Oh No, Not More of Trump!

The Presidential election should be a contest of ideas and policies, as well as a test of character. This time around, it is more like a slow motion car crash, save for the intervention of Bernie Sanders.  I sense no spark in Mrs Clinton’s speeches, as opposed to Sanders, who knows how to work a room. His run for the nomination was significant for its new ideas. In contrast, Mr Trump has wowed his crowds. Tens of thousands of people with chips on their shoulders and hearts full of malignant feelings towards some of their fellow Americans have filled auditoria to hear his brand of Americana. He cannot be dismissed. 15 million people voted for him in the primaries. Yet a Republican-leaning newspaper, The Huffington Post, concludes every article on Trump with the following:

            “Editor’s note: Donald Trump regularly incites political violence and is a serial liar, rampant xenophobe, racist, misogynist and birther who has repeatedly pledged to ban all Muslims ― 1.6 billion members of an entire religion ― from entering the U.S.”  

Trump has nowhere near enough support to win the race to the White House. In November some 200 million people will vote and the current polls have Trump running ten points behind. The gap between the candidates is not surprising. Trump’s brand of politics is almost unknown. Take just the last few days. He insulted parents of a fallen war hero; he claimed that Russia would not invade Ukraine, although it did so in 2014; he expressed hope that his daughter would just “find another company” if she were sexually harassed at work; he joked at a campaign event when he shamelessly accepted a Purple Heart, the military decoration for soldiers wounded in combat, from a veteran, although Trump has not served a day in the armed forces; he initially refused to endorse Speaker Paul Ryan and Senator John McCain but changed his mind and made a stiff and insincere statement giving them support; and he ordered a crying baby out of one of his rallies. In an interview with NBC News journalist George Stephanopoulos, he was questioned about the death of the soldier Humyan Khan. He argued that he too had made “sacrifices” in his life by working hard and employing thousands of people but could not point to one act of true sacrifice.

Amidst this catalogue of catastrophes, Michael Morell gave an interview with The New York Times. Morell was the acting director and deputy director of the Central Intelligence Agency, having served for 33 years under three Republican and three Democrat Presidents. Despite Trump’s claim that Morell is biased in favour of Mrs Clinton, Morell is neither a registered Democrat nor a registered Republican. As an experienced and respected government official, he has always remained silent about his political preferences.

Morell told the newspaper that he will vote for Mrs. Clinton because she will deliver on the most important duty of a President, keeping the nation safe. Trump, he says, is not only unqualified for the job, but he may well pose a threat to our national security. Morell spent four years working with Mrs. Clinton when she was secretary of state, most often in the White House Situation Room. In these critically important meetings, he found her to be prepared, detail-oriented, thoughtful, inquisitive and willing to change her mind if presented with a compelling argument. Mrs. Clinton was an early advocate of the raid that brought Bin Laden to justice. Tellingly, Morell says he never saw her bring politics into the Situation Room. In fact, he saw the opposite. When some wanted to delay the Bin Laden raid by one day because the White House Correspondents Dinner might be disrupted, she said, “Screw the White House Correspondents Dinner.”

In sharp contrast to Mrs. Clinton, Morell states Trump has no experience on national security. Even more important, the character traits he has exhibited during the primary season suggest he would be a poor, even dangerous, commander in chief. These traits include “his obvious need for self-aggrandizement, his overreaction to perceived slights, his tendency to make decisions based on intuition, his refusal to change his views based on new information, his routine carelessness with the facts, his unwillingness to listen to others and his lack of respect for the rule of law.”

However, Trump is like a lighthouse-shaped doll with a semi-circular bottom, the one that you knock over but straightens up. He can say such awful things. Does he really think all Mexicans are killers and rapists? Does he really want to ban all Muslims from entering into the United States? Will he really build the wall? No of course not! But he has channelled into a brand of ill-feeling amongst blue collar Americans who are fed up with low wages, the fat cats in Washington, state Congresses and City Halls up and down the country who, they feel, have both disinherited them and who continue to deprive them of their rights. And Trump brands himself as the only one who will fix it.

For Trump supporters, he is the real deal. They love his never-ending stream of insults. “Crooked Hillary” will ring out for the rest of the campaign. He will pour oil on the flames with the news that the Bill, Hillary and Chelsea Foundation is being investigated by the FBI. It is alleged that Mrs Clinton, when Secretary of State, gave favours to donors in exchange for money. One wonders how Trump explains the actions of the NRA in this regard.

But Dodgy Donald has skeletons in his own closet. Last week, The Washington Post reported that Trump claimed he gave millions of dollars of his own money to charity but could find no evidence in support. The newspaper looked at the Donald J. Trump Foundation. Tax records show no gifts from Trump to his namesake foundation since 2008. The Trump campaign's official list of donations included thousands of free rounds of golf given away by Trump's golf courses but no cash gifts from Trump's own pocket between 2008 and this May, except $10,000 to the Police Athletic League in New York. The New York Supreme Court is hearing a case where Trump is alleged to have signed off a 2007 deal designed to deprive the US Treasury of millions in tax. And Trump has still not disclosed his tax returns.

An avalanche of mud will be slung between now and November in probably the dirtiest Presidential election ever. The Clinton campaign raised $90m in July, compared with Trump’s campaign’s $80m. Both sides have been boosted by small online donations which are indicative of an enthusiastic support base who either won't or don’t care about Clinton and Trump controversies. With this kind of spending power, both candidates will fill the airways with a perpetual stream of negative adverts. I don’t envy my American friends who will have to put up with this sort of politics for another three months.

 

 

Last night, Trump set out his economic plan. I have not read it yet but I won’t be surprised if we are back to trickle down a la Reagan, a seriously failed policy, tax cuts for business and a deficit in the trillions.