Donald Trump suggested that Russian agents should hack into Hillary Clinton’s email and produce the personal emails a team of lawyers had deleted as being non-State Department related. The suggestion captured headlines, and shocked experts.
There is simply no precedent for this: A presidential candidate publicly appealing to a foreign adversary to intervene in the election on his behalf.
“This is unprecedented — it is one of those things that seems to be genuinely new in international relations,” said Paul Musgrave, a University of Massachusetts professor who studies American foreign policy.
After a long pause, Mr. Musgrave added, “Being shocked into speechlessness is not the sort of thing you’re really used to in the business of foreign policy analysis.”
Trump also made clear just how much he wants to be in Putin’s good graces.
”Right now, we don't have a good relationship. Putin has said things over the last year that are really bad things. OK? He mentioned the "N" word one time. I was shocked to hear him mention the "N" word. You know what the "N" word is, right? He mentioned it. I was shocked.
He has a total lack of respect for President Obama. Number one, he doesn't like him. And number two, he doesn't respect him. I think he's going to respect your president if I'm elected. And I hope he likes me.”
In one answer, Trump states that the despotic leader of the Russian Federation calls President Obama “ni***r”—with an offer to remind reporters what that is, in case they missed it. Oh, and Trump also says, “I hope he likes me.”
At a rally on Friday, Trump said he was “taking the gloves off” and that there would be “no more Mr. nice guy.” This came, of course, deep inside a string of insults including agreeing with the crowd in their calls to lock up his political opponent.
The next day, Trump stopped to insult a Gold Star family, dismissing their sacrifice and questioning their loyalty, authenticity, and motives.
It’s not because Donald Trump thinks that any publicity is good publicity. It’s because he knows that bad publicity is better.
Bad publicity is more lasting. Bad publicity draws more attention. Bad publicity lets Donald Trump capture more than half the time on the morning news the night after the Democratic Convention was graced by a whole series of moving, powerful speeches from brilliant, eloquent speakers.
There’s an old, deeply cynical, and unfortunately true aphorism that goes back decades: If it bleeds, it leads. The darker, the more twisted, the more awful something is, the closer it will be to the top of the page, and the larger the headline type.
Trump instinctively knows this. That’s why his predisposition is never to apologize. Never to soothe. Never to heal.
Instead he starts by throwing flames and follows it up by rubbing salt in the wound. He lives in the moment of jaws dropped open in shock. He exists for the raised eyebrow.
His narcissism feeds on column inches and media minutes, and he doesn’t care if the voice saying his name is jovial or outraged. But he prefers outraged. Horrified is even better.
Eventually, if something is offensive enough, outrageous enough, mean-spirited enough, ugly enough, Trump moves on. Not to get rid of that topic, but to turn it into part of his stump speech. His standard monologue.
Banning people from the nation based on their religion? Creating a 3,000-mile wall along the border that would require impossible engineering, along with hundreds of times as much building material as the Great Pyramid? Those are the early ideas that consistently generated enough hate to secure a place in Trump’s daily speech. Abandoning our allies. Deporting millions. Tearing up treaties. Yes. Yes. Yes. All acceptable additions to the “policy," but none of them quite so easily hurled at people as the wall, or the ban. So Trump is always looking for a new way to be offensive.
Inviting a foreign power to meddle in our election? That may be good enough. Insulting a prisoner of war? Absolutely. Hinting that a Gold Star family is less than fully American? Prime. Trump will need to test it a bit more. Dip in a litmus strip and see if it’s acid enough to make it into the evening rhetoric, where the select few get a glimpse of the grimoire in progress.
Because ultimately, Trump’s speech is designed to throw off darkness. It’s designed to be an engine of hate.
That may seem like a bad strategy. But bad is a strategy. The villain gets to chew the wallpaper and twist his mustache. The villain gets to prance and shake his fist and thunder. He gets to cancel Christmas. He gets the frickin’ sharks with laser beams.
The villain is almost always more interesting—even more charismatic—than the hero plodding her stolid, honorable path. The villain is unconstrained. The villain can say anything.
And there are always those who gather around the villain to bask in the dark light. You don’t have to grow minions in a lab. They come on their own.
If you don’t believe me, you can see for yourself. There’s a Trump rally this afternoon.