Donald Trump

“”"If she gets to pick her judges, nothing you can do folks. Although the Second Amendment people... maybe there is, I don't know."

—Not The Onion.

Remember how in high school elections, the kid who promised soda machines and pizza for lunch every day always won? Meet their God.

Guide to: U.S. Politics

Hail to the Chief?

Bible Belt Falconist Party Gary Johnson In God We Trust Progressive Era United States Constitution Woman's Christian Temperance Union

Persons of interest

Joe Arpaio Michael Steele Paul Wolfowitz Scooter Libby Tony Zirkle Wiley Drake v - t - e

Donald J. Trump (b. 1946), a.k.a. The Donald™, "John Miller", or "John Barron", is a heel wrestling personality, Nobel Prize nominee, and a perennial candidate for U.S. President. In the summer of 2015 he commandeered the Clown Car, running on the hazy slogan of "Make America Hate Great Again".

He's loud and flashy. He's brash and a bit of a douchebag. He's a li'l bit sexist and a li'l bit racist. That's the essence of his campaign, and it's all anybody really knows about this "blue-collar billionaire." Trump stopped being a real person sometime around the mid-eighties. (A casino mogul and TV executive would never do cocaine.) The man has the complexion of a bruised orange. There's nothing natural left in him.

Nowadays, Trump markets himself as a Turbo-Wingnut: he's a climate change denier, is militantly pro-life, wants to toughen up America by building a Great Wall of Mexico and eliminating the Department of Education, thinks vaccines cause autism, yada yada. In American terms, Trump is pretty much styling himself as the second coming of Jackson, complete with his plan for a new Trail of Tears.

This is a substantial reversion of his earlier positions: Trump used to be pro-choice, pro-universal health care, and has donated more than half a million dollars to Democrats over the last two decades, including the Wicked Witch of the East, Hillary Clinton. This must be distinctly understood, or nothing frustrating can come of the story we are going to relate.

The substance of Trump's candidacy has been making dick jokes and period jokes. He won the most number of votes for (and against) him in Republican primary history, demolishing the previous record held by George W. Bush), and that's without spending much money on the race. In a way, his supporters have treated this election as a piece of Absurdist theatre. Politics has become Whose Line Is It Anyway?, where everything's made up and the points don't matter.

Listen up, Fives, a Ten is speaking!

“”Trump found the flaw in the American Death Star. It doesn't know how to turn the cameras off, even when it's filming its own demise.

—Matt Taibbi

The more we've learned about his businesses this election cycle, the more Americans have come to realize he has some of the worst business instincts of any human being.

Teflon Don

Trump's connections with mob figures are old and run deep, according to journalist Wayne Barrett; they're mostly associated with his casino and huge erections construction activities. In 2015, the details became public of Trump's involvement with Colombo crime family figures during the making of Trump's first name-branded product: a Cadillac limousine in 1988. Trump has dragged his feet over releasing his tax returns, and Ted Cruz suggests those returns could show the extent of his mob dealings. Trump and some of his spawn have been named as material witnesses in a massive tax-avoidance scheme by mob-connected Felix Sater. As an aside, it has been reported that Trump himself paid no income taxes in 1978, 1979, 1984, 1992, and 1994.

A Saudi prince claims he bailed Trump out twice when the mogul got into financial difficulties. Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal bought up a private yacht that Trump was forced to cede to creditors during the 1990's, and later helped buy a NYC hotel when Trump was short of funds a second time. Said Saud is now embarrassed by the association.

Business acumen

“”He was the original "too big to fail."

—Harry Hurt III, biographer

“”In 1995, when he offered this company, if a monkey had thrown a dart, at the stock page, the monkey on average would've made 150 percent. But the people that believed in him, who listened to his siren song, ended up losing well over 90 cents in the dollar. They got back less than a dime.

—Warren Buffett on Trump's Atlantic City hotels business

It's always been a bit of mystery just how much Trump buys into his own bullshit. He estimates his net worth at "over ten billion", which is impossible for him to prove but also impossible for anyone to disprove. This is not just based on his assets (which are not terribly liquid) but also how he feels about his worth on a daily basis. The record really shows a middling businessman with a lot of structural advantages, who came out on top because of how rigged the system is. It's not hard to make a lot of money in New York real estate, especially when your rich daddy gives you a big head-start. In fact, over time it becomes practically impossible to lose money. This is relevant to his claim that he can do an exceptional job of running the US government, since he hasn't been truly tested in a situation with no fawning yes-men or training wheels.

Really, the reason the Trump Brand still exists and is fiscally solvent is because of his daughter Ivanka. Supposedly his sons are both dumbasses, but she is scarily intelligent. It was her idea to start selling off the name in exchange for royalties without having to put up the capital costs of construction and running a property, something which Donald opposed but is now the cornerstone of the company, since it's effectively free money. Ivanka is obviously worried about damage to the Trump brand, since she's tried to spin out a separate sub-brand; she's the one who staged a family intervention and convinced Dad to fire his campaign manager.

Trump's record on predicting economic recessions is also laughably bad:

• In 1999, he predicted an economic crash greater than the Great Depression.
• Then, in 2001, he reversed his position and claimed the US market was strong right before a minor recession hit.
• In 2005, he claimed the real estate market was strong, and followed this up with the launching of "Trump Mortgage" in 2006. Trump Mortgage subsequently went out of business when the housing market crashed the next year.
• In 2011, he predicted massive inflation, suggesting the price of a loaf of bread would soon be $25.
• And he has been predicting another recession since 2012.

Golf

Meanwhile, on the other side of the pond, the real-life Auric Goldfinger has been trying to build a golf course on (what used to be) a protected wetland habitat. He tried to have several of his Scottish neighbors evicted, including a local farmer by the name of Michael Forbes who refused an offer on his property. For this, Forbes was awarded "top Scot" award in 2012. His actions were parodied in this song.

Since then, the Scottish government's plans to increase wind turbine capacity (his opposition to which even led to a heated discussion over Twitter with the host of the British version of The Apprentice, Lord [formerly Sir Alan] Sugar) has encouraged him to cancel his plans, proving once and for all that they are worth every penny. Trump reported to Scottish authorities that he lost millions on the project, whereas in his US presidential disclosure, he claimed that the project was highly profitable.

Trumped-up university

“”Even in New York, a city of shining spires to every kind of financial bullshit imaginable, it is illegal for Trump to claim that he can teach you anything.

—Cracked

Trump University was essentially a scam in which people were promised an education in real estate, by top experts picked by Trump himself, for an exorbitant "tuition". Salesmen were told to apply high-pressure tactics on vulnerable people. Some were encouraged to max out their credit cards, others had to cough up their disability money, etc. In return, they received bare-bones real estate education from people Trump never even met, though he was very much involved in the marketing aspects. He got a cut in return for these "institutions" being allowed to use his name.

An even bigger issue lies with name Trump University itself and its claims to offer certain degrees: graduate, postgraduate, and doctoral. This is in violation of New York law, which requires you to obtain a charter to call yourself a university. In 2014, the New York Supreme Court held that Trump was personally liable for running an unlicensed school and making "false promises" through his university Trump Entrepreneur Initiative; this was confirmed by the testimony of a former salesperson and the court-released "Trump University Playbook." About 8000 former students are suing Trump U. in two separate class-action lawsuits, one of which involves the RICO^[wp] (Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations) Act.

This is the case in which Trump attacked a “Mexican” judge’s ancestry (he's actually from Indiana) because he made a judgment Trump didn't like. But all this shows is that Trump is willing to do anything to help us make him realize his American dream, even if it means ruining us financially.

“”Why isn’t this man in jail for fraud? In addition to his phony Trump University, there was also a Trump Institute, that used plagiarized materials to peddle real estate advice.

—PZ Myers

Charity

As of 2015, Trump owned 30% of the Bank of America building in San Francisco, location of the "Banker's Heart" statue. Apparently, this is where he left his heart.

Donald Trump has been called "the least charitable billionaire in the world". Take, for example, his donations to 9/11 charities: $1,000 (his own backyard, no less). The donation went to the anti-psychology Scientology front group, the "New York Rescue Workers Detoxification Fund", which was co-founded by Tom Cruise. Trump, who owns 40 Wall Street, actually received $150,000 for damages due to 9/11 from a special federal fund earmarked for "small businesses".

Many of Trump's larger donations are on their face self-serving, in the form of donations to:

• His sons' schools
• Golf-related charities
• Celebrity-related charities
• Land donations with golf easements
• Asbestos-contaminated land from failed golf-course projects ("Donald J. Trump State Park")

To prove his anti-tax bona fides, Trump's foundation gave $10,000 to Jenny McCarthy's "charity" Generation Rescue.

As for real charities, Trump has a pattern of stiffing them: The Donald J. Trump Foundation has actually received more donations from a single other donor (World Wrestling Entertainment) than Trump himself contributed during the period 1990 to 2009 when he gave a paltry $3.7 million. In 2014, Trump personally gave $0 to his own foundation.

The office of Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi was reported to have been considering an investigation of Trump University just before requesting and receiving a $25,000 political donation from Trump himself. The donation allegedly came illegally from a non-profit Trump family foundation, which is not allowed to make political donations because of its tax status. It's also come out that he may not have been donating the proceeds of several business ventures to charity as he had promised to do, which could amount to fraud. This is aside from the veterans' charity snafu. These include Trump U, Trump Vodka, and his new book Crippled America, all high-profile activities with profits supposedly going to benefit charity. The harsh spotlight of a presidential run is suddenly not working out for him.

Jesus turns down friend request

“”"[It] was the theo-political equivalent of money laundering. Dobson and his gang are making Trump clean so that he is worthy of evangelical votes.

—John Fea, history professor at Messiah College

James Dobson of Focus on the Family believes that Trump was recently born again, but not everyone agrees. When asked the inevitable leading question, "What is your favorite book?" Trump answered with the usual pandering reply, "The Bible!", although he couldn't provide a favorite verse. Eventually, Trump found one: "Two Corinthians" (he means Second Corinthians), which earned him a cookie endorsement from Falwell Jr. It also leads one to wonder how frequently he takes communion, despite Trump’s claim of "as often as possible."

“”If Christians do vote for the nuclear weapon-loving Trump, they probably have a better chance of meeting God real soon…

—Hemant Mehta

Rare moments

See the main article on this topic: Stopped clock

“”Our country is divided and out of control. The world is watching. Our country is totally divided and our enemies are watching.

—Trump accidentally says something poignant, for once.

Despite his status as a living meme, even Trump is no exception to the stopped-clock principle: he regularly calls out the neoconservatives and their hired help. His annihilation of the Club for Growth was also on point.

• Trump's comments on George Bush having advance foreknowledge^[wp] of the September 11 attacks and the lack of strategy post-9/11 from the Bush administration have led some in the right-wing news media (even including self-confessed truther Alex Jones) to label him a "truther", although this isn't very accurate, as Trump backtracked from some of the advance knowledge comments. He also believes the famous “28 pages” redacted from the official 9/11 report were done so to please the Saudis, which would appear to be partially accurate.
• He once recorded an audio commentary for a film that is regarded as the greatest of all time by several critics. The name of said film? Citizen Kane, of course. You can find it on YouTube.

It begins

George H.W. Bush started this when he considered Trump for vice president and planted the idea in his head, not realizing that Trump was some kind of Cthulhu in the making and unknowingly screwing his second son out of the chance.

If there is anything this election has taught us, it's that Trump is playing Korean Starcraft while everyone else is playing checkers. He registered the slogan "Make America Great Again" six days into Barack Obama's second term. There has been some (mostly baseless) speculation that Trump's entire candidacy is revenge for Obama's Roast jokes.

Testing the waters

“”My audience, 90% of them, they support you.

—Alex Jones to Trump, in a 2015 Infowars-exclusive interview

Trump was a long-shot Republican contender for the 2012 Presidential nomination, so he could have run against Barack Obama. Then as now, Trump had no political experience, though he has a good deal of bankruptcy business experience. Trump's ongoing activities were hard to reconcile with "conservative" positions: he owes a substantial portion of his wealth to his involvement in the gambling industry, and his apparel line is manufactured in the very country that he wanted to hit with punitive tariffs. In 2011, he also became the first presidential hopeful to use the word "fucking" in a speech.

When compared side-by-side with old Fox News personalities, it's pretty clear Trump was doing something akin to that (You suck, America! Now buy my book and I'll tell you why). Content to surf the media wave and pocket the donations, Trump didn't hesitate to jump on the birther bandwagon, demanding to see Obama’s long-form birth certificate. He also believes Bill Ayers ghostwrote Dreams From My Father.

He dropped out of the race after the aforementioned speech, which went against his work ethic heavily endorsed on The Apprentice. (Don't give up!) After NBC took The Apprentice off the air in '07, Trump returned to hawking steaks.

2016 Presidential Run

The upcoming new look for the White House. No kidding.

“”I built a little empire out of some crazy garbage Culled the blood of the exploited working class But they've overcome their shyness Now they're calling me "Your Highness" And the world screams "Kiss me, son of God"

—They Might Be Giants

Much to the dismay of GOP power-brokers and the delight of comedians everywhere, Trump declared in June 2015 that he is again running for POTUS on the 2016 Republican Presidential ticket. Blunders and confusion mark the Trump campaign, with some even going so far as to suggest that Trump may be suffering from Alzheimer's or senile dementia due to his age; since his father suffered from Alzheimer's before his death in 1999, this conspiracy theory isn't as far-fetched as it sounds...

He immediately received backlash for his racist comments against Mexican immigrants during his announcement speech, which cost him his beauty pageant and other television deals.

Trust me with donated campaign money

Trump gave $35,000 to an advertising company called Draper-Sterling. Like, from Mad Men. The firm doesn't exist, and this is their address in New Hampshire. So far he has paid $4 million to himself for flying in his own plane, $200K to Trump Tower, and $400K to his country club campaign headquarters in Palm Beach. Most hilarious is $1.8 million paid to the company making/distributing Trump hats, which is owned indirectly by Trump’s son Eric. Suspiciously much money ($6 million estimate) goes to Trump owned companies and Trump's family. Hillary Clinton joked, "What is Trump spending his meager campaign resources on? Why, himself, of course."

It's like Trump is skimming off the top, except his fundraising is so bad that the "top" is the whole thing. It's also unheard-of for a major party convention to be begging for $6 million at the last minute. These should be huge yuge red flags to anyone.

Platform

“”They don’t really know or care what he stands for, only that he’s an extended middle finger at the hated political class and the national GOP. He FIGHTS!... His appeal to them isn’t so much ideological as it is nihilistic.

—Rick Wilson, GOP strategist

So the thing about Donald Trump is, he's full of shit. So the error you've made, as a sane human being, is giving any consideration to his idiotic ideas. The people are being conned and misled, as is so characteristic of Trump's schemes. He has a whole AOTD chapter dedicated to making promises, no matter how grand, by drawing on the emotional side of a person. Because this is when you can start working them.

Issue	"Solution"
National Security	As with most of Trump's positions, the answer is "all of the above". (America can't afford to be the world's policeman. We need to expand the military.) Trump thinks we should "close up" the internet to stop ISIS. Just like that! Which likely means, Whatever I don't like will be shut down. In what Tricky Dick on a bender might mistake for a foreign policy strategy, Trump said that the way to defeat ISIS was to "bomb the shit out of them", then send [Exxon]Mobil to suck out all the oil. He advocates for civilian deaths in war, saying we should "take out their families." Further, he's talking the whole family: grandparents, uncles, aunts, cousins, half-siblings, children, siblings-in-law, and their children. Whoever has a familial connection to the terrorist, he wants to wipe them out, regardless of their culpability. (Clue Brick: It's also a war crime under Article 33 of the 4th Geneva Convention.) He'll bring back torture, though he knows it doesn't work, since "they deserve it anyway." He'd also "go much further" than waterboarding suspected terrorists, and thinks that dipping the bullets in pigs' blood before shooting Muslim prisoners is a cool way to deter terrorism, and certainty not a recruiting bonanza.
Border security	Hispanic people are lazy and come here to get welfare and commit crime. Also they're stealing all our jobs. The monorail wall Trump proposes to stop illegal Mexican immigrants is a non-starter. Mexico will not pay, and Pew research suggests more Mexicans are returning to Mexico than are emigrating to the United States. Moreover, the majority of US construction workers are undocumented Mexican immigrants. D'oh. He's talked about the materials the wall will be built of. He's talked about putting his name on it. Metaphorically, of course. The wall is about his only concrete idea (pun intended) that he has consistently campaigned on, and he's already waffling on it. He has since doubled down, explicitly calling for a national database that registers and identifies all Muslim Americans. (We really need more Inquisitions.) In a rally in Wisconsin, he clarified to Chris Matthews that the register wouldn't apply to wealthy Muslims. That the policy only applies to poorer Muslims might make them more disposed to fight ISIS and help MAGA! He's like the kid that just read the back of the book before writing a book report, and will literally fight you if you tell him he got the whole general plot wrong.
Foreign policy	It's abundantly clear he doesn't know anything about foreign policy. You get a nuke! You get a nuke! Everybody gets a nuke! Trump has begun to pivot away from his earlier statements ("sorta neutral") about Israel. But that's just evidence of his famous "flexibility." Trump also wants to Mafia-ize the U.S.'s national security posture. (It'd be a sad sight if Russia invaded you next week.) The military is oversized because of their own military adventures, and he has the gall to chastise Europe for not chipping in. Trump has hinted he may go to war if Mexico refuses to pay for nonsensical building projects. Trump said, in interviews with The Atlantic and the New York Times, that he would ignore NATO's defense policy if NATO members do not pay their membership fees. This completely goes against NATO's longstanding policy of providing security to all of its members, and its pledge to defend their members if those members are attacked. He has however stopped short of saying the US should actually leave NATO; in effect, he wants to extort NATO allies for money.
Economic plan	Get rid of NAFTA, NATO, NASA, the NAACP, and anything with an N. It's dizzying how quickly Trump has hitched himself to the Brexit campaign (right down to NAFTA's equivalent of "Article 50"). He argued that Hillary Clinton is "100% wrong" because her view of the referendum differed from the outcome, whereas Trump wisely chose the side that "won." Trump is doing the media's work for them by branding Brexit a dry run of what a Trump presidency would be like. What is his position on jobs? He's going to "bring them back!" Republicans and Democrats have already dropped the ball on helping those most effected by outsourcing; Trump wants to roll back free trade and raise tariffs, but that won't necessarily fix the problem. On the contrary, it's a threat to eliminate hundreds and thousands of American jobs. Their paychecks wouldn't even keep up with inflation if they get what they want. But the average voter won't look a whole lot deeper than that free trade is "killing us!" His economic plan sounds like the work of a businessman who's made strategic use of bankruptcy. It would wreak havoc on the dollar and turn US Treasury Bonds from the safest place to put your money into a risky proposition which investors would stay away from. You can't unring the bell on his plan; just ask any country that ruined their currency long-term for a short-term benefit. The Trump Tax Cuts aren't just right-wing, they're crazy-wing. They've been criticized by conservatives for the huge deficits that would result, and by liberals since the main beneficiaries of his cuts are the very wealthy.
Environment "The concept of global warming was created by and for the Chinese in order to make U.S. manufacturing non-competitive."	Jerry Brown tends to be frugal with his endorsements. Hearing Trump say asinine things regarding climate ("there is no drought!") must have pushed him over the edge. But when it affects Trump's golf course, then climate change IS real, it IS happening, and urgent action must be taken.
Healthcare	So, pretty much Obamacare except that the insurance cartels companies can headquarter in whichever states have the weakest consumer protection laws and force their plans on everyone else. For all of Trump's macho-man image, this is a remarkably pusillanimous plan. Trump's candidacy is based on ditching GOP orthodoxy, but this healthcare plan is a standard Republican nothingburger that is indistinguishable from what a lot of others have offered up. This indicates that Trump does not feel secure about his position in the nomination process, and is trying to signal to the establishment that he can adopt some of their stances, too.
First Amendment	It's becoming of a bit of a running gag how Trump keeps threatening to sue people who are critical of him. (As you may have guessed, Trump rallies tend to be a gold mine for muckraking reporters.) So of course he wants to "open up the libel laws," which would completely undo the First Amendment, making it easier to sue media outlets that dare to criticize him. Since actions speak loudest, especially where Trump is concerned, what has he done in the meantime? Ejected journalists at his rallies simply for being journalists. No person, no problem! Khizr Khan's claims at the 2016 Democratic National Convention that Trump had not read the US Constitution seemed to be reinforced by Trump's comments that Khan "had no right" to claim that he had not read the Constitution – clearly not reading the First Amendment, giving him the right to free speech.
Abortion	It sounds like the main takeaway from Paul Ryan's sit-down was that Trump agreed to nominate pro-lifers to the Supreme Court. In 1999, Trump said that while he hated the concept of abortion, he viewed himself as "very pro-choice." At that aforementioned event in Wisconsin, Trump floated an idea to punish women who seek abortions. While speaking with MSNBC host Chris Matthews about how he would enforce it, he very quickly reversed the statement to say that he would make the procedure illegal and punish doctors who do so. The best part was when he said that penalties for abortion should not apply to men. Shhhhh...Trump is pointing out the inherent contradiction in the conservative platform.
LGBT rights A polygamous relationship gone wrong	While lukewarm on LGBT people getting married and serving openly in the military, in 2000 he concluded that “‘Don't ask, don't tell’ has clearly failed,” and even blasted Pat Buchanan for engaging in the sort of chicanery which Trump is now. Flash-forward: Now he's touting "traditional marriage"—a concept he grudgingly admits is totally alien to him. He has promised to appoint judges to overturn same-sex marriage if need be, despite dismissing traditional marriage as a "dead issue" in the past, and attending the wedding of David Furnish and Elton John. In the Prime Universe, Trump opposed the transgender "bathroom bill," saying trans people should be free to "use the bathroom they feel is appropriate." Mirror!Trump, on the other hand, says it should be up to the states. He's stated that he "wouldn't block laws" that permit discrimination based on sexual orientation. But at least he won't behead anybody.
Energy	TL;DR Trump wants to pull out of all climate agreements, get rid of environmental regulations, and increase the use of coal. Standard GOP pandering. He also states that he wants energy independence. The lack of mention of nuclear is likely due to nuclear being actually proven technology that's not only safer than coal (and most renewables, even when including Chernobyl!), but cheaper as well! fuck you, that's why. Wait... is he still using "America First"? (He's going with the Third Reich's "worker's party" thing too.) Can't tell if he is intentionally fucking with us, or is actually adopting Goebbels' playbook.
Second Amendment	In the course of a single convoluted sentence, he managed to say we shouldn't have guns in classrooms, we should have guns in classrooms, switched back to we shouldn't, and then finally wound up saying we should. The secret service had a word with Trump after he claimed that "the second amendment people" should go out and shoot Hillary Clinton. Trump and Obama/Hillary at least agree on one point: he is against allowing people on the no-fly list to buy guns. Weakness on guns combined with anti-Latino rhetoric could possibly open up Texas, so expect this to be backtracked in a few days or hours.
IRS	With Trump cratering in the polls, he suggested that we repeal the Johnson Amendment of 1954, which prohibits tax-exempt organizations (namely churches) from purchasing and running political ads. Nobody seriously expects the IRS to enforce the law, but it's meat that Trump is throwing to the evangelical wing and they're eating up like fools. He needs them now, because a lot of them are threatening to sit out the election. Voting for a thrice-married adulterer isn't their thing. Trump wouldn't be able to change the law via executive action (tax law is Congress's domain), but he could order the IRS not to enforce the ban, which would amount to the same thing. That being said, it would be hilarious if American mosques started electing more Muslims to public office.

... and that, boys and girls, is how a pro-choice liberal in a shitty toupee stole the Republican Presidential Nomination.

Where did we go right?

Trump accumulates a few nuggets of cocktail party knowledge about political topics (7-11 was an inside job!) and sort of freewheels through it while trying to steer the conversation back to the main talking points, which are Building Stuff and Making America Great Again®. On Baltimore, he knows that people torched a Rite-Aid. On climate change, he knows the difference between climate and weather, kind of. Someone back at headquarters didn't know there were two different organizations called "La Raza" and sent out orders to use that defense in the Trump U. case. Trump was endorsed by the National Enquirer and has parroted their "journalism" as fact, like the thing about Cruz's father and JFK. (Also, the only person directly quoted in the Enquirer hit piece is Roger Stone, who also wrote a book on how he thinks LBJ killed JFK and regularly makes appearances on Infowars.) His responses on China actually betray a sort of thought process: what he's advocating sounds like an intentional invocation of Nixon's Madman Theory, and Nixon went to China, so we guess in Trump's head those things are somehow directly related. His wife Melania's speech to the Republican National Convention was supposed to cap the RNC with a sincere defense of her husband. Instead, part of it was grabbed from Michelle Obama.

There's actually considerable biographical evidence that Trump is serious about Building Stuff: sources close to him claim that he was deadly serious about the wall; the reason he likes it is that it gives him a physical thing to focus his imagination on, and he is not generally interested in abstractions. As you'll note below, interviewers can get Trump to agree to pretty much anything, as long as they frame it as something novel. He genuinely has no clue how the Executive Branch is run.

Situations keep arising for him to show what kind of leader he would make, and he keeps fumbling them; he lives in the moment and doesn't seem capable of long-term planning. The way he handled the Orlando situation is probably the best example of this. Any credible Republican would spit-roast Clinton over the e-mail server and coast to the White House. Trump, instead, will posit that Bill had a bathroom quickie with Coney while the pair of them giggled about how they faked the moon landing and poisoned the populace with fluoride. Any legitimate criticism of Clinton just gets lumped in with his never-ending miasma of conspiracy theory horseshit ("people are talking about" and "I'm just asking").

Adults in the room

Trump's "short list" for vice president included Ben Carson, Chris Christie, Newt Gingrich, Ivanka Trump,^{[No, not The Onion]} Joni Ernst, Bob Corker,^[Who?] Sarah Palin, Donald Trump, John Kasich, Nikki Haley, Joe Scarborough, and Jan Brewer. On July 15, he announced that Governor Mike Pence of Indiana would be the nominee.

Meanwhile he's slowly starting to assemble a team of the worst politicians you can imagine. Corrupt shit-bags like Chris Christie and Newt Gingrich, ratfuckers like Roger Stone, and now Rick Scott—these are the people that will actually be running the place.

Sow the wind and reap the whirlwind

“”They've been tailoring the suit for years. It just happens to fit Trump perfectly.

—Sam Seder, The Majority Report

“”I’ve got to mow my lawn.

—Sen. Jeff Flake (AZ) on skipping the Republican National Convention

Bircher tactics work. If this election is a litmus test, then the entire Republican party failed it. And that really gets to the heart of the problem: The "Silent Majority" has always held these beliefs under the surface. They've not been very politically active; they're too busy hating the world for changing to even bother voting. But now, Trump has re-activated that base. This is right in Trump's own wheelhouse anyway. People forget that Trump joined the Reform Party back in 1999.

So now, left with no Bush or Cruz, they've swallowed hard and endorsed Trump. But you can tell their endorsements are half-hearted. Trump might be a big player in New York real estate, but he's not a team player—the dressage crowd who somehow manage all to be related to one another (yep, even Obama is related to some of our famous political leaders). Adding to that, this is a guy who flaunts his wealth like someone who just won the lottery and has a gold-plated stroller for his kid. It's taking everything the party holds dear—capitalism, family values—and turning it into a reality TV joke.

It's having down-ticket effects that the GOP is not happy with. Not only is Trump capable of fumbling the presidency right into Clinton's hands, he may cost the GOP significantly in the legislature. Polls have Wisconsin senator Ron Johnson getting creamed by Russ Feingold in no small part because Johnson can't step out of the shadow of Trump. And Trump's poisoning of the GOP won't stop after the election. Nobody knows how Paul Ryan is going to rebuild his image after an hour or more of accumulated footage where he weakly endorses Trump while simultaneously disavowing everything he says. And Christie...wow. Where to even start? He went from a contender for the White House to the guy who fetches McDonald's for the blowhard who claims he saw radical Muslims in Christie's own state cheering on 9/11.

The party is already fissured, and if enough people voted Trump in, career politicians would have to adopt platforms more in line with Joe Sixpack if they want to be electorally successful. And with Antonin Scalia's death, the stakes were just too high to let the presidency slip away. But now that they've accepted that they're going to lose the presidency—and suffer serious losses in the fall—the party is finally ready to take their medicine. Like a gangrenous leg you must amputate. They are in for a very unpleasant time in Cleveland (As long as everyone is armed, we'll be fine!), and Trump will run as a zombie, but the party will emerge more-or-less intact.

Some are openly calling for the Republican Party to refuse funding to Trump and give money to other vulnerable candidates instead. Serious Republican talking heads are half-entertaining rumors that Trump is not, in fact, a top-level douchebag, but actually one of the most successful political double agents ever planted. It's easy to see the appeal of this theory: it's painful for conservatives to admit the party is getting its just deserts for pandering to cretins; they'd rather just pretend that it's due to Hillary's witchcraft.

"I am the most militaristic person ever."

They so proudly wear this insignia.

In July 2015, Trump set the tone for the race with an attack on John McCain's military record, declaring:

“”He's a war hero because he was captured. I like people who weren't captured.

Trump's Vietnam-era record was one of a series of draft deferments (including studying real estate at the University of Pennsylvania). This was parallelled by a seemingly unusual conversion of his fitness to serve from 1-A (available to serve) before college to 1-Y (only in time of emergency) to 4-F (unfit to serve) after college, citing a bone spur in the foot, though he no longer recalls which foot. Trump doubled down on his comments, causing Rupert Murdoch to disavow him, although Roger Ailes still hasn't let up. McCain eventually had to apologize to Trump (!) for calling his supporters crazies, which provoked this entire exchange. Whoever bought his soul is going to be disappointed at how tiny it is.

So, according to Republican voters, a Vietnam vet with multiple purple hearts gets swiftboated, but a trust fund kid who mocks prisoners of war for getting caught gets a pass.

Assassinate Hillary Clinton

Trump made an ambiguous statement which has been interpreted as a call to assassinate Hillary Clinton.

“”[Clinton] gets to pick her judges, nothing you can do, folks. Although the Second Amendment people maybe there is, I don’t know.

—Donald Trump, at a Wilmington, N.C. rally

Another day! Another Trump gaffe! As expected, the usual cadre of Trump sycophants were on-hand to explain why a man who speaks his mind and says what every one is really thinking didn't actually mean what he said.

“”I fear that an unbalanced person hears that in this inflamed environment and, God forbid, thinks that was a threat. I certainly take it as a threat, I really do, and Trump needs to apologise

—Tony Schwartz, author of [Trump’s book] The Art of the Deal

Rhetoric begets reaction

“”I’ve got black accountants… Black guys counting my money! I hate that. The only kind of people I want counting my money are short guys that wear yarmulkes every day.

—A former-Trump Plaza Hotel and Casino executive quoting Trump

Trump's problem is his rhetoric. He is continually pushing the Overton window^[wp] to his advantage, while exhibiting an "alarming willingness to use fascist themes and styles," according to the father of fascism studies. (Most infamously, he retweeted and endorsed a quotation from Benito Mussolini, and when confronted about it, said "What difference does it make?") Extreme rhetoric has consequences: In general, Trump's rallies have inspired, or outright incited, an uptick in violence from his supporters all over the nation, including from his own security guards and campaign staffers. Protesters and journalists are often the intended targets. Even when there's no violence, he expresses disappointment at the peace. It's gotten so bad, Trump actually entertained political assassination of Hillary Clinton to keep her from appointing Supreme Court Justices, prompting the Secret Service to host a private meeting with him over his remarks.

Guys like Marco Rubio are unable to court Trump supporters, because Rubio would never come out and refuse to condemn the KKK—even though he knows that Klansmen vote Republican. Trump can somehow not condemn the KKK and condemn them in the same day and not alienate anybody in his base:

I don't know anything about what you're even talking about. . . . Did he endorse me, or what's going on? Because I know nothing about David Duke; I know nothing about white supremacists.

Remember, a Mexican guy was beaten nearly to death in Boston last year by folks who said they did it because of Trump. Trump didn't denounce that behavior, he just said his supporters were passionate. Just as he has an "out" when people question him about his comments on Mexicans (I'm just talking about the illegals!) and Muslims (I'll only ban Muslim visitors temporarily!). The general election is months away. Trump will refute these allegations for a week or so, and then people will be tired of talking about it.

My demeaning comments towards women were just show business

“”In the future, if you're wondering: "Hillary can't satisfy her husband," is when I decided to kick your ass.

—Bartlet Clinton

Tear rolls down William F. Buckley's eye

In the course of the GOP debates, he openly insulted the looks of his party’s sole female contender, Carly Fiorina, the menstrual cycle of Fox News anchor Megyn Kelly, and suggested Hillary Clinton got “schlonged” in her 2008 Democratic primary loss to Barack Obama. In response, voters live-tweeted their periods to him.

His followers harassed Kelly with unoriginal and sexist slurs after Trump decided not to partake in the Fox News debate. Even the media have their role to play: when Kelly cut her hair, everyone knew it was in preparation for her rematch with The Don. Bill Maher was right on the money when he said that if Republicans were smart, they would be running Megyn Kelly.

In response to an ad that slut-shamed his wife, that the Make America Awesome Super-PAC released, Trump proceeded to attack Ted Cruz's wife. Yes, Trump attacked someone who had nothing to do with the ad. Yes, he couldn't be bothered to read the fine print on the ad that clearly said "not authorized by any candidate or candidate committee."

"Hispanics love me!"

Trump was invoked by the perpetrators of a hate crime in Boston, in which two brothers assaulted a Hispanic homeless man and urinated on him before leaving him to die. While Trump's first tweet condemned the action, he followed it up with:

I will say, the people that are following me are very passionate. They love this country. They want this country to be great again. But they are very passionate. I will say that.

His campaign manager followed up in an interview:

We would never condone violence. If that’s what happened in Boston, by no means would that be acceptable in any nature. However, we should not be ashamed to be Americans. We should be proud of our country, proud of our heritage, and continue to be the greatest country in the world.

"Look at my African-American over here!"

Trump uses made-up statistics from a neo-Nazi group suggesting that a high proportion of murders involve black people killing white people. Trump also cited unscientific statistics based on answers to loaded questions from "a virulently anti-Muslim organization" called the Center for Security Policy to suggest that American Muslims are more violent and more accepting of Sharia than they really are.

Nope, not done yet. During a rally, when his supporters beat up a black protester while chanting "USA!" Trump can be heard demanding "Get him out of here!" while later insisting that the protester "should have been roughed up." True to his word, when Trump next sent his security guards to rough up another protester, one of his stormtroopers supporters let his excitement get the best of him and belted a “Sieg Heil!” as the uppity negro was dragged away. (You could also hear another one say "Light the motherfucker on fire!")

At another rally, Trump kicked out thirty black students... for being black. Literally no reason other than being black attendees at his rally; they weren't even protesting this time!

"I love the Muslims!"

Trump repeatedly claims without much evidence that American Muslims celebrated 9/11, but what Trump advocates would be much worse. Trump argues we should ban all Muslims from heading to America, including Muslim American citizens, something even Dick Cheney ("Here's a guy who did a rotten job as Vice-President...") would not advocate. Joe Scarborough had to cut him off on his show.

"Beautiful Jewish Baby!"

Even Bibi Netanyahu thinks Trump is out of his tree? It's beautiful that Muslims and Jews can come together in their shared opposition to Donald Trump. Maybe Trump is what we need to achieve peace in the Middle East, sort of like Ozymandias' squid creature in Watchmen.

Trump supports a mandatory identification database for Muslim Americans. When asked about the parallel of requiring registration of, well, Jews, Trump's ambiguous answer/non-denial was, "What do you think?" For what it's worth, Trump's daughter has converted to Judaism, so file this one with "Dick Cheney puts votes ahead of his gay daughter".

"I don't know who David Duke is."

Trump's press events and rallies are magnets for cranks of all varieties. The great thing about Trump is he can be whatever you want him to be: Ronald Reagan for the normal republicans, Pinochet for the libertarians, Hitler for the fascists, Jefferson Davis for the paleocons, and a Prussian despot for the NRx!

• Take Jim Sherota of Alabama, a Walter Mitty-type who stumbled into the spotlight at a rally when he told the press that he hoped President Trump would turn the border into a hunting resort and offer citizens a $50 prize for every illegal immigrant they could kill.
• American ayatollah Pat Buchanan, 2000 Reform Party presidential nominee, has been consistently bullish on Trump's campaign. Oddly, in 2000 Trump refused a nomination from the Reform Party, singling out the presence of "neo-Nazi" Buchanan as a reason for his refusal.
• Jim Gilchrist, head of the Minutemen border posse, has also jumped Trump's bones, thrilled to have finally found a candidate as anti-immigrant as himself.
• Janusz Korwin-Mikke, the Polish politician who supports Brexit and thinks the Holocaust would have been preventable if every Jew had a gun(?), also offers his support for Trump because “Clinton is supported by the Jews.”
• Marine Le Pen: Leading French racist endorses leading American racist. Read all about it. (She took offense at being compared to him last Autumn. Wonder what changed her mind.)

But it's not just the crypto-fascists who love him: Real Neo-Nazis of the swastika-waving, Jew-baiting, race war-daydreaming variety have jumped onboard, too! In a one-week analysis by Twitter analysis firm Little Bird has found out that a whopping 62% of Trump's retweets have been from accounts which believe in white genocide alone, and 58% of the top white supremacist accounts on Twitter follow Donald Trump.

• The chairman of the American Nazi Party loves Trump's racist proposals, but dismisses him as a candidate because he doesn't believe Trump could actually accomplish any of them.
• He has retweeted user @keksec_org, a white supremacist who quotes such wonderful people as Geert Wilders just as often as he does Trump, and frequently refers to "the feeble mind of the American Negro" when he is criticised on Twitter.
• KKK Grand Wizard Emeritus David Duke has praised Trump's supposed fight against "Jewish domination of the media", despite the fact that Trump is professedly pro-Israel and has no problems at all with his daughter converting to Judaism. (Trump disavowed Duke, but didn't seem to think association with an actual Brownshirt was that big a deal.)
• Representatives of the Council of Conservative Citizens, an unreconstructed segregationist outfit that helped to incite the 2015 terrorist attack in Charleston, have also endorsed Trump.
• According Andrew Anglin on the neo-Nazi website The Daily Stormer, "The Donald has once again proven ... that 'make America great again' is code word for 'race war.'" Stormfront founder Don Black has publicly credited him with reviving white nationalism in America, and pledges that the machine set in motion by Trump 2016 will outlast the businessman's candidacy even if he drops out. Thanks, asshole. The Anti-Defamation League also thinks Trump stirred up racism and made ugly types of racism more acceptable.
• Ironically, although Trump has compared his rival Ben Carson to a child molester, he himself has won the coveted endorsement of neo-Nazi child molester (and erstwhile al Qaeda supporter) August Kreis III.
• A segment of PBS Newshour showing first-time voter Grace Tilly and her family failed to report on some interesting tattoos on their hands: an 88 tattoo (numerical code for "Heil Hitler" in the neo-Nazi community) and Odin's Cross, a white nationalist symbol. Both symbols are listed as neo-Nazi hate symbols by the Anti-Defamation League.
• Birgitt Peterson, a 69-year-old woman from Yorkville, Illinois, appeared in the Chicago Tribune doing a Nazi salute. Peterson, born in West Berlin, alleged that she took offense to counterprotestors calling her a Nazi; therefore, she said "If you want to do it right, you do it right" and did a Nazi salute. Remarkably, this stunt backfired, with the image circulating on the internet showing alleged neo-Nazis at Trump's rallies (an allegation Peterson denies). Donald Trump, Jr., decided to weigh in on the debate, retweeting an allegation that this was the work of Bernie Sanders supporter Portia Boulger (despite Peterson being identified in the original Chicago Tribune report) and alleging that this was part of a vast left wing conspiracy against Trump, Sr., deleting his tweet without apologizing or even acknowledging his mistake. This has led to the hashtag #ApologizeTrumpJr. Trump immediately apologized for his mistake... two weeks after he had posted the picture up originally.
• Trump tweeted a picture of Hillary Clinton with what appeared to be a Star of David and a giant pile of cash, accusing Clinton of being the most corrupt politician ever. Trump decided to counter allegations of antisemitism, blaming the "dishonest Jewish-run media" for distortion, and describing the star used as a "basic star", a sheriff's badge, or a label from a Frozen coloring book. The fact that the image originally appeared on 8chan's version of /pol/, and contained the watermark of @FishBoneHead1—whose racist, anti-Semitic, and Islamophobic tweets on geopolitics have been in plain sight on Twitter until recently—was just a coincidence.

Your Mind Is My Puppet

HS quarterback

“”He's like that right-wing uncle you dread seeing at Thanksgiving, just with a national media profile—and your uncle couldn't be happier about it.

—Paul Waldman

The biggest Overton shift this year has been anyone believing that Donald Trump is "anti-establishment." Liberals and conservatives are just wired differently. Republicans generally respond better to displays of strength and forthrightness, whereas Democrats generally respond better to bipartisanship and compassion. For better or worse, Trump looks at life like buying a used car. You go in with bluster and threaten to walk if they don't give you what you want.

With that in mind, it's no surprise that the candidate with the best “tell it like it is” game on Twitter and in debates is pulling ahead. It's a strategy in touch with the perceptions of the GOP base. Many still think that Romney had the general election sealed up, but choked. It's why Don's portrayal of his opponents as boring, dumb, nerdy, losers, low-energy, chokers or "choke artists" have been so effective.

In the minds of the base, it's never been the case that the country has become more progressive, or that 12 years of Bushes was more regime change and Reaganomics than voters ever wanted. Nope, the perception is that McCain, Romney, Bush, Rubio—these candidates all “choked,” in concert with the American people wanting them all to be President but just not knowing it yet. They're all presumed guilty of giving the country two more Democratic terms based on supposed personal and strategic failures, never on a disconnect between what voters wanted and what these candidates were selling. The RNC propping up Romney (again!) in opposition to Trump shows that they can't even grasp this basic fact about their own voters.

Sound and fury, signifying nothing

“”Somewhere, in the brimstone-caked cave where the universe weaves the threads of American politics, someone decided to give a Republican base hungry for a return to the 1980s a candidate born of and longing for that decade.

—Phillip Bump

"Make America Great Again" can mean entirely different things to two people who agree on most issues, let alone millions with varying views. It's a fantastic slogan, because "Make America Great" doesn't mean a damn thing. It's like "support our troops." What's the converse of that? How do you rebuke a statement like that? You can't. (That's the whole point of a slogan.) He's basically inviting you to pick your own evidence as to how it "isn't great" (tacit agreement) and then to fix your own temporal horizon as to when it was "great." Naturally, people will focus on a time in their own lives when things were great, and so someone who promises to restore them to that position generates a positive reception. Nostalgia is a powerful sales tool; look how many advertisers plug into it.

It's difficult to argue against that sentiment. What's the alternative? A campaign based on Let's Not Make America Great Again. If you confront it directly, you end up having to embrace it as Trump's opponents are doing. "Make America Whole" and "Make America Awesome" don't have quite the same ring, though.

Idiocracy

“”We won with the poorly educated. I love the poorly educated.

—The Donald, immediately after winning Nevada

According to Rolling Stone, the guy-at-the-end-of-the-bar theory of Trump is increasingly true, in that he will say whatever is the opinion of Ordinary Americans—you know, idiots—sitting in a sports bar. His followers on Facebook were rated as the least grammatical of any candidate (12.6 mistakes per 100 words), barely edging out Rick Santorum (11.5 per 100).

Everyone knows politicians speak in shorthand. Newspapers seldom print whole speeches these days, so speeches are typically anchored around vacuous sound bites. Trump goes one step further by talking at a third-grade reading level. Everything is "terrible", "terrific", "fantastic", "horrible", "loser", "yuge". This is coming from a man who literally uttered the words "I have a very good brain" and "I went to an Ivy League school, I know so many words, I have the best words." In a statement bragging about his vocabulary, he used the word "words" instead of "vocabulary". (Palin again. I read all the best newspapers!) He tends to use a particular set of words or one simple talking point which he repeats mostly unchanged multiple times during the same thought:

The other thing with the terrorists is you have to take out their families, when you get these terrorists, you have to take out their families. They care about their lives, don't kid yourself. When they say they don't care about their lives, you have to take out their families.

I would build a great wall, and nobody builds walls better than me, believe me, and I'll build them very inexpensively. I will build a great, great wall on our southern border.

I’m a very smart guy, I went to the best college, I had good marks. I was a very smart guy, good student. [...] I was a really good student at the best school. I’m like a smart guy [...] If I were a liberal Democrat, people would say I'm the super genius of all time. The super genius of all time.

My whole life is about winning. I always win. I win at golf. I’m a club champion many times at different clubs. I win at golf. I can sink the three-footer on the 18th hole when others can’t. My whole life is about winning. I don't lose often. I almost never lose.

This sort of stuff is outlined in Art of the Deal, not to mention they are well-known persuasive techniques (repetition persuasion, social proof persuasion, anecdotes persuasion).

Trollpublicanism

See the main article on this topic: Proll

“”“I’m not saying that’s a good thing, and in truth it probably says something perverse about the culture we live in. But I’m a businessman, and I learned a lesson from that experience: good publicity is preferable to bad, but from a bottom-line perspective, bad publicity is sometimes better than no publicity at all. Controversy, in short, sells.”

—The Art of the Deal (1987)

Trump has mastered the technique of False Conviction: you can get away with parodying ultra right-wing opinions if you remain absolutely committed to it. Donald will say things where it's clear he's being deliberately contrarian, but he will sell it as if it's his own full name.

The fact of the matter is that the media blew their load too early. Trump laid the bait and they could not resist: Illegal immigrant rapists, John McCain, disabled reporter, KKK disavowal, Lewandowski, Taco bowl, John Miller, history with women, and so much more. He has systematically made the media attack him on issues which the public sees as minor or deceiving. He's built the armor himself. A great example of this was when he said more British Muslims join ISIS than the British military. The Guardian, in its rush to Stump Trump, reported that 640 Muslims joined the military but only 440 have joined ISIS (if you don't count the ones that died or came back). While they're back-slapping each other for stumping that plastic American celebrity, everyone who reads that is seeing Trump's actual point being reinforced with hard numbers from a paper that clearly hates him, "so it must be true". This is part of why voters like him and think he “speaks truth to power.”

We shall overcomb

“”He’s always been that guy, and you denied it and ignored it and hand-waved it away and made excuses every step of the way because you were convinced that you were so much smarter than the rest of us. You were so certain that you had received some superior wavelength giving you special insight into the Donald; only you could tell that it was all an act. Only you could grasp that his constant courting of controversy was just to get attention from the media. Only you could instinctively sense that his style would play brilliantly in the general election and win over working-class Democrats. (SPOILER ALERT: It isn’t.) You insisted that you could “coach him”.

—Jim Geraghty

Trump's ability to blow up Republican sacred cows is pretty remarkable e.g. staunch conservative and shock value until the spotlight hits him, then he switches back to southpaw and blows the right-wingers away. Trump doesn't have a voting record. And human beings are really, really bad at processing information that falls outside of their heuristics and reconciling information that on its surface seems contradictory.

Therefore, if a candidate does not fall squarely into one of the two buckets we associate with politics—"conservatism" and "liberalism"—then he must be in the middle, despite not logically fitting as a "moderate" in any sense. And because many people subconsciously believe in the golden mean, Trump is using the same strategy almost every authoritarian populist has used to craft a successful coalition: pair extreme ideas from one end of the spectrum with ones that either come from the other extreme end or are appealing for their "moderation." For example, pair your extreme views on immigration with opposition to trade, or rhetoric opposing "hedge fund guys" and other selected rich capitalists who are unpopular across the board. This becomes a net win for Trump. He "tells it like it is" or "calls out both sides." Donald is an empty suit and he invites us all to try him on:

DEBATE TRUMP: “Taxes too high, wages too high. We’re not going to be able to compete against the world.”

GASBAG TRUMP ON THE STUMP: "The influx of foreign workers holds down salaries, keeps unemployment high, and makes it difficult for poor and working-class Americans . . . to earn a middle-class wage."

SUBTEXT: To those of you working 2-3 jobs at $8.00 per hour, once I deport all the illegals you're still going to be making $8.00 per hour. F**k you very much.

In 2002, Trump appeared on Howard Stern’s show and voiced his support (such as it was) for the Iraq War based on the financial interests in the region. In Las Vegas, Trump swerved the entire Republican Party, blasting the war louder than any Democrat would have:

Thousands and thousands of lives, we have nothing. Wounded warriors all over the place who I love, we have nothing for it.

It's like Vietnam. Even though it was an obvious boondoggle by 1969, it wasn't until the late 70s-early 80s that criticizing the war was socially acceptable. And we're going through the same motions now that we did back then: People are claiming Iraq was a fault of execution, not the original decision to go in, which Trump is basically echoing with his We need to go in and take their oil. Even though he now talks as if it was a mistake from the beginning, because we didn't immediately pillage all the oil and their wealth.

So what are we to believe? This is not a multiverse. You have to do one or the other. Trump's seductive technique is that he establishes himself as a huckster from Day 1, but then winks and nudges you into believing that you and you alone are the one who understands his "true" positions and values. It's a little bit like the playboy who sleeps with a bunch of different girls. They let him get away with it because each of them is convinced that she's the one he really loves and the other girls are just tramps who are easily lured by such a charming guy. And, of course, each one is convinced that in the end he'll come around to his one true love. This is why his supporters cherry-pick through the heaps of manure to prove that he's not really X-Y-Z.

Feud with HBO and Last Week Tonight

“”So that the Jew you shan't recognize / His name turns up in other guise. / Herr Nathan calls himself Jonathan, / While Levin becomes Levinson.

—Trust No Fox on his Green Heath And No Jew on his Oath, Nazi propaganda

In March of 2013, Trump attacked Jon Stewart on Twitter for changing his name from Liebowitz to Stewart, tweeting:

“”If Jon Stewart is so above it all & legit, why did he change his name from Jonathan Leibowitz? He should be proud of his heritage!

Two years later, while spending a portion of May 31, 2015, embarassingly trying to flame Stewart, Trump also blatantly insisted that the tweet quoted above never took place, tweeting:

“”All the haters and losers must admit that, unlike others, I never attacked dopey Jon Stewart for his phony last name. Would never do that!

He then proceeded to lie that John Oliver^[wp] (Stewart being the former boss and colleague of Oliver) had tried to get Trump to appear on Last Week Tonight, something which Oliver maintains has never happened. Oliver even checked to make sure nobody had accidentally invited him, and nobody had.

In response to all of this, on February 28, 2016, Oliver started the #makedonalddrumpfagain campaign, explaining:

"Trump" does sound rich - it's almost onomatopoeic[wp]. "Trump!" is the sound produced when a mouthy servant is slapped across the face with a wad of thousand-dollar bills. "Trump!" is the sound of a cork popping on a couple's champagnniversary, the day the renovations in the wine cellar were finally completed. The very name "Trump" is the cornerstone of his brand. If only there were a way to uncouple that magical word from the man he really is. Well, guess what—there is! Because it turns out, the name "Trump" was not always his family's name. One biographer found that a prescient ancestor had changed it from—and this is true—Drumpf. Yes; fucking Drumpf! And "Drumpf!" is much less magical. It's the sound produced when a morbidly obese pigeon flies into the window of the foreclosed Old Navy. "Drumpf!" It's the sound of a bottle of store brand root beer falling off the shelf in a gas station mini-mart. And it may seem weird to bring up his ancestral name, but to quote Donald Trump, "he should be proud of his heritage"—because Drumpf is much more reflective of who he actually is. So if you are thinking of voting for Donald Trump, the charismatic guy promising to make America great again, stop and take a moment to imagine how you would feel if you just met a guy named Donald Drumpf. A litigious serial liar, with a string of broken business ventures and the support of a former Klan leader who he can't decide whether or not to condemn. Would you think he would make a good president, or is the spell now somewhat broken? And that is why tonight, I am asking America to make Donald Drumpf again!

Oliver also revealed that HBO had even officially filed paperwork to trademark the name "Drumpf." HBO has also purchased the domain donaldjdrumpf.com and released an official Chrome browser plugin called the "Drumpfinator," which changes every instance of "Trump" to "Drumpf" in the browser.

The thought underlying the quite overtly satirical relabeling of Trump to Drumpf is that Trump's image and persona is based on the Trump brand—and thus, if people instead knew him as Donald Drumpf (the way his family's name was spelled before the Thirty Years' War), then hopefully people would stop automatically knee-jerk associating him with the fame and fortune attached to the Trump brand, and instead see the man for who and what he really is.

The only problem is that, for people who don't know about that little spat, it just looks like they're making fun of his German ancestry; hence, our coverage of it here helps set the record straight and avoid any confusion regarding the "Drumpf" meme.

The Russian connection

“”Do you think Putin will be going to The Miss Universe Pageant in November in Moscow - if so, will he become my new best friend?

—Donald Trump, June 18, 2013. Putin didn't go

“”In the intelligence business, we would say that Mr. Putin had recruited Mr. Trump as an unwitting agent of the Russian Federation.

—Michael J. Morell, former director of the CIA

Following Trump's harsh criticisms of NATO and calls for Russia to hack into opponent Hillary Clinton's email server, and his belief that all Crimeans really wanted to be with Mother Russia, many news outlets have been questioning further the links Trump has with Vladimir Putin and Russia.

Policy advisers

“”He is a very flamboyant man, very talented, no doubt about that [...] He is the absolute leader of the presidential race, as we see it today. He says that he wants to move to another level of relations, to a deeper level of relations with Russia. How can we not welcome that? Of course we welcome it.

—Vladimir Putin on Donald Trump, before he became the official GOP nominee

“”He said Donald Trump is a genius and he is going to be the leader of the party and he's going to be the leader of the world or something [...] These characters that I'm running against said, 'We want you to disavow that statement.' I said, 'What, he called me a genius, I'm going to disavow it? Are you crazy?' [...] I think I'd have a good relationship with Putin.

—Donald Trump, embellishing his praise.

Trump's Russia adviser Carter Page has made a business on dealings with Russia. Page has had a lifelong fascination of Russia from the days of the Soviet Union, and supported Putin in his writings for a while as a staunch defender of Russian intentions, and has accused the U.S. of red-baiting and adopting a Cold War mindset with regards to Russia – that, and the fact that the economic sanctions imposed on Russia affected his business dealings with Gazprom^[wp] and other Russian businesses.

And after hiring recruiting Paul Manafort as a volunteer, former consultant to the pro-Kremlin Victor Yanukovich^[wp] as his campaign chairman, Trump changed his position on Crimea from demanding stronger western intervention from "weak", "ineffective", "worst president" B. Hussein Obama.

Another Trump foreign policy advisor, retired army lieutenant Michael Flynn^[wp], flew to Moscow in 2015 in order to attend a gala banquet in honor of RT (a channel which he has appeared on regularly), and was seated the head table, two seats away from Putin. Now, Michael Flynn was working under President Obama, and nobody thinks Obama has a Russian connection from that alone, but put together, this all paints the picture of a man who thinks Russia would be good for his business, and he's trying to "woo" the oligarchs to his side.

Business connections

“”Almost all of the oligarchs were in the room.

—Trump on his 2013 Miss Universe contest in Moscow.

According to TIME magazine, the most obvious example of Trump and his Russian satellite business' interests is Trump SoHo^[wp]. "A lawsuit claimed that the business group, Bayrock, underpinning Trump Soho was supported by criminal Russian financial interests. While its initial claim absolved Trump of knowledge of those activities, Trump himself later took on the group's principal partner as a senior advisor in the Trump organization", TIME writes. Bayrock went on to be involved with a number of Trump projects globally. The other development for this project was the Sapir Organization; founder Tamir Sapir was from Georgia (the former Soviet republic, not the state). A bayrock official also "brokered a $50 million investment in Trump SoHo and three other Bayrock projects by an Icelandic firm preferred by wealthy Russians 'in favor with' President Vladimir V. Putin", according to The New York Times. The suspicion surrounding the project meant that Bayrock's finance chief, Jody Kiss, sued Trump for fraud.

Trump's first real estate venture in Toronto was a partnership with two Russian-Canadian entrepreneurs. "The hotel's developer, Talon International, is run by Val Levitan and Alex Shnaider, two Russian-Canadian entrepreneurs. Levitan made his fortune manufacturing slot machines and creating bank note validation technology, and Shnaider earned his in the post-glasnost steel trade," wrote Toronto Life in 2013.

When Trump built a tower in Panama in 2008, Trump Jr. said at a real estate conference: "Russians make up a pretty disproportionate cross-section of a lot of our assets. We see a lot of money pouring in from Russia".

Melania Trump plagiarism controversy

Nothing to see here, folks...

See the main article on this topic: 2016 Republican National Convention#Melania Trump plagiarism controversy

On July 18, 2016, the first day of the 2016 Republican National Convention, Trump's (current) wife, Melania, gave a speech to talk about why the Donald would be the racially superior United States presidential candidate. The speech contained a paragraph that was pretty much identical to a paragraph of Michelle Obama's speech at the 2008 Democratic National Convention.

Following Melania's speech, various media outlets reported the similarities, stating that the speech was "awkward", "embarrassing" and "an act of plagiarism". Although it took the Trump campaign a while to do so, and whilst they procrastinated 24 hours in either avoiding the subject altogether or claiming that Melania's speech wasn't really plagiarism (although the fact that it was plagiarism was pretty much obvious to anyone listening to or reading the speech), someone high up essentially said "You're Fired" to Melania's scriptwriters, and that was the end of that one.

Trump Mania

Well, let's give Denny his due: when has he ever given us any bad advice or led us in the wrong direction?

La Familia Trump consists of the usual suspects; a pack of shit-stirrers, talent-vacuums, bigots, and media whores as unfit to hold office as the man himself. We have dossiers on most of them:

• Joe Arpaio: Cartoonishly-corrupt sheriff of Maricopa County. Arpaio, whose department has been sued multiple times for racist policing practices by the federal government, declared "I’m with him to the bitter end."
• Anti-PC crusader Ann Coulter: Hopped on the Trump Train early but appeared to sour on his ‘half-baked tweets at midnight’. What's that old saying about a speck in your neighbor's eye?
• George Galloway: Here's a tricky one: Who would be a more terrible president, Donald Trump or George Galloway? Fellow Brexiteer Nigel Farage appears to agree with Galloway on this one.
• Sean Hannity: His inner construction worker cannot resist.
• Alex Jones: Vaunted anti-government loon, is spreading the Trump Gospel—in essence, becoming a cheerleader for torture, the surveillance state, deportations, and zero-percent corporate taxes—all in exchange for a plug from Donald on his show.
• Arthur Laffer: Trickle-down needs to be brutally murdered, because it won't fucking die on its own. (Shouldn't you be wrecking Australia's economy right now?)
• Michelle Malkin: Sees which way the wind is blowing and announced she would be "pulling the lever for Donald Trump." This from the woman who called him a "conservafraud" two years before. Others might have taken offense at Trump calling them "born stupid," but not Malkin: she couldn't Stump The Trump, and hopefully gained "wisdom" from the experience.
• Ted Nugent: Of course, no collection of wingnuts would be complete without Nugent. Political life lessons from him are like filling the seats at the BET awards with KKK members.
• Dennis Prager: Admits he only supports Trump out of hate for the left. One of the most adamantly anti-Trump talk show hosts of the past year was, in fact...Dennis Prager.
• Donald Rumsfeld: Trump's not doing so well in endorsements; he'll take what he can get. Let's speculate on other stupid endorsements he may get. Lynndie England? Ollie North? Is G. Gordon Liddy dead yet?
• Michael Savage: Called Trump "the Winston Churchill of our time."
• Phyllis Schlafly: Marital rape supporter Nonagenarian stay-at-home mom and ERA opponent.
• Ben Stein: Once a flack, always a flack. "He wants a peaceful, calm America."
• Milo Yiannopoulos: Refers to Trump as "Daddy." As the official spokesman for the Internet's sewer, Yiannopoulos half-jokingly yearns for a God-Emperor Trump to transform America into some sort of a fascist monarchy.

Patient Zeroes

• The Harvard Republican Club refused to endorse Trump which is the first time in 128 years they would not endorse the Republican candidate. "He isn’t eschewing political correctness. He is eschewing basic human decency."
• Silvio Berlusconi: Il Trump italiano. Just subtract a foot of height and add underage Moroccan prostitutes.
• Nigel Farage: Has compared himself to The Don. Take a seat, Enoch. (Trump is UKIP turned up to 11.)
• Geert Wilders: Completely adrift from reality. Screams anything necessary to get more votes. Dat hair, tho.
• Boris Johnson: "Wait, I have dumb hair, too! Vote for me!"
• Hugo Chavez: Why should the Reds feel left out? A very similar rhetorician, with endless insults but a strong ability to manipulate the media and make people laugh. Latin Americans even coined the term Trumpismo to describe demagogues like Chavez.
• Pauline Hanson: Australia's Most Honest Politician. "I don't believe in halal" is the kind of bilge they can look forward to.
• Rob Ford^[wp]: R.I.P. He reminded us a lot of Bender when he temporarily became human.
• Michele Fiore^[wp]: Rule 63 is an Internet rule which states "For any given male character, there is a female version of that character." Gold-plated AKs, cigar-chomping, word salad ("ocular cavity"), quack supplements, fraud, shitposting, /pol/ following, this woman's got it all!
• Rodrigo Duterte^[wp]: President of the Philippines, known for being as inflammatory and authoritarian as Trump; he dominates the media and parades the same kind of "lemme clean up the establishment" populism as Trump. His nickname is even "The Trump of the East."

See also

• Patrick Buchanan: A failed paleoconservative presidential candidate who shares many of the same nationalistic ideas about free trade, foreign policy, and immigration. Naturally, he was an early and enthusiastic Trump supporter.
• Charles Coughlin: An Ameican Catholic priest who became the granddaddy of right-wing populism, nationalistic demagoguery, and globalist conspiracies.
• Joseph McCarthy: There are at least 40 million illegal immigrants. Some people say there are 30 million illegal immigrants. It's probably somewhere in the middle. 32, 33, 34 million.
• George Wallace: The OG non-PC presidential candidate. At least Wallace didn't use racist dog-whistles. (He told voters exactly what he supported!)
• Ronald Reagan: A B-radio and film personality who completely changed his politics to appease his masters at GE TV theater. He was picked out of a hat because the name had a high recognition value. He didn't actually decide anything, he just read the lines he was given.
• Sarah Palin: Basically a Nostra-dumbass. She foretold Trump without even knowing it.
• Know Nothing Party: Rick Perry publicly called Trump a "Know Nothing" shortly after Trump announced his candidacy. (And when Rick Perry thinks you've gone out to lunch, well...)
• Narcissistic personality disorder: Trump isn't the kind of person who would turn down a business model centered on the idea that “Trump is a genius worth emulating.”
• Ultracrepidarian: Also: hire ghost writers to write bestseller books in your name about how smart and rich you are.
• Daddy Trump
• Secure the border

External links

• Donald Trump Insult Generator, TIME.
• Trumpbart - Spoof of Breitbart. Ben Shapiro called Breitbart.com "Pravda for Donald Trump", which is just about right.
• /r/the_donald - In an in-no-way-coincidental mirroring of the idiot they spend their days drooling over, Da_Dawnald are possibly the most thin-skinned, whiny middle-schoolers ever encountered on Reddit. Even the most mild criticism (hey, stop flooding modmail with thousands of harassing insults) triggers them and brings out the Nazi Germany comparisons.
• "Donald Trump Campaign Offered Actors $50 to Cheer for Him at Presidential Announcement"
• "Donald Trump: 'I Could ... Shoot Somebody, And I Wouldn't Lose Any Voters'" - We're not sure the world is ready for a mad emperor Gordon Gekko.
• His insults toward other candidates,The New York Times

Videos

• Never forget.
• RNC Prays For Democratic Defeat, Trump Victory - The fact that they're literally praying in an empty room is a powerful statement. So alone in their righteous anger.

Footnotes

United States 2016 presidential election articles on RationalWiki
	Topics: Affordable Care Act - Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission - DAESH - Gun control - Illegal immigration - Koch Industries - United States Electoral College Parties: Democratic Party (primaries) - Green Party - Libertarian Party - Republican Party (primaries • Convention • Tea Party) Candidates: Bush (R) - Carson (R) - Christie (R) - Clinton (D) - Cruz (R) - Huckabee (R) - Jindal (R) - Johnson (Lib) - Kasich (R) - Paul (R) - Perry (R) - Sanders (D) - Stein (Green) - Trump (R) - Walker (R) - Webb (D) • Running mates: Kaine (D) - Pence (R)