*
Yes, I have employed the theatrical sleight of hand of conflating two movie quotes with four actual Trump quotes and three separate actual Trump/Russia-scandal quotes being reported today.
I have done this because one of the fascinating, terrifying joys of that political-science-fiction classic The Manchurian Candidate is that once you buy into the premise that the Russians would go to any lengths to influence who becomes president of the United States, the rest of the plot quickly lines up behind a kind of inevitable logic.
And once you buy into the premise that not the fictional film version of the Soviets of 1962 but the real-life version of the post-Soviet Russians of 2016 would go to any lengths to influence who becomes president of the United States, the kaleidoscopic chaos of Donald Trump’s fever dream of a campaign also quickly lines up behind a kind of inevitable logic.
So think of the inevitable logic of the plot points in the screenplay of what we might title The Trumpchurian Candidate . . .
Two weeks ago, Trump, who has continually—again and again, even during the debates—defended the Russians against charges that they have hacked American political-related computer systems, elevated his bizarre loyalty to Putin to a new level by disputing the classified briefings he’s gotten in which our spies drew him the proverbial map.
Trump continues to say he would restructure the greatest wedge against Russia—NATO—and lend American help to NATO countries menaced by, say, Russia, only if they paid up.
During the September presidential forum, Trump said Putin was a greater leader than Barack Obama and, with no apparent irony, or awareness that Putin is a dictator, cited Putin’s approval ratings of 82 percent.
The same month, the second man Trump named as a foreign policy adviser, Carter Page, was investigated by our intelligence agencies for allegedly meeting in Moscow with the Russian who supposedly supervises their attempts to mess up our election.
After years of boasting, “I do have a relationship with him”—Trump is recorded on video saying that—he switched in September to a full denial that he even knows Putin.
And Trump has defended Putin’s anger at the use of the phrase “American exceptionalism,” and Trump has refused to say anything when his own running mate, Mike Pence, called Putin “small and bullying,” and Trump denied that the Russians had anything to do with Malaysian Airlines Flight 370, and Trump has insisted that Putin will never go into Ukraine, even though he went into Ukraine in 2014!
Anybody seeing the plot lines of our movie The Trumpchurian Candidate taking shape yet?
*
There is one other writer’s trick to which I must now confess:
I omitted from my collection of quotations anything from The New York Times’ reporting this morning that the FBI looked but found nothing necessarily nefarious about that reported direct line between a computer server in Trump Tower and the Russian company Alfa-Bank.
Nor, the Times says, has the FBI found anything that ties Trump or anybody near him to the conclusion of American intelligence agencies that the Bureau now seems to be finally, grudgingly agreeing with: that the Russians are trying to disrupt the presidential election.
But I would point out that the Times report also confirms that “the FBI’s inquiries into Russia’s possible role continue.” And the Times also quotes an op-ed in its own pages from this past August in which former CIA acting director Michael Morell said simply, “In the intelligence business, we would say that Mr. Putin had recruited Mr. Trump as an unwitting agent of the Russian Federation.”
In sum, there is only one flaw that would result from altering that line from The Manchurian Candidate to insert into our script for The Trumpchurian Candidate, so that it would read, “I think if Donald Trump were a paid Russian agent, he could not do more to harm this country than he’s doing now.”
That flaw is . . . Trump may not be a paid Russian agent. . . . He may be stupid enough, or disloyal enough, or anti-democracy enough . . . or just evil enough . . . to be doing it for free.
DESCENDING FROM THE CLOUDS
Post date • WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 2
As a student of history—and as an individual of largely German heritage—I have wondered since my teens what it would have been like—what it must have been like for distant relatives I will never know—to have been a German and watch what seemed like a strange but evidently unimportant political movement rise up from the fringes of my society and from the unsound mind and evil soul of one individual.
What would it be like to watch a man, laughed at more than feared, spew bizarre but hardly earth-shattering invective, year after year, in the shadowy corners? And then to see him—in real time and in my native language—double down on his rhetoric and hate and convoluted revenge fantasies, and then triple down on them, and quadruple, and quintuple.
What would it be like to watch in amazement, from your home, from the only society you and your family had ever known, to see the country you thought you knew react not with trebled laughter and quadrupled outrage—but with growing acceptance and enthusiasm?
What would it be like to see and hear, in your own language and time, the hate in which the man trafficked and the power he sought to usurp become part of your daily life?
What would it be like to hear a demagogue, a monster in the making, campaigning for office and promising to disband opposition parties and jail the opposing candidate?
What would it be like to hear those who follow him see their most secret, violent fantasies come to life, burnished with the authenticity and authority of a man who had moved the bar between right and wrong toward himself, who could, with a few words, validate their desires to hate and exclude and kill?
What would it be like to see it unfold, in preliminary elections and in increasingly fevered rallies, as millions handed over their votes, never dreaming that they would be repaid only with fear and privation and death, and the destruction of their country?
What would it be like to watch as the sober agencies of government gradually became corrupted, first to influence the outcomes of elections, then to separate a minority from the day-to-day life of my country, then to remove them to camps and uncertain fates there?
What would it be like to watch as the police became first militarized and then politically aggressive and partisan—as they literally adopted the logos and the clothing of the rising mob?
What would it be like to watch the figure at the center of this ever-darkening storm begin to promise accords—on my behalf, on my country’s behalf—with dictators around the world?
What would it be like—and when would it have hit home—that what I was watching was no longer politics, nor the governance of a country, but the normalization of repression and horror?
All this I have wondered.
What would it be like to see my country devolve and deteriorate from democracy to mindless, soulless cult worship?
Thanks to Donald Trump, I am getting the chance to find out.
*
Last Saturday: A rally-goer in Phoenix spits at the media pen and starts shouting, “Jew S.A.! Jew S.A.!” and is captured on video as he does so.
Day before yesterday: He self-identifies as George Lindell, of Phoenix, and he claims it was not an anti-Semitic chant, but empathy for a group of Hispanics at the Trump rally who pronounce “USA” that way.
Because that’s what you do at Trump rallies: empathize with Hispanics.
Lindell does not explain why his empathy was followed by telling reporters and photographers that they were “going down” and adding, “The Jews run the country anyway.”
*
In Cleveland on October 22, a man shouts “Lügenpresse” at reporters. It’s an alt-right term that was used to describe anything Western in the East Germany of the 1960s; it even dates back to the propaganda of the Kaiser in the First World War. But it gained an added meaning—�
�liar press,” or “lying Jewish press,” or just “lying Jews”—in the Germany of the 1930s.
*
Last Sunday: Another man at another Trump rally yells at the press pit, “Put the camera on us, faggot! Put the camera on us, queer!”
He self-identifies as Matt Fox, of Palm Springs, and he explains that he’s proud to have said it, and besides, “Queer isn’t a bad word. Queer means happy.”
*
Yesterday: A member of Trump’s Agricultural Advisory Committee tweets a poll result that reads, “TRUMP 44 Cunt 43.”
*
Last Sunday: As that rally begins in Las Vegas, an opening speaker named Wayne Root almost sounds like he's fantasizing about the death of Hillary Clinton and then says, “We’re putting the D.C. elite on notice. We’re coming to tear it down. We’re coming to rip it up. We’re coming to kick your ass. And we’re coming to put you in prison.”
*
Since a year ago June, and in the campaign that has followed, Trump crisscrossed the country in an airplane, descending from the clouds into the arms of growing numbers of fanatics, at ever larger rallies. He gave them a positive message, promising something for everyone, then ascended back into the clouds.
A week ago tonight, he descended at Kinston, North Carolina, his plane taxiing toward the crowd of fanatics. A huge spotlight was directed on the door, right next to the giant letters spelling TRUMP, and he walked down the airplane stairs and began to speak.
Soon, an older man in a dress shirt and jacket and sunglasses moved slowly toward the stage and got to within twenty feet of Trump. He waved a piece of paper in the air and shouted, “Donald, Donald . . .”
Trump spotted him and pointed him out to security, and as the man was removed, Trump said, “We have a protester. By the way, were you paid one thousand five hundred dollars to be a thug? . . . You can get him out. Get him out . . . Out!” Trump went on to riff about what a disgrace it is, and how tough his people are.
The man turns out to be an ex-Marine. And he’s sixty-three years old. And he’s named C. J. Cary. And he’s . . . a Trump voter. And he’s corresponded with Trump since 1992. And he’s had thirty-six different Trump signs in his North Carolina yard, and they keep getting vandalized. And he keeps getting new ones.
And the piece of paper in this ex-Marine’s hand was a note urging Trump to not lose the election by continuing to be impolite and unwelcoming . . . to minorities.
But to Trump, he wasn’t one of his people.
As Mr. Cary approached, Trump did not see the veteran, nor a pen pal, nor a man with thirty-six Trump yard signs, nor a supporter. All Trump saw was that Mr. Cary . . . is African American
So Trump called him a thug.
*
Called him a thug, the same way George Lindell called the reporters Jews from Jew S.A. . . .
The same way Matt Fox called them faggots and queers . . .
The same way the Trump mob in Cleveland called them “Lügenpresse.”
The same way Wayne Root called all of Trump’s opponents “D.C. elite” to be “put in prison.”
*
What would it be like to see my country devolve and deteriorate from democracy to mindless, soulless cult worship?
Thanks to Donald Trump, I am getting the chance to find out.
I close with a paragraph from a website called HistoryPlace.com. I’ve played a little trick here. I’ve already quoted this paragraph, a minute ago.
I have changed just two words in it, both of them proper nouns.
“In the campaign that followed, [he] criss-crossed [the country] in an airplane, descending from the clouds into the arms of growing numbers of fanatics, at ever larger rallies. He gave them a positive message, promising something for everyone, then ascended back into the clouds.”
HistoryPlace.com then adds that the candidate who descended from the clouds in his own airplane made his fanatics more and more ludicrous promises.
Such as: “In the Third Reich every German girl will find a husband!”
TRUMP TV—YOU THINK IT’S FOR WHEN HE LOSES?
Post date • THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 3
It is not breaking news.
He will do it again today, at least once.
Donald Trump will attack the media.
Did it in Miami yesterday. Said, “Another important issue for Americans is integrity in journalism. These people are among the most dishonest people I’ve met, spoken to, done business with. These are the most dishonest people.”
The crowd booed lustily.
“There has never been anywhere near the media dishonesty like we’ve seen in this election. Don’t worry, they won’t spin the cameras and show the kinds of massive crowds. They won’t do that.”
He says this every single day.
Yesterday he singled out, for the third time, one reporter—my ex-girlfriend, incidentally, Katy Tur of NBC, still a dear friend. She was harassed by the simpering bullies who populate Trump crowds, but she’s fine, because unlike them, or Trump, she’s neither a coward nor a fascist.
Still, abusing the media, inciting physical harm against them—that always whips up the crowd.
But it’s also . . . a preview.
His son-in-law, Jared Kushner, was reported this week to be using personnel recruiters to try to staff up . . . “Trump TV.”
Which starts the obvious cognitive dissonance echoing again.
Trump TV means his family expects him to lose.
Right? Already in the proverbial “soft launch” on Facebook, it’s a cynical exploitation of the past sixteen months of relentless self-promotion and reality show plot lines and network enablers and the accumulation of a database of at least twelve million email addresses.
But it is based on that one premise: President Trump would have no time for his own political television apparatus, right?
What would a president of the United States need his own television network for?
What would a president of the United States, elected purely as a cult figure and facing enormous opposition from the moment of his inauguration, do with his own television network?
What would a president of the United States with no apparent commitment to nor understanding of democracy, with only a stated insistence that “I alone can fix it,” put on his own television network?
*
Trump TV isn’t designed as a fallback in case he loses!
Trump TV is designed as a ready-made propaganda outlet in case he wins.
Trump TV isn’t a consolation prize—it’s a means of consolidating power once he’s in the White House. It may not even remain “Trump TV.” It may morph into something like “Official State TV.”
What more could he ask for—indeed, what would he need more—than a media outlet that always agrees with his decisions and whims, and insults and then demonizes and then organizes action against those who criticize him, and ultimately can be amped up to outshout the unofficial American broadcasters—the disloyal ones like CBS and NBC and ABC and CNN and Fox News and every nascent operation from The Closer to Breitbart TV—if they won’t toe the line.
Hell, why bother “outshouting” them for very long?
Trump has already threatened all media, all those protected by libel laws, all free speech. He has threatened CNN and The New York Times by name. Nine days ago, his henchman Dan Scavino threatened Megyn Kelly. “Watch,” he tweeted, “what happens to her after this election is over.”
Why would you assume that Trump would bother sticking to the laws when he believes—as no president in our history has ever believed—that he can just nullify them with executive orders? Why not cut to the chase and just announce that you can’t broadcast news without a license from the government, and we will let you know when your license application has been reviewed?
In the age of satellites
and internet, it’s doubtful that Trump TV—as State TV—could totally drown out outside voices. Even when the Nazis took over all of German radio in 1933, and then in 1939 made it a criminal offense to listen to foreign stations, words of dissent made it through.
But not from within the country.
And ask the Chinese or the North Koreans how unfettered the internet is. They are told, and eventually most of them come to actually believe, that in blocking them from seeing half or more of all websites, their governments aren’t denying them truth, but protecting them from external brainwashing.
Happily, that could never happen here!
Not with Trump having demonized the current American media during virtually every one of his speeches, like yesterday, to the point that, on the thirteenth of last month in Cincinnati, the entire traveling press corps had to be escorted to safety by police dressed in riot gear.
Happily, that could never happen here!
Not with Trump having advocated for restrictions on the internet to keep terrorists from communicating. Or from brainwashing American minds. And then he decides who’s a terrorist.
Happily, that could never happen here!
Not with Trump’s toady Newt Gingrich having gone on record as long ago as 2008, saying that part of the internet needed to be turned off and the First Amendment should be reconsidered.
No, no, no, Trump TV is his backup plan—just to cash in on his indisputable popularity with the average American.
The average American!
Who believes what Trump tells him, that the “rigged media” is conspiring against him—and against Trump. Who shouts “Lügenpresse” and yells homophobic and racist slurs at the reporters and who does so with impunity!
Who wants to hear that Trump is right and Trump is good and Trump is winning and Trump has gotten them all better jobs and Trump has made America great again and Trump has gotten rid of those filthy immigrants and Trump is happy to raise the chocolate ration to twenty grams a week and Trump has killed the terrorists and Trump alone fixed it and Trump recognizes which group is the next threat and Trump is acting to protect you from it and Trump has good news about the fighting and Trump is right: we have always been at war with East Asia.
Trump Is F*cking Crazy (This Is Not a Joke) Page 11