by Shelton Bumgarner
@bumgarls
Just as Trump’s wall is being built as a fence, it’s becoming pretty clear that he’s not the political genius access journalists are making him out to be. It pains me to say this, but we’ve elected Being There’s Chauncey Gardner president.
Here’s what I think happened. In Obama’s second term, the Republican Party’s base stopped believing in liberal democracy. The conditions were there for someone like Trump to rise. And, remember, all the front runners for the nomination before Trump secured the nomination were, in relative terms, extremely conservative. So, given how poorly Hillary Clinton acted as candidate, if Trump had decided to play president on Sharknado, we would now have a President Cruz or President Rubio. They would likely — especially with Fed court nominations — be appointing the same Federalist Society hack judges that Trump is. But, in a way, they would be far better in getting what they wanted because, well, they aren’t complete idiots like Trump.
So, really, because Trump was a conservative celebrity Twitter troll that the base knew from TV, Trump did not have to do any work. As others have noted, Trump was simply playing the role written for him on The Apprentice. Trump is demonstrably a barely functioning human being, much less an adult. He’s a grifter and a con artist. He’s far better at rhetoric than he is any form of political theory.
The reason why we’re told he’s a political genius is a lot of very intelligent, very well educated people are projecting on to Trump things that don’t exist because they have no other explanation for what’s going on. Making him a genius helps them feel good about the metrics that they, themselves are successfully measured by. They know they’re smart and well educated and would think the same way given the results Trump gets. But what they can’t admit — because it would threaten their self-identity — is Trump is just a malignant version of Chauncey Gardner. Trump became president not because he is smart or clever or worked hard like they did. He’s president because of macro social, political and economic problems in the United States that he has no control over.
So, if the people who are covering Trump have a vested interest in making him seem far more adept than he is, then he becomes invincible. Access journalists write in hushed tones that Trump’s latest clusterfuck is actually a subtle play for single women liberal voters just outside Phillie. They say that because how else do you explain such bizarre behavior? To say that Trump is pretty much a lucky moron is to suggest that you can be not only stupid and criminally incompetent, but not go to a good school and have more power than people who did to it “the right way.”
With that in mind, some things come to mind. One is, if you’re not only a political grifter but have poor impulse control, you’re likely to get in trouble. That Trump would actively collude again the day after being given a political pardon by the “poor optics” of Bob Mueller’s testimony to Congress is a sign that maybe you shouldn’t be president anymore. The surreal irony of all of this is Trump is getting into more trouble now because he is beginning to get the hang of how to abuse the levers of power. Again, if he was a political genius that access journalists want us to believe, this is not what he would do.
And so now, we’re in the situation we’re in. Trump will grow in power because he’s able to use his power more effectively. Trump’s likely to wiggle his way out of this TrumpUkraine scandal and, well, I guess if we’re such idiots to let him do it we deserve what we get.
