At this stage, some will argue that it isn’t worth the effort to interpret Trump’s misstatements, or to point out the truth of the matter—in this case, that a Jordanian named Abu Musab al-Zarqawi founded isis, in 2004. At the very least, it should be obvious to everyone by now that Trump doesn’t deal in reality; he deals in mythmaking, demagoguery, and carnival barking.
.. But, just for the sake of argument, let’s assume that Trump is smarter and less myopic than he seems. Let’s assume that what he’s really focussed on isn’t winning this year’s election, a task he now realizes is beyond him, but creating a long-term Trumpian movement. A nationalistic, nativist, protectionist, and authoritarian movement that will forever be associated with him, but which also has the capacity to survive beyond him. A movement that in some ways would resemble other right-wing political parties around the world, such as France’s National Front, Austria’s Freedom Party, and the U.K. Independence Party, but which would also harken back to earlier moments in American history, such as the rise of the anti-immigrant Know Nothing movement of the eighteen-forties, and the formation, a century later, of the isolationist America First Committee, which sought a negotiated peace with Hitler.
.. for right-wing populist movements to succeed, a number of things need to be in place. For one thing, they need a narrative that mainstream political leaders, and political parties, are guilty of not merely incompetence but betrayal. The most notorious example is the “stab-in-the-back” myth, widely believed in Germany after 1918. That narrative held that the German military didn’t really lose the First World War; the soldiers were betrayed by traitorous civilian politicians who signed an armistice.
.. in withdrawing almost all U.S. troops from Iraq, helped bring about the conditions that enabled isis to seize territory and create a self-styled caliphate. (He fails to point out that the Bush Administration initiated the troop withdrawal.)
.. He certainly doesn’t sound like he’s trying to win over the soccer moms in Columbus, or the office workers in Tampa, that he needs to win the election. He sounds like he is talking to his angry base, and supplying them with an inflammatory narrative that can be trotted out for years, and decades, to come. It’s a tactic that politicians outside the United States, such as Jean-Marie Le Pen and Jörg Haider, have used to good effect in building up far-right nationalist movements.
.. It is, of course, a staple of extremist parties of the left and right that democracy is a sham, and that elections count for nothing. And once you have delegitimized an election result, or an elected leader, you can justify all sorts of extra-electoral, and indeed anti-democratic, actions.
.. Four years from now, or eight years from now, a more disciplined and self-controlled figure could take up where he left off. If at that time the United States were facing a serious economic or national-security crisis, more Americans—conceivably even a majority of them—might be willing to accept the argument that regular politicians have failed and betrayed them, and that drastic measures are called for. Healthy democracies don’t decay overnight. They gradually rot from within, with termites like Trump undermining their foundations.
Trump escalates claim that Obama founded ISIL
And he gives Clinton credit for being the terrorist group’s co-founder.
“For him to turn around and say what he did about the president and the secretary is so bizarre. It’s reminiscent of demagogues who want to be in the press no matter what they have to say,” she said. “They make their verbal poo poo any place to get attention. And this is a tactic. This is not an accident. This is a tactic, and here we are talking about it.
.. As he often does, he pointed to the massive crowds he draws at his rallies as evidence that his support is as strong as ever. He implied that polls have failed to accurately capture that support and that “I have a whole group of people out there that people don’t even know about.”
The Method To Steve King’s Madness
King concedes that the one hundred-to-one claim was an “estimate,” but with a mischievous smile, he points out that he succeeded at shifting the immigration debate. He fueled the conservative antagonism that killed the Senate bill in the House.
.. “I’ll say this about Steve: Most of his controversial comments are the kind that you might say are off the cuff. They’re not. He’s a bright guy,” he says. “He knows what he’s doing when he’s stirring the pot. And he likes that.”
.. During the campaign, he stumbled upon his signature issue in the legislature: English as the official language.
.. ‘GUNS ARE FOR MEN WHAT JEWELRY IS FOR WOMEN’
.. “King’s main effect on the immigration reform debate is Overton Window-ish,” invoking a political science term that describes the “window” of policies considered acceptable at a given time, named after Joseph P. Overton. “Very, very few grassroots conservatives or elected Republicans actually agree with him on immigration policy. However, he enables elected Republicans who are more restrictionist or otherwise hardline … to strike a pose that reads as ‘moderate.'”
.. Since King came to Congress, his most over-the-top rhetorical outbursts include comparing immigrants to dogs, calling illegal immigration a “slow-motion terrorist attack” on the United States, claiming Al Qaeda would be “dancing in the streets” if Barack Obama was elected president, and declaring that racial profiling wasn’t an issue in Ferguson, Mo., because protesters were from a single “continental origin.”
.. “I’m more the conscience of the conservative than I am someone looking for consensus.” He wants to elect a president in his image. Journalist Obradovich says, “When Ted Cruz, Mike Huckabee and Rick Santorum come to Iowa, they absolutely want to see and talk to Steve King.”
The Man the Founders Feared
the organizing principle that runs through the campaign of the Republican Party’s likely nominee isn’t adherence to a political philosophy — Mr. Trump has no discernible political philosophy — but an encouragement to political violence.
.. “I’d like to punch him in the face,” Mr. Trump said about a protester in Nevada. (“In the old days,” Mr. Trump fondly recalled, protesters would be “carried out in a stretcher.”)
.. When two brothers beat up a homeless Latino man last summer and cited Mr. Trump’s words as their justification — “Donald Trump was right, all these illegals need to be deported,” one of the men reportedly told the police — Mr. Trump responded by saying that while this was a shame, “I will say that people who are following me are very passionate.” His supporters, he said, “love this country and they want this country to be great again — they are passionate.”
.. Note Mr. Trump’s linkage of violence, passion, anger and love of country.
.. Because we can no longer deny what Mr. Trump is and what he represents.