulders but he will accidentally fall off the edge of the platform. The event will go unnoticed and Joe will remain pinned under the stands until later in the week when he will escape, wander off and begin a nomadic existence in various D.C homeless shelter where the female inhabitants will nickname him “The Shoulder Holder.”

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