“Clown Runs for Prez.” This title, in huge letters, made the front page of the New York Daily News last June when Donald Trump announced his candidacy.
“If the American Dream weren’t already dead, it would have killed itself,” said Dana Milbank, a journalist at the Washington Post, going a step further as she heard the Republican candidate’s speech.
The tone had been set. It’s never really changed. The media and political establishment on American soil — and elsewhere in the world — considers Donald Trump a clown. A rabble-rousing fool who has a head for entertainment, which is more and more useful these days for political office.
His incendiary statements have generally been taken lightly, since he himself hasn’t taken them very seriously. Worse, they have allowed him to be a media darling. The listening ratings for the Republican debates have broken records this year thanks to his presence.
But today the clown is no longer making people laugh. And the end-of-recess bell has rung.
We can no longer deny that Donald Trump’s xenophobic and racist comments stir up hatred.
He had already described Mexicans as criminals and thieves, and then said he wanted to deport the some 11 million undocumented immigrants who are currently on American ground. Since the Paris attacks, Muslims have become his target.
In the last few days, he has supported the idea that “thousands” of Muslims cheered in New Jersey when the World Trade Center buildings collapsed in New York. It’s an urban legend. That never happened.
He also said this about Syrian refugees welcomed by the United States: “If I win, they’re going back.” Keeping his momentum, he let it be known that there would have to be a registration process for Muslims living in the United States, which pushed a journalist to ask him — in a strongly relevant way — the difference between this plan and the one conceived of in Nazi Germany to register Jews.
Another of the major reasons that Donald Trump is able to deliver such a large number of venomous remarks is that his rivals don’t dare condemn them, except sometimes grudgingly. Ben Carson, Ted Cruz, and the others know very well that the Republican Party’s most radical voters are those who vote in great numbers to choose their candidate for the 2016 presidential election. They don’t dare scare them off.
In kowtowing to the ultraconservatives, they are damaging the image of their party. They are contributing, like Donald Trump, to feeding a climate of suspicion and hatred toward minorities. Instead, they should tell him to stop his nonsense.
Cool it, my Canadian compatriot. Trump may look like a buffoon from a Canadian perspective, but it seems to me he’s well suited to what Citizens United has done to the American political scene. Congress has turned over the responsibility of governing to the private sector, so why shouldn’t business billionaires be seriously considered for the presidency?
Yes, Trump is a bit over the top at times — racist, misogynist, xenophobic — but his bazillions qualify him as head of a government for business, by business, and of business. The moneyed individuals and corporations who have bought and paid for their representatives in Congress write the legislation, tell the House and Senate how to vote on it, and provide their representatives with talking points, should they get the opportunity to get their faces on television.
In short, Trump is the frosting on the Citizens United cake. If he doesn’t get the nomination, it’s only because Republicans are still in denial.