Trump and his many follies
By Raju Chebium
American Bazaar columnist
WASHINGTON—The orange-faced, beady-eyed, gelatinous blob named Donald Trump has broken many political rules on his way to becoming the Republican presidential nominee. This is not good.
The thin-skinned, arrogant buffoon, who shamelessly peddled fear during his acceptance speech at the GOP convention and described a dystopian America that does not match the reality of life in these United States, has built a network of fans—most of them white males—and has given voice to their fear, racism and resentment over the fact that they live in an increasingly multihued, pluralistic society.
Dimwit Donnie is a low-wattage bulb when it comes to policy—build a wall along Mexico and force the Mexicans to pay for it? Really Drumpf?—but he’s bright as a beacon when it comes to unleashing bigotry, xenophobia and sexism to achieve political success.
He should not be allowed anywhere near the White House.
Donnie “Small Hands” Trump was born into wealth; his father was one of the richest men in America. He went on to take over his family business, made a bit of money but lost a whole lot more. He was a success here and there and a failure everywhere else. Throughout his life, Donnie was incurably attracted to publicity like a vulture to road kill, and he said and did silly, stupid things to keep the media spotlight on him. People generally ignored him and wrote him off as a harmless blowhard.
Until one day, tired of being dismissed variously as a fraud, a mental patient, and a delirious egomaniac, Donnie decided to shake things up and run for president. People dismissed this as just another stunt by a deranged blob of a man. This disrespect was evident on the campaign trail when Donnie’s small hands were ridiculed. Turning tangerine with rage, Donnie roared back, “Hey! I’m big everywhere else!”
But Donnie had a secret spell—“Make America great again”—that resonated with millions of Republican voters throughout the country. He knew it would brainwash millions of lost and angry Republicans—those who lamented the loss of a golden, gleaming America that never was, those who’d never reconciled themselves to seeing a black man living in the White House, those who resented brown-skinned immigrants for taking jobs they didn’t want or weren’t skilled enough to do. As he predicted, they became his trumpeters and catapulted him ahead of the competition and handed him the prize—the GOP nomination.
And so here we are, faced with the possibility—albeit slim—of Trump becoming the leader of the most powerful nation on earth. A man so ill-disciplined that he can’t resist lashing out at a Muslim couple whose son—a captain in the U.S. Army—sacrificed himself in Iraq could be entrusted with the nuclear code come January. A man who has a tenuous grasp of the Constitution may be in charge of defending it. A man who epitomizes the Ugly American stereotype could become the leader of the world’s most powerful democracy.
It’s not just his temperament that disqualifies Donnie. His policy positions are nonsensical.
When he promised to build his infamous wall, the Mexicans laughed in his face. Donnie then vowed to round up millions of illegal immigrants living in the U.S.—at a cost of untold billions of dollars—but now appears to be backing off that pledge. He vowed to ban Muslims from “terrorist” nations from entering America and provoked so much anger and anguish that he appears to be walking back that bit of nonsense. He has blundered and thundered and tweeted like some demented child and has made the United States the laughing stock of the world while still a presidential candidate. Can you imagine the horrors this man will unleash on the world if he’s elected president?
When I was vacationing in Canada last week, a man asked me what I thought of Trump. I told him he should never be allowed to become president of anything. The man’s face relaxed and he broke into a smile. Canadians also want Hillary Clinton to become the next president, he said, explaining that his country dreads what Trump would do to U.S.-Canada relations. “Hillary Clinton may not be exciting but she knows her stuff and is way more qualified to be president,” he said. And I shook his hand and said I couldn’t agree more.
Contributor’s note:
Raju Chebium, a native of Chennai, was a reporter for 23 years for the Associated Press, CNN, Gannett News Service and USA Today. For 14 years, he was based in Washington, D.C., and covered the Supreme Court, Congress, and national politics.