Donald Trump’s Ideology of Applause
“He does have an 82 percent approval rating,” Donald Trump said during the special “commander in chief” forum last week. It’s worth dwelling on that sentence, because it’s the key to what drives and guides his presidential bid. It’s the giveaway.
For Trump, the whole point of political office is adulation, and adulation is the entire proof of a person’s worth. Rectitude pales next to ratings. Ethics are a sorry substitute for applause. And the methods by which a crowd is fired up don’t matter, so long as he can bask in the clapping.
.. He grew so enamored of a magnificent, impenetrable wall along the Mexican border because the primary-season voters who thronged his rallies went gaga for it. He was a rat pressing a lever and getting precisely the pellet of reverence that he sought, so he kept pressing, over and over, harder and harder: Mexico will pay for it! Meanwhile I’ll round up and deport all the illegals! Let’s ban Muslims while we’re at it!
.. The general election is a laboratory with rules different from those of the Republican primaries, and he’s still trying to figure out which lever to press.
.. When his insults aren’t about physical appearance, they’re about popularity.
A newscaster is incompetent because his or her show isn’t No. 1. A newspaper isn’t trustworthy because its profit margin is down. Jeb Bush wasn’t fit for the presidency because voters didn’t swoon for him. Trump deserved the job because more people chanted his name.
.. The idea of intrinsic merit is alien to him.
.. the Russian word that Putin used for Trump can mean not only “brilliant,” which is Trump’s interpretation, but also “colorful” or “flamboyant.”
.. When he demeans the very Republican senators whose re-election campaigns he should be helping, it’s typically on the grounds that they haven’t showered him with praise or genuflected when he draws near.
.. He’ll play a fascist if that’s the path to the throne. He’ll weave ludicrously tall tales if that’s the route. Should he get there, he’ll proclaim his arrival the very evidence that he’s worthy, and then he’ll do whatever it takes to continue feeling as affirmed.