How Long Will the Trump Binge Last?

And When Will the Hangover Start?

Last night some Twitter people put me in the position of slamming Donald Trump.  I don’t dislike Trump, the businessman, never did, though I pointed out previously that he was dumb, dumb, dumb to attack Senator McCain’s (and other Vietnam war prisoners) war record. Also, his point about the border problem is well known and voiced first by other candidates. Worst of all is his generalized smear of Mexicans, great people, a hard-working and resilient people, with generally conservative values.  

I could go on, but I will just add that it was also a brain-dead move to do his little number on Fox News correspondent Megyn Kelly.  Trump has since backed off of his statement about McCain, but still sorry to say he ambushed Megyn Kelly, rather than the opposite way he played the contretemps. He knew in advance he was going to be asked a “woman question,” of course, and, knowing that the vast public masses (me included) are fed up with the media, he was scripted to bite anyone who asked a question he wouldn’t answer.

I understand, too, that Donald Trump is the most media savvy political phenomenon since Joseph Goebbels, Hitler’s propaganda minister.

Media savvy or not, just about everyone can demagogue the media. It’s just that serious people who really care what happens to America choose not to play that game. Demagoging the issues, really, is getting easier all the time with the expansion of social media, something that Donald Trump recognized early on.

Trump has never made any secret of his contempt for the media and you have to say (generally) it’s rightly deserved. But many Trump reporters are either Democrats or blind followers willing to put by their moral prescriptions, their alleged conservative principles for a guy who says he supported Hillary Clinton (to buy her allegiance, you’re supposed to believe), who figured prominently in NY Mayor Bloomberg’s gun control campaign, who is or was for single payer health care, and other liberal causes.

Yes, Donald Trump has expropriated the ideas and talking points of the other GOP candidates and hyped them to the max, embellishing them, amplifying them with hyperbolic claims that sound like they’re from a Superhero comic book.  Everyone knows what he’s saying because he’s the most colorful figure to appear on the political scene since Barack Obama (no skin color pun intended). It doesn’t matter that the other candidates have said these things first, and long before Trump decided he would be a Republican.

For that matter, I am not sure he is a Republican. A real Republican would not be at all willing to hand a win to Hillary Clinton by running third party. A real Republican, running as a Republican, would make that clear from the start.  Or else Donald Trump should run as an Independent from the start. No, the Republican badge, for Trump, seems to be the outgrowth of his opportunist nature.

Yet, this colorful and animated character follows a “conservative” pattern (helping the liberal media destroy the GOP nominee or not voting for them) that gave us the Messiah Barack Obama in 2008 and 2012 and wants to replace him with Messiah Trump. Lots of people may blah-blah-blah about “principles” and then forgo them just to make themselves feel good, or to merge their identities with billionaire celebrities, hoping desperately that some crumbs will fall from his table.

With Trump, it’s not about the message, it’s about the messenger. Celebrity. All good, but what’s in it for America?  Just the hangover after the drunk.