Donald Trump speaks to the irrational fears of millions of Americans. That these fears are not based on facts is irrelevant to the people who hold them. And they do hold them. They feel them. They cling to them. Many have access to objective information that would debunk their fears, if objective information was relevant to them, but clearly it is not. They will live their fears, and they don't want to be dissuaded from it. They want politicians to address their fears with an unthinking presumption that they are valid. Donald Trump does exactly that. Not because he shares those fears or cares about the people who hold them, but because he can exploit those fears to manipulate the people who hold them to serve his own personal purposes.
Trump wants people to believe that Islamic terrorists are lurking in the shadows, that Democrats are sympathetic and abetting them, that violent criminals are out of control, that people from Mexico are crossing the border to rape women and poison children with drugs, that government regulations are destroying the economy, that Christanity is at risk of being destroyed, and that Hillary Clinton wants to take everyone's guns.
Trump wants people to believe that unless he is elected to Take America Back and Make America Great Again, doom is imminent. He's just a fancier version of that guy with the placard roaming your city center, warning that The End Is Nigh. Except that millions of people actually believe him.
As unhinged as this all sounds, none of it will convince his supporters that supporting him is unhinged. As he himself put it, he "could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody," and not lose voters. But even on his supporters' own terms, which means pretending that their irrational fears are actually justified, the dirty little secret of the Trump candidacy is that Trump doesn't actually care. His presidential campaign isn't about solving problems or protecting against even worse ones, it's an ego trip. A game. An exercise in narcissistic indulgence. Trump himself recently accidentally let the truth slip:
Donald Trump says if he loses the presidential election to Hillary Clinton, he’d be fine with it because he’s got a lot of money and he’s the one telling the truth.
“I’m a truth teller,” the Republican nominee told CNBC on Thursday. “All I do is tell the truth. And if at the end of 90 days I fall short because I’m somewhat politically [incorrect] even though I’m supposed to be the smart one and even though I’m supposed to have a lot of good ideas, it’s OK. You know, I go back to a very good way of life.”
This is a man who had just claimed that the woman who will be president created ISIS, but he'd be okay with it because he will be okay. Terrorists and rapists and drugs and violent crime and a destroyed economy and destroyed religion, all of which sound like very bad things, presumably causing all manner of suffering to millions of people, but no worries, because he won’t be the one suffering. A man who actually believed all that and cared about people other than himself wouldn’t be shrugging it off. He wouldn't be looking to the very good way of life he’ll continue to have, he would consider that way of life endangered, and he would be worried about all the people who don't have a similarly very good way of life.
Get it?
Donald Trump offered a fatalistic assessment of his personal and political future on Thursday, saying he will not abandon the controversial style that fueled his ascent despite lagging poll numbers and a string of damaging controversies.
And if that means losing to Hillary Clinton in November, Trump told CNBC: "I'm going to have a very, very nice long vacation."
The world will be falling apart, the nation will be crumbling, fire and brimstone will be coming down from the skies, with the dead rising from the grave, human sacrifice and dogs and cats living together, but he'll go on a very, very nice long vacation and then go back to a very good way of life. He may even be able to sustain the game for a while, which would make that very good way of life even better. For him. Which would make it all okay. Because nothing else matters to Trump. Even when he does express disappointment at the prospect of losing, it’s only about himself:
Oh you better elect me folks, I'll never speak to you again. Can you imagine — can you imagine how badly I'll feel if I spend all of that money, all of this energy, all of this time, and lost? I will never, ever forgive the people of Connecticut, I will never forgive the people of Florida and Pennsylvania and Ohio. But I love them anyway, we'll see. I think we're gonna do very well.
Donald Trump is playing his supporters for fools. It's not just that he doesn't actually share their beliefs—he doesn't actually seem to have any—it's that he doesn't care about them at all. His presidential aspirations are not about them, and they are not about the common good, they are about nothing more and nothing less than Donald Trump. He doesn't believe his own bullshit. He knows that it's bullshit. He just wants his supporters to wallow in it for his own self-aggrandizement.
In a sad profile of Trump's daughter and key adviser, Ivanka, came this little nugget:
A Trump family friend told me, “It’s a close family in many ways—except it’s all about Donald all the time.” He went on, “Donald only thinks of himself. When you say, ‘Donald, it’s raining today,’ he says, ‘It doesn’t matter, I’m indoors.’ ”
Which is no surprise to anyone who pays any attention to Trump. In her stunning profile of Tony Schwartz, the man who actually wrote Trump's best-selling book, Jane Mayer writes:
“Trump has been written about a thousand ways from Sunday, but this fundamental aspect of who he is doesn’t seem to be fully understood,” Schwartz told me. “It’s implicit in a lot of what people write, but it’s never explicit—or, at least, I haven’t seen it. And that is that it’s impossible to keep him focussed on any topic, other than his own self-aggrandizement, for more than a few minutes, and even then . . . ” Schwartz trailed off, shaking his head in amazement. He regards Trump’s inability to concentrate as alarming in a Presidential candidate. “If he had to be briefed on a crisis in the Situation Room, it’s impossible to imagine him paying attention over a long period of time,” he said.
People expecting a Trump pivot toward a supposedly rational, reasonable middle ignored who Trump really is:
This year, Schwartz has heard some argue that there must be a more thoughtful and nuanced version of Donald Trump that he is keeping in reserve for after the campaign. “There isn’t,” Schwartz insists. “There is no private Trump.” This is not a matter of hindsight. While working on “The Art of the Deal,” Schwartz kept a journal in which he expressed his amazement at Trump’s personality, writing that Trump seemed driven entirely by a need for public attention. “All he is is ‘stomp, stomp, stomp’—recognition from outside, bigger, more, a whole series of things that go nowhere in particular,” he observed, on October 21, 1986.
In fact, Trump's recent campaign shakeup was a pivot toward the far right lunatic fringe. But it's not about politics or ideology or even campaign strategy. It goes back to Trump's distilled essence, as described by Schwartz:
He saw Trump as driven not by a pure love of dealmaking but by an insatiable hunger for “money, praise, and celebrity.”
An insatiable hunger. A desperate need. An addiction. Trump cares so little about actual policy, that if he somehow got elected he would delegate its entirety to his vice president. Trump just wants the spotlight. He doesn't care how he gets it.
Schwartz told me that Trump’s need for attention is “completely compulsive,” and that his bid for the Presidency is part of a continuum. “He’s managed to keep increasing the dose for forty years,” Schwartz said. After he’d spent decades as a tabloid titan, “the only thing left was running for President. If he could run for emperor of the world, he would.”
Trump thrives on firing up crowds and basking in the adulation. He doesn't care how he does it, just so he gets the validation he craves. It's not about people or policy, and it's not about the national interest or making the world a better place. It's about Trump. Whether his own family or his pathetically deluded adoring supporters, Trump just doesn't care about anyone or anything other than Trump. He's a master of manipulation, and he depends on his ability to get away with it. He toys with people’s fears and passions. As has been the case his entire adult life, Trump is just a gaudily gilded con man playing suckers for fools.
