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DonaldTrump
MAR
18
Trump, Putin, Ukraine, and the future of the GOP
By:
Michael E. Ross
on
MAR
18
THAT RELATIVE radio silence we’ve observed from Team Trump recently is not an accident. Well, it’s partly unintended consequences; the instant faceplant of Trump’s Truth Social website did keep the former president from elevating his profile in his usual bellicose fashion. Still, despite being just seven months from the midterm elections, there’s a sense that the Trump 2024 campaign is in hunkerdown mode, planning, negotiating, gathering nuts and dry powder for the fall. And there’s likely another explanation for the comparative quiet of Donald Trump, his enablers and minions. It’s an explanation evolving – exploding – half a world away. Thanks to the expansionist antics of Russian president Vladimir Putin, war is on the march in Europe, for the first time since World War II. Putin’s scorched-earth war against neighbor Ukraine has led to the deaths of thousands since the war started on Feb. 24, and the displacement of more
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DEC
19
2020 - The postwar world: An election's truth and consequences
By:
Michael E. Ross
on
DEC
19
THE PREVAILING wisdom in the aftermath of the 2020 presidential election is that, by accident and on purpose, Donald John Trump remains the black-hole sun at the center of the Republican party universe. Within the GOP, there’s no credibility without him. And a large number of party loyalists – not just the 126 House Republicans who signed on to Trump’s fatal gambit to overturn the outcome of the election – are irreversibly subservient to the soon-to-be former president. Donald Trump is the isolationist, white-supremacist hill they will die on. And for a party whose identity was already in turmoil – witness the desperation of leadership that helped make Trump the 2016 Republican nominee in the first place – the GOP’s fealty to Trump could be the sign of a party facing that next worst existential crisis: having no future at all.Mainstream Republicans in Congress have been in lockstep with Trump, only sometimes reluctantly, for the las
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JAN
13
Donald Trump, the necessary unnecessary apprentice
By:
Michael E. Ross
on
JAN
13
DONALD TRUMP’S chilly longtime catchphrase, the one he used to achieve power and prominence in the world of reality TV not so long ago, has been too much and too long a fact of American life since the Great Recession, a time when irony and schadenfreude have become not-so-strange bedfellows in our politics. The Donald assumes the presidency at noon eastern time one week from today, taking the helm of the world’s oldest popularly-elected representative democracy. Ironically, it’s at that moment of great national importance, pompous and circumstantial, when Trump’s stock begins to fall in value. It’s that time when the wish for calamity to befall him and others — schadenfreude — will start to be granted, and not just by his political opposites. That’s when, in some and several ways that will not be comfortable for the Republican Party leadership to readily admit, the political and electoral services of Donald John Trump will beg
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AUG
18
The hunting of the presidency (Part 11): Trump’s campaign reset reset
By:
Michael E. Ross
on
AUG
18
FOR THE SECOND time in about as many months, the wreck of the Hesperus commonly known as the Donald Trump presidential campaign is undergoing a shift in strategy intended to stop (or slow) both a defection of American voters and Republican thought leaders and officials. Paul Manafort, the attack dog brought in in March by the moneyed attention addict and Republican nominee, has been demoted from his role as campaign manager, as the Trump 2016 brain trust desperately attempts a reset of messaging. With the latest Trump tweak, they’ve hired Stephen Bannon, a honcho grande at Breitbart News, as the new campaign overlord. The Trump campaign has also brought aboard Republican pollster and longtime Trump friend Kellyanne Conway to act as campaign manager, The Washington Post reported. Trump released a statement: “I have known Steve and Kellyanne both for many years. They are extremely capable, highly qualified people who love to win and know how to win,” he said. &ld
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AUG
11
The crosshairs dog-whistle: A history
By:
Michael E. Ross
on
AUG
11
EXTREMISM IN the pursuit of the presidency is no rarity. We’ve seen this more than a few times in this campaign season, a year crowded with so many occasions of jaw-dropping arrogance, outrageous contradictions and just plain bad manners, it’s beggared the imagination of how much worse things could get. We found out on Tuesday. Donald Trump, the Republican nominee and moneyed attention addict, spoke at a campaign rally in Wilmington, N.C., invoking one part of the Constitution that he suggested could help rescue his floundering campaign. With a Chicken Little scenario, Trump raised the possibility that gun rights advocates may well seek to make a forcible change if Hillary Clinton, the Democratic nominee, is elected president and chooses to appoint judges supporting more restrictive gun control measures. Trump said it would be “a horrible day” if Clinton were elected and made her choice for the next Supreme Court justice. “If she gets to pick he
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JUL
25
@theNEXTrealDonaldTrump
By:
Michael E. Ross
on
JUL
25
ON THE FOURTH day Donald Trump arose from the bowels of the convention arena he never really left and assumed the formal nomination of his tribe. For him it was a validation of everything he’d done to get there, a confirmation of the rightness of his message, proof of its purchase on the national culture. For many, many of the rest of us, Trump’s ascendancy to the Republican nomination confirms that coded language still speaks loudly in a racially and ethnically divided America, that dog-whistle politics can be tweaked and redeployed for a digital age ... that playing the rage card still works. What’s-next time: With the primaries history, with the various convention dramas behind them, Trump and the Republicans now face the challenge of pitching to the American people in the aggregate. That may be a bigger challenge than they’re prepared for. ◊ ◊ ◊ First, Team Trump is going up against experience. The Republican challenger, who didn’
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APR
21
The new old Donald in New York
By:
Michael E. Ross
on
APR
21
THE MAN can’t help himself. The evening when Donald Trump won the New York Republican Primary, the candidate briefly assumed the personage of someone you could almost kind of imagine to be ready to pursue the presidency as a serious contender. CNN was happy to accommodate him. The network had arranged to turn the Empire State Building red last night when Trump was projected the winner— a stunt that crosses the line from journalism to political promotion. It was all part of a signal strategy CNN had devised to immediately announce the winners of the primary, Deadline Hollywood reported. Clinton got the same treatment when she locked up the primary a little later; the building bathed in regal blue. But Trump got the honors first, reflecting pollsters’ confidence borne out — a lopsided win, a straight-up blowout for Trump over his nearest challenger, Ohio Gov. John Kasich (60%-25%). And a humiliation for Texas Sen. Ted Cruz (at 14.5%). And Trump made the
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FEB
11
On the #@%$! campaign trail: Potty-mouth in politics and pop culture
By:
Michael E. Ross
on
FEB
11
The coarser, meaner, keener political discourse of the 2016 primary season– embodied by Donald Trump’s frequent use of profanity on the campaign trail– has had a long parallel presence in the popular culture. Trump’s antics in the current campaign spotlight the ways Trump may only be the symbol of an emerging frankness in both politics and pop culture, a candor we might have expected in the ongoing collision of new media and old. On Monday night at a campaign rally in Manchester, N.H., Republican frontrunner Trump repeated an audience member’s use of the word “pussy,” the well-known vulgarism for a woman’s genitalia, to describe his primary opponent, Texas Sen. Ted Cruz. If that were an outlier, a one-off uttered in the heat of the moment, it probably wouldn’t have aroused so much attention or concern. But Trump has crossed the line of decorum before. The Donald has otherwise legitimized street talk on the stump in a way tha
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FEB
02
Iowa, the caucuses and Donald Trump
By:
Michael E. Ross
on
FEB
02
IOWANS HAVE always taken great pride in casting the first votes in the nation’s presidential elections. This year, that first canvass of the national mood expressed locally carries more importance than just bragging rights or symbolic gravitas. The vitriol-powered candidacy of billionaire attention addict Donald J. Trump, and the ugly nativist strain he’s set loose in this country, scream for a public assessment of his campaign’s long-term viability. Today and tonight, in caucuses at more than 1,600 locations statewide, residents of the Hawkeye State are set to do exactly that. And it’s not just a make-or-break moment for Iowa. Today’s caucuses are a moment of truth for the Republican party as well, and comments from GOP insiders in recent months prove that they know it. ◊ ◊ ◊ “I think he's now mounting a serious campaign,” a South Carolina Republican said in October. “His stump speech had matured and even though th
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AUG
31
Trump: Some of all the right noises
By:
Michael E. Ross
on
AUG
31
EVEN WHILE he seems to be winging it in his current bid for the American presidency, the height of unpredictability, you can't help but think that billionaire attention enthusiast Donald John Trump is starting to paint by the numbers. Lately he’s hired at least 10 paid staffers, and brought on Chuck Laudner, a top advisor to Rick Santorum’s 2012 campaign. And The Donald’s been dutifully making the rounds, not content to let his tireless celebrity status run laps for him on the campaign trail. He’s been putting in his time. With such displays of credibility, Trump intends to show the legions of doubters across the country that this time, he’s serious. Trouble is, Donald Trump is serious about running for president at a time that can’t help him: when America itself isn’t really that serious about who’s running for president. Not yet. But that fact hasn’t calmed the rattled nerves of the leadership of the Republican Party, which
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JUL
23
The hunting of the presidency 2016 (Part 2)
By:
Michael E. Ross
on
JUL
23
THE CLOWN WINNEBAGO required to contain the current field of Republican presidential candidates is mighty crowded, and the field just got bigger (Ohio Gov. John Kasich launched his presidential campaign on Tuesday). At this point, the campaigns of the 16 White House hopefuls amount to a full employment act for standup comics and late-night talk-show hosts. One of those candidates — for years a reliable source of pop-culture comic relief — has managed to detonate his campaign, and threaten to implode the Republican brand, before the thing’s even started. Donald Trump, trainwreck There may be no more effectively immediate way to turn a public figure into a nonentity than by doing what was just done to Donald John Trump, one of the men who would be and will never be president. Hours ago, someone or someones performed a full-on takedown of Trump’s Wikipedia page, The Verge reported. Twice. It didn’t last long, of course, but it couldn’t be m
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MAY
18
Bid? No Trump
By:
Michael E. Ross
on
MAY
18
Sometimes in the news business, there’s news coming at you from so far off that when it finally arrives, it isn’t news anymore. That happened Monday when billionaire publicity enthusiast Donald Trump formally, finally dislodged the hairball we knew was coming and announced that he would not be running for the presidency of the United States in 2012. The earth’s axis remained unchanged, much like the rapidly declining fortunes of the Republican Party. The king of wishful thinking announced his decision on the same day he was meeting with NBC executives to discuss the future of his show "The Celebrity Apprentice" — the same day that NBC announced the programming for its fall 2010 lineup, with Trump’s program very much in that lineup. “I will not be running for president as much as I'd like to,” Trump said in a written statement. “This decision does not come easily or without regret; especially when my potential candidacy cont
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APR
20
Donald Trump: A no-show of hands
By:
Michael E. Ross
on
APR
20
Even a dog can shake hands — Warren Zevon Donald Trump, the man who would be the Smartest Guy in the American room, is the beneficiary of the proverbial publicity that money can’t buy. As the brusque, sarcastic conservative darling of the moment rides his NBC show to no small profile in the prime-time ratings, Trump has endeared himself to the more extremist aspect of the Republican Party (the obstreperous crew that once loudly but now not so much called themselves the Tea Party). Some of the recent polling finds Trump in the catbird seat, the preference over other presumably more qualified (elected) possibles for the 2012 presidential campaign as Mike Huckabee, Mitt Romney and Sarah Palin. Never mind that Trump has been playing this crowd, gauging the field of likely contenders and gaining mightily in the right-wing opinion polls by not revealing much about the Trump world view and capacity to govern, not much beyond his … unease about the veracity of the presiden
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APR
15
Ladies and gentlemen, Donald Trump and the Blacks!
By:
Michael E. Ross
on
APR
15
The word “the” is a powerful thing. The definite article, for all its three-letter smallness, has a way of embracing everything that follows it in one presumptive lumpen collection of the same. This is a linguistic subtlety that’s apparently escaped Donald Trump, the self-described Smart Guy who is flirting again with a possible run for the presidency in 2012. That lack of subtlety in the context of political constituencies was apparent in a radio interview the Donald had today on Talk Radio 1300, in Albany, N.Y. When discussing the overwhelming support that President Obama continues to enjoy among African Americans in New York state and nationally, Trump volunteered his own sense of how well he fares with those U.S. citizens. “I have a great relationship with the blacks,” he said. “I've always had a great relationship with the blacks.” When you first hear it, the mind refuses to come to the immediate, obvious conclusion. No o
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