self-important blowhards. This time, though, I wasn’t in the mood. Only rarely during the Obama era had Trump’s antics yielded satisfying retribution. What appeared to be good for late-night comedy I felt would not be good for the Democrats. (Certainly not for Republicans.) It could not be good for America. *1 It boded ill for humanity.
Otherwise I misread the moment, along with one hundred percent of the commentariat. We
knew
that Trump would be gone long before the primaries. We got it completely wrong. Before grasping just how mistaken I was about his prospects, I vowed not to jump in. Why write about this extended exhibition of Trumpian autoeroticism when everyone else already was? No need to feed the beast. Better it should starve of neglect.
Over the weeks and months that followed, as Trump spewed taunts, insults, threats, and dog-whistle-free bigotry—expanding his repertoire from Mexicans to the planet’s 1.6 billion Muslims—his poll numbers vindicated his methods. Thousands of real voters with real fears and long festering grievances thronged to his rallies. Among them were manifestly unrepentant haters, but that was not the majority sentiment. These were citizens whose resentment and anger had steeped in the blatant chronic bad faith of their elected representatives. For the time being, Trump would overcome his germophobic dread of waving fields of outstretched paws. With his genius for counterfeit fellow-feeling, he knew exactly which buttons to push and when. (During a midwinter meeting with the editorial board of the
Times,
he slipped up and gave the game away: “You know, if it gets a little boring, if I see people starting to sort of, maybe thinking about leaving, I can sort of tell the audience, I just say, ‘We will build the wall!’—and they go nuts.” *2 Indeed they did.) Trump loomed as an aspirational figure, a pseudo-populist self-proclaimed multi-billionaire whose contempt for the customary protocols of the reviled Washington establishment bound him to his adherents in a mutual intoxication. A cocktail of bogus facts, stirred by fear, naïveté, and an indifference to pragmatic exigencies. A zeal only loosely tethered to reality. “I love the poorly educated!” he crowed. They loved him back.
That he did not sound or behave like a typical politician won him points for authenticity. No one in the congregation seemed to mind—or even register—that an authentic corporeal Donald Trump did not exist. There was only
Trump
—in the flesh, as it were, a bloated bloviator in a navy suit and bright primary-colored necktie, with a laboriously tended pumpkin-pink coif that grew nowhere in nature. All was artifice. He greeted each assembly with a profession of love, congratulating the crowd for being three times larger than it in fact was. At each subsequent whistle-stop it grew larger yet. Trump held forth with bladder-testing stamina. But what was that coming out of his mouth? A stump speech of rambling self-aggrandizement and tough-talk sound bites: bigness, greatness, getting screwed, getting even, China, Mexico, Japan, the system’s rigged, losing, winning, head-spinning, an endless infomercial about his putative riches and fantastic fabulousness—flowing in intermittently filtered free association.
The bombast spoke plainly of his tactics, if not necessarily of his objectives. I doubted that winning the Republican nomination, let alone winning the general election, could be Trump’s genuine desire. The most logical rationale for his candidacy was the abiding obsession with his ever-metastasizing brand. From the podium he peddled Trump water, Trump wine, and Trump Steaks (an obsolete product). He spoke of himself in the third person: “Nobody would be tougher on ISIS than Donald Trump”; “Missouri just confirmed a victory for Donald Trump”; “Rand Paul is doing so badly he figures he has to go out and attack Trump.” When a protester who repeatedly shouted “Not all Mexicans
Otherwise I misread the moment, along with one hundred percent of the commentariat. We
knew
that Trump would be gone long before the primaries. We got it completely wrong. Before grasping just how mistaken I was about his prospects, I vowed not to jump in. Why write about this extended exhibition of Trumpian autoeroticism when everyone else already was? No need to feed the beast. Better it should starve of neglect.
Over the weeks and months that followed, as Trump spewed taunts, insults, threats, and dog-whistle-free bigotry—expanding his repertoire from Mexicans to the planet’s 1.6 billion Muslims—his poll numbers vindicated his methods. Thousands of real voters with real fears and long festering grievances thronged to his rallies. Among them were manifestly unrepentant haters, but that was not the majority sentiment. These were citizens whose resentment and anger had steeped in the blatant chronic bad faith of their elected representatives. For the time being, Trump would overcome his germophobic dread of waving fields of outstretched paws. With his genius for counterfeit fellow-feeling, he knew exactly which buttons to push and when. (During a midwinter meeting with the editorial board of the
Times,
he slipped up and gave the game away: “You know, if it gets a little boring, if I see people starting to sort of, maybe thinking about leaving, I can sort of tell the audience, I just say, ‘We will build the wall!’—and they go nuts.” *2 Indeed they did.) Trump loomed as an aspirational figure, a pseudo-populist self-proclaimed multi-billionaire whose contempt for the customary protocols of the reviled Washington establishment bound him to his adherents in a mutual intoxication. A cocktail of bogus facts, stirred by fear, naïveté, and an indifference to pragmatic exigencies. A zeal only loosely tethered to reality. “I love the poorly educated!” he crowed. They loved him back.
That he did not sound or behave like a typical politician won him points for authenticity. No one in the congregation seemed to mind—or even register—that an authentic corporeal Donald Trump did not exist. There was only
Trump
—in the flesh, as it were, a bloated bloviator in a navy suit and bright primary-colored necktie, with a laboriously tended pumpkin-pink coif that grew nowhere in nature. All was artifice. He greeted each assembly with a profession of love, congratulating the crowd for being three times larger than it in fact was. At each subsequent whistle-stop it grew larger yet. Trump held forth with bladder-testing stamina. But what was that coming out of his mouth? A stump speech of rambling self-aggrandizement and tough-talk sound bites: bigness, greatness, getting screwed, getting even, China, Mexico, Japan, the system’s rigged, losing, winning, head-spinning, an endless infomercial about his putative riches and fantastic fabulousness—flowing in intermittently filtered free association.
The bombast spoke plainly of his tactics, if not necessarily of his objectives. I doubted that winning the Republican nomination, let alone winning the general election, could be Trump’s genuine desire. The most logical rationale for his candidacy was the abiding obsession with his ever-metastasizing brand. From the podium he peddled Trump water, Trump wine, and Trump Steaks (an obsolete product). He spoke of himself in the third person: “Nobody would be tougher on ISIS than Donald Trump”; “Missouri just confirmed a victory for Donald Trump”; “Rand Paul is doing so badly he figures he has to go out and attack Trump.” When a protester who repeatedly shouted “Not all Mexicans
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