Ladies and gentlemen, the strategic mind behind the Trump campaign: Paul Manafort, Trump’s campaign chairman and chief strategist. (At least for now. Anyone want to put money on Manafort lasting until November?) Howard Fineman has an interview with Manafort in which Mr. Chairman is awfully blunt about a number of things. Like what Trump is looking for in a vice president:
“He needs an experienced person to do the part of the job he doesn’t want to do. He seems himself more as the chairman of the board, than even the CEO, let alone the COO.” [...]
The campaign probably won’t choose a woman or a member of a minority group, he said. “In fact, that would be viewed as pandering, I think.”
Let’s unpack that. Trump doesn’t want to do the job of president, is what it boils down to. He wants to be the guy who hands down vague pronouncements from on high and other people try to implement them in his name. And to avoid the appearance of pandering, he’s ruling out the majority of the population who are not white men. Because everyone knows Donald Trump wouldn’t choose a woman or person of color because he thought highly of them—the only possible reason would be to pander.
But don’t worry for Trump. “He’s gonna win,” Manafort says. “This is not a hard race.” But what about women ? Don’t hey hate Trump? Easy peasy:“Hillary is the one who’s got a gender gap. And while we are behind among women over all, we’re ahead among white women even now.”
You just go on thinking it’s going to be easy, guy. We’ll be glad to take advantage of that.