Trump, though, is cut from a very different cloth. He’s an authoritarian, not an ideologue, and his antecedents aren’t Goldwater or McGovern; they’re figures like George Wallace and Huey Long
.. A man so transparently unfit for office should not be placed before the American people as a candidate for president under any kind of imprimatur save his own. And there is no point in even having a party apparatus, no point in all those chairmen and state conventions and delegate rosters, if they cannot be mobilized to prevent 35 percent of the Republican primary electorate from imposing a Trump nomination on the party.
.. What Trump has demonstrated is that in our present cultural environment, and in the Republican Party’s present state of bankruptcy, the first lines of defense against a demagogue no longer hold.
.. But the party’s convention rules, in all their anachronistic, undemocratic and highly-negotiable intricacy, are also a line of defense, also a hurdle, also a place where a man unfit for office can be turned aside.
Donald Trump’s Epic Neediness
I was and am transfixed by something else: the scope and intensity of his hunger for adulation. It’s bottomless, topless, endless, insatiable. He gazed upon a teeming arena of admirers and neither their presence nor their numbers was quite enough.
He ached for an extra exhibition of their ardor. He had to issue a command and revel in their obeisance.
.. But while his appeal may be layered, his drive isn’t. What set him in motion was a compulsion to see his face flickering across TV screens, his handle popping up in retweets, his minions arrayed before him. What eggs him on is the sound of his name uttered by pundits, rivals, crowds.
.. Everything about Trump’s campaign can be explained in terms of substance abuse: He’s addicted to attention, demanding regular fixes and going to ever greater lengths — in terms of reckless statements and provocative acts — to get them.
.. Imagine what that would mean for a Trump presidency. His agenda wouldn’t be conservative, moderate, liberal or for that matter coherent. It would be self-affirming and self-aggrandizing: whatever it takes to remain the focus of everyone’s gaze, the syllable tumbling from everyone’s lips. Trump, Trump, Trump.
American Dignity
I am preoccupied with Trump, and what he means for our nation. He is single-handedly destroying the Republican Party. We haven’t seen a political party collapse in this country in well over a century. It’s happening now. Institutions that are strong don’t collapse overnight. I don’t know that even Trump saw the rot in the GOP. But it was rotten, and that’s why it’s collapsing.
Consider: the last two men standing in the GOP primaries are the two candidates most hated by the Republican establishment: Donald Trump and Ted Cruz.
.. I think back to watching his Mobile rally — August 21, 2015 — on TV, the first time I had seen an entire Trump campaign speech. Thirty thousand people came out to hear him. And the speech was ridiculous — a rambling mess. I snorted that anybody would be taken in by this nonsense.
.. As someone who was told, by the respectable heads of a deeply respectable institution, that I am not a respectable person and have no place in respectable society (and I have heard some version of this my entire life), to see Donald Trump succeed is … well, gratifying. There is nothing respectable about the man. His tawdry, messy life is an open book, his mouth something of a festering, running sore. He’s not much of a thinker. His use of the law to advance his fortune is rather shameless. But honestly, I wish I could live that shamelessly, with that kind of courage, and that kind of persistence, and not have my life and my words constantly held against me. Or not care, because the judgements of gate-keepers don’t matter. Trump is poking all of the right people in the eyes for all the right reasons. I don’t so much care that he wins, but I am enjoying the spectacle of watching someone live so openly and so honestly. He’s coarse and crude, but he appears to make no pretenses. He offends all the right people. He seems to be honest about who he is. That’s not the same as speaking the truth — Trump speaks very little of that. But as someone who has lived in a world that has held the fact that I am Charles Featherstone against me, I am in awe.
.. I wish I could do that. I wish I could get away with it. And succeed as spectacularly as Trump is.
Past that, though, what he actually says resonates with me. Some. Mostly his anger, the anger he channels of people who do not matter, and who know they do not matter, who know the world is increasingly rigged against them.
.. Trump channels something — the rage and desperation of a people who know they don’t matter anymore.
.. Yes, they have may been a privileged people once, knowing the order of the world arising from the great struggles of the first half of the 20th century was arranged for them, and may be struggling for privilege again, but they also know politics has told them — economically and socially — “lie down and die.” That they are white, and crude, and prone to brutality and violence, frequently not very compassionate or empathetic, all-too-often confused by the world, and that their religion is simplistic and mostly idolatrous, all that makes it hard to sympathize with them. (I find it hard.) But you leave people behind at your peril. You can tell them to “lie down and die,” and some will. But many won’t.
.. His supporters realize he’s a joke. They do not care. They know he’s authoritarian, nationalist, almost un-American, and they love him anyway, because he disrupts a broken political process and beats establishment candidates who’ve long ignored their interests.
When you’re earning $32,000 a year and haven’t had a decent vacation in over a decade, it doesn’t matter who Trump appoints to the U.N., or if he poisons America’s standing in the world, you just want to win again, whoever the victim, whatever the price.
As productivity climbed, working-class Americans wanted their wages to rise also. Instead, Republicans gave them tax cuts for the rich while liberal Democrats called them racists and bigots.
.. I think Trump is a poor man’s idea of a rich man, a demagogue who would be a terrible president, possibly even a tyrant. But I get why people less secure economically than I am don’t care, and are for him anyway
Rush: Trump’s Message Will Resonate
They’re all calling me rich. I’m really rich — I’ll show you here in a minute — and I’m proud of it.” No. Romney will go buy a station wagon, put the dog on the roof, and go on vacation. Trump’s out there flying his Boeing 757 with his name on it in 14-karat gold on the fuselage. He’s out bragging about everything he’s done because he’s proud of it.
He’s proud of his success, he’s proud of his achievements, and he wants people to know. He says he’s not bragging ’cause he doesn’t have to brag. He’s not ashamed of any of it and he doesn’t want to put on any airs and act like it was an accident or act like he doesn’t deserve it, because he does deserve it.
.. That’s the reaction a lot of people are gonna have because that’s the way they’ve been raised. “It’s unfair to beat anybody. It’s unfair. Competition is not necessary. Conflict resolution, that’s what we need. We need to compromise, get along, be bipartisan.” It’s gonna scare a lot of people. Beating the Chinese, beating the Japanese. These are people that are ignorant, who have no idea that what Trump says here is actually true. Make no mistake.
.. You don’t think the ChiComs consider us an enemy? They sure as heck do. You don’t think Putin considers us as an enemy? He sure as heck does. We’re an enemy simply because we’re the lone superpower anymore. It’s how you deal with that, that distinguishes you.
.. And plus he’s got the best of the best working for him. He’s got a brain trust that would rival any university and he’s got people that know how to get the job done. These are goal oriented people that work for him. And believe me, his ego is so big that he wants to just stand up there and say, “I told you so. I’ve been telling you for years.”