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Citizen Trump? 12/28/2015 8:26:44 AM
How does a reality star, sometimes billionaire, with no experience in government end up as the leading candidate for the Republican nomination for president? Let's play the blame game, shall we? I mean if Donald Trump can do it and have his poll numbers go even higher no matter what kind of outrageous comment he makes, we can do it too. Trump is leading in the polls for an infinite number of reasons, but I'll give you ten to keep this somewhat short.
1. The media is doing what they did for the Tea Party. No matter what their detractors said, no matter what they did, they were covered virtually every day until the elections. During the debate on Obamacare, several so-called demonstrators spit on black congressmen. The Republican party denied it; I guess because you could't actually see the spit on video. The Donald's latest outrage was his comment about Hillary being "schlonged" by Obama the first time she ran for president. He also noticed that she disappeared from the podium for a while during the debate, assuming she used the rest room, which he found "disgusting". We know the man doesn't think his **** stinks, but now we have evidence. Cruz was closing in on him when he said this, but Trump's surged ahead again afterwards.
2. Reality shows. I watched his so-called television show once. It wasn't even as good as the Kardashians, and that's about as bad as you can get. The man seemed to think "You're fired!" was a wonderful slogan. So, like George W. Bush, the man is a familiar figure on the national scene and somehow that qualifies him, in some minds, as a legitimate contender. He's going to bomb the **** out of ISIS. No he's not. His secretary of defense and his generals won't let him, not to mention Congress. That's what ISIS wants us to do. They want us to kill innocent civilians, whom ISIS is hiding behind., and we'd have 1.6 billion people after our behinds.
3. He's a billionaire. He said he was worth upwards of nine billion dollars, but fact checkers say it's more like 2.4 billion. He's also filed bankruptcy at least four times. Under bankruptcy laws you can negotiate to pay your creditors less than you owe them. So then, the man has welched on his debts at least four times. And he inherited almost four hundred million from his father. Trump supporters don't sweat the small stuff. They only know he's a billionaire and for some reason, these typically undereducated people respect rich people. Rich people do what Phizer just did, move their home offices to Ireland to take advantage of lower corporate tax breaks. Phizer and other Big pharma companies lobby to make sure the government can't negotiate lower drug prices. The federal government is their biggest customer. If Uncle Sam was a private company, they would be given a break on pricing.
4. Trump speaks his mind. No he doesn't. He says what his supporters want him to say, much as Faux News caters to the narrow-minded among us. Trump doesn't try to appeal to everybody as most politicians do; he doesn't make political commercials. He doesn't need to. He doesn't take money from fat cats, but he's still getting donations from the people above. Don't you wish Ralph Nader or Jerry Brown could've got away with this stuff? Both of them genuinely care about the issues. Trump cares about Trump.
5. After the San Bernardino attack, people were prone to hate Moslems in general. Trump announced that he would not let Moslems immigrate to the United States, until we figured out what the hell was going on. That statement violates the Constitution; Republicans are always complaining that democrats disregard the Constitution, except when they do it. So Trump was playing the hate card, just as Hitler played the hate card when he blamed the Jews for everything, including losing WWI.
6. Chris Matthews and others of his ilk. I almost threw up the other day when I tuned in Matthews' generally liberal show. He was showing a documentary of Trump called "Citizen Trump", comparing him to William Randolph Hearst. Among other things, Hearst started a war with Spain, to improve the circulation of his paper, but Trump doesn't belong in the same sentence with Hearst. Matthews was blatantly playing for better ratings. When the Republicans debate, ratings go up because viewers want to hear what insane thing Trump will say next.
7. Junior high tactics. Trump has said that he will put a super model in the White House. He's talking about his wife. She's his third or fourth. She would not be seen dead with him if he didn't have any money. But after that statement and the one about a woman going to the bathroom being disgusting, no woman, including Republicans, should vote for Trump. He is an avowed misogynist, and he proves it over and over again.
8. "I didn't say what I said." Trump wrote an autobiography called the ART OF THE DEAL. Of course he had a ghost writer write it for him, but the writer must've interviewed him. In it, he said that if he ran for president he'd run as a Republican because Republican voters were so stupid they'd believe anything he said, and they have. So far anyway, and after the schlong comment, apparently there's nothing that he can say that will offend his following.
9. Play the religion card. Trump says he's a Presbyterian. He also mentioned saying his morning prayers during one of his speeches. If you believe either of those things, you ought to change your name to Mr./Ms. Naive. There's only one church that Trump goes to and that's the Church of Trump.
10. Slogans. "Make America Great Again." Has he ever been specific about the historical period he's talking about? If he means the Reagan presidency, you know he's full of it. Has he forgotten the Iran/Contra scandal? America was great during WWII when we all pulled together to beat two of the greatest military powers in the world at the same time. Corporations made tanks, planes and war materials, including uniforms and boots. Women went to work as Rosie the riveter. Americans lived on ration cards and grew Victory Gardens. Except for the extreme right and the American communists, politics was put on hold. That's why we call them the greatest generation. We are not talking about the 19th century when capitalist moguls tried to corner the market on virtually everything. If Trump isn't talking about Reagan he's talking about Carnegie, Rockefeller, and J.P. Morgan, and money, money, money.
Two words: Dump Trump.
Dave Schwinghammer Fargo-esque novel, SOLDIER'S GAP, is available new and used on Authorsden and at Amazon.com, Barnes and Nobel, among other discount sites.
