One Red State diarist wonders whether Trump’s four-day journey from gracious concession to sober self-reflection about his ground game to shrieking about fraud and a do-over in Iowa to low-key “it’s in the past” dismissal means that he’s actually insane. Old theory: Trump is erratic. New theory: Trump is bananas.
I don’t think he’s bananas. I think this is what it looks like when a candidate decides to test out new lines of attack in real time, with the entirety of the media hanging on his every word, instead of with focus groups behind closed doors.
In a striking reversal of rhetoric, Donald Trump would not rule out Ted Cruz as his hypothetical vice-presidential pick.
“Well, I don’t know. Look, I have nothing against him. It was sort of a sad thing that happened, but I’ve always liked him,” Trump told Hugh Hewitt on his radio show Thursday, after weeks of trashing his primary rival as nasty, hypocritical and disliked.
Trump added that he has “always gotten along well” with Cruz, but that “I’m so much now focused on New Hampshire.”
What happened between Wednesday and now? My guess is that Trump concluded that crying “fraud!” over Iowa had backfired, partly because it made him look erratic and sore-loser-ish and partly because it risked annoying New Hampshirites who don’t want to spend their week listening to Trump re-run someone else’s election. That’s where the part about being “so much focused on New Hampshire” comes in. He said nearly the same thing verbatim to Anderson Cooper last night in the interview Ed blogged earlier, suggesting that that’s his new “message” when asked about the results of the caucus — even though that message, that the past is the past, is 180 degrees opposite his demand for a do-over 48 hours ago. What’s going to happen tomorrow night when he’s inevitably asked about fraud in Iowa, probably in the opening minutes of the debate? Even if he tries to duck it, Cruz is going to use it as evidence that Trump’s too unpredictable and prone to “Trumper tantrums” to be president. Does Trump double down on “fraud!” at the point or does he double down on “let’s move on”? There seems to have been no strategy here beyond him rashly tossing the charge about cheating out there, seeing if it stuck, and then dropping it cold turkey when it didn’t. It’s just like when he started calling Cruz a “maniac” for not being able to work with his Senate colleagues before the December debate, took some heat for it on the right, and then was all chummy with Cruz again on debate night. Given how serious the accusations are — election fraud! Cruz unhinged! — these aren’t trial balloons Trump is floating so much as trial zeppelins. And then, a few days later, when it doesn’t work out as well he planned, he turns around and essentially says: What zeppelin?
The really weird part of this, though, is that he’s backing off the personal attacks on Cruz too, not just the fraud claim. How can you say you’ve always liked a guy whom you’ve been calling nasty, corrupt, cronyist, a hypocrite, a “total liar,” and someone whom no one likes once they get to know him? And how can you not rule him out for VP when you’ve spent the past month arguing that he’s not constitutionally eligible to be president? Is Trump dropping that claim too? This whole weird backtrack smells like his campaign manager pulled him aside and told him that attacking Cruz relentlessly has started to hurt his own popularity, which is dangerous when he’s being threatened by a well-liked candidate in Marco Rubio. So now Trump’s going to chuck everything he’s been saying since New Year’s and try a new low-key “I’m serious and I’m staying on message” approach. Good luck, I guess.
Via the Right Scoop, here he is last night getting angry (and profane) in a much more productive way than he did with this week’s “fraud” digression.
Isn't this the first time a presidential candidate has used the word "fuck" casually in a speech to a big crowd? I just don't recall any presidential candidates as potty-mouthed as Trump. How can a guy so rich be so unclassy?
Ever been around really rich guys? They are the captains of the ship, aggressive, bossy - and profane. Especially Northern urban ones.
They're not politicians. Politicians are boys who were high school class Presidents, who have never done anything substantial themselves, but who give speeches, bite and smile for the camera, decide things "collegially", and generally live middle class lives until cronyism and business contributions - because they are politicians - make them rich.
REAL rich guys who run things and made themselves billionaires are Pattons. Politicians are Powells.
Trump is a Patton of real estate. The rest of the candidates, except Carson, are high school class presidents who moved up the popularity contest scale.
Carson is legitimately a success in his own field, but the nature of his field is fighting with the forces of nature within the confines of cells and neural pathways and a single individual person's body.
Trump's business is the logistics and leadership of a massive private army, to achieve objectives.
Also, Trump is not talking to the people who are going to sniff at him. Who is screwed by Mexican immigration most of all? Working class people - the sort of guys Trump leads on every major construction project. Note in that vignette about the people who helped Trump when his limo broke at the side of the road. What did he do? Simply throw money at them - $20k in cash? No, he PAID OFF THEIR MORTGAGE. He focused DIRECTLY on THE thing that hangs over middle class lives, and he fixed it. You helped me in the way that I really needed it, and I helped you in the way that you need it most - and I know what you need most, because ALL middle class people need that most.
Trump has a great deal of awareness of working class and middle class people. And THEY are not going to be offended when he uses an expletive about things THEY use expletives about.
Are the upper class horrified by expletives? No. The Clintons are famous for them. Powerful people are profane in life.
But high school class presidents and wannabees have set a sort of "Marquess of Queensbury Rules" for communications, which serves to weed people out of their club.
That's nice, but Trump doesn't care. Those people are not going to vote for him anyway.
People like me are. And we are not offended when Trump says "Fuck you" to people that we all want to collectively scream "Fuck you!" at also. He does it for us. It's cathartic, and it makes us more ready than ever to vote for him.
The "Reagan coalition" included the Blue Collar - but Reagan's policies SCREWED THEM. Trump won't screw them. The only way to make America great again is to put America back to work, and that means taking the jobs BACK from illegal immigrants, by keeping the illegals out and pushing them out of the country. And it means punishing companies that don't make stuff in America by hitting them with tariffs that make American-made products cheaper than stuff made in foreign countries with slave wages and no environmental controls.
Trump is talking about that, and the cluck-cluck, tut-tut class are bitching about his STYLE.
Trump is great. He tells it like it is. He talks to people who have been screwed, who KNOW they've been screwed, and who want to no longer be screwed. He tells them how he's going to unscrew them. And he tells the people who say "Tut tut" to go screw themselves. And he CAN, because he's got $5 billion. ANd he's got $5 billion because he is a Patton of real estate.
Patton was controversial and profane too. He was a walking ball of decision, energy and will. Trump has done in real estate finance what Patton did on the battlefield.
When you're being led by a Patton, you win. People like to win.
When you are led by a Cruz or a Rubio, you get great speeches, and you keep getting screwed because men with the wealth and direction of Trump actually OWN the politicians and determine the outcome.
You're either going to get Trump straight, with Trump's peculiar affection for the working class (no doubt from familiarity on thousands of job sites), or you're going to get men just like Trump, who don't give a shit about the working class and who view them as COMMODITIES to be priced as low as possible and expended. But they'll hire the pretty face of a Rubio or a Cruz to speak nice, polite words and intone visions and promises that all sound like unicorn farts. And that never come true.
Rubio and Cruz will give us more of the same. Trump actually WILL make America great again.
And he'll swear doing it, while campaigning angry. Once he is firmly in charge, he won't need to swear so much. He'll rise to the dignity of the office.
But he's not in the office yet, and to actually WIN against the oily lies of the Republican political class, he has to motivate the working class and the middle class to come vote for him.
You do that by getting their energy up, reminding them of why they are right royally pissed, and putting clear words on it. And there's nothing like a good "Fuck!" to amp up the energy and anger.
Winston Churchill had a parrot. During World War II, he trained that parrot, which he kept in his office, to repeat the German salute with a one word change.
After Churchill died, the long-lived parrot lived on, but had to be kept at home in private. Because the parrot was still screaming "FUCK HITLER!" whenever anybody came into the room.
Sir Winston Churchill taught his parrot to regale people who entered his Prime Minister's Office with the salute FUCK HITLER in 1941.
I don't care if Trump swears. He means it. So did Churchill.
You shouldn't care if Trump swears either. He's right. Unless you WANT to be a 'tut-tutting' nancyboy. Don't be a tut-tutting nancyboy. It's weak and pathetic. Leave that to the oily class presidents who speak nice and present the smiling polite face of the rich men who have bought them and who own their balls.
Is there nothing that Trump can do that will stop you from making up some new pack of lames excuses for him?
The way you -- our self-styled Defender of the Poor and Downtrodden -- tie yourself in knots over this crude pro-abortion faux-Xtian cronyist tycoon is beyond belief.
