How’d We Get Ourselves into This?

What does it matter how we elected this man? Shouldn’t we just go forward? I will spare you the old saying about not learning from history—you can take it as read. We do need to see what has led us to this point. If we don’t know how we got here, we won’t know where to go. None of the following is to say that somehow we should be plotting Trump’s overthrow or failing to pray for him and for our nation. He has been elected under our laws and therefore has the office. Our laws also allow for his peaceful impeachment and removal from office should that become necessary. We do not have military coups in this country. But for now we will assume that there will be a Donald Trump as President for the next four years. It seems impossible. How did it happen?

It started with a publicity stunt, the famous “golden escalator” moment in June of 2015, when Trump rode down the stairs at Trump Tower, gave his famous speech about the wall, and announced that he was running for President. We’ll get to that speech and its aftermath in a minute. For now I want to examine why Trump made this move in the first place.

One has to remember that Trump’s announcement was nothing new. He had been dipping his toe in the Presidential waters for at least a decade, but his actions never led to anything serious. He was too busy opening casinos, slapping his name on everything in sight, going bankrupt, and getting divorced. But because he was such a brash, outsize personality, he was golden fodder for the media, and they could always count in his willingness to give them a sound bite or two.

Here’s what seems to have happened to set off this particular toe-dipping, at least in part: NBC wasn’t coming up with the money Trump felt he deserved for the upcoming season of “The Celebrity Apprentice.” Trump had met “quietly” with at least one other network n the hope that NBC would come to its senses, but he needed something a little more dramatic. So he went ahead with his Big Announcement.

The thing of it is, Trump was supposed to come down the escalator, make a brief speech, and stride off into the sunset, well-tailored shoulders outlined against the glow of the TV lights. Instead, he launched into his famous “build the wall/Mexicans are rapists” rant. Corey Lewandowski, Trump’s former campaign adviser, says that “Trump’s announcement went through at least five major drafts and edits that resulted in a tightly prepared script with no mention of rape. But, according to Lewandowski, the ‘vast majority’ of the speech Trump actually delivered was spontaneous and unscripted. ‘That speech was going to last seven minutes and 28 seconds — I think it was originally timed in at,’ Lewandowski said. ‘His announcement speech ended up clocking in somewhere north of 45 minutes.’” (I got the info on this interview from Yahoo News, but they’re hardly the only source for it.)

So the question is: Why did Trump give the speech that he did? I’ve never read any real explanation. Somehow he latched onto this idea about Mexican immigrants and decided to run with it. I would speculate (but not too wildly) that some news story set him off, as this type of thing has happened numerous times since then. He’s a cable news consumer of monumental proportions and often reacts to some story that happens to catch his eye. Who knows?

What is known is what happened next. First of all, the crowd at the event went wild. Secondly, NBC canceled Trump’s “Apprentice” contract as well as the Trump-sponsored Miss USA and Miss Universe pageants. Other major corporations tied to Trump followed suit. His art of the deal had failed him. He was stunned.

What to do? Well, Trump couldn’t very well say, “Hey guys, I didn’t mean it! I was just grandstanding! Take me back! Please!” So instead he had to soldier on and act as if he really did want to run for President. His advisers assured him that he wouldn’t have to actually run, like, as the nominee. He’d hold a few megarallies, gain back his credibility, and gracefully drop out when he’d gotten what he wanted.

But the crowds kept growing. As has been pointed out numerous times, in exhaustive detail, Trump’s ego is massive and his craving for admiration unending. How could he resist? So he kept going on through the primaries. Surely, surely he wouldn’t actually get the nomination. But he did—albeit with only 45 percent of the primary vote. (We really need to do something about how Republican primaries are run.) And we know what happened after that. It has been pointed out that the three-week stretch there right near the end, when Trump seemed intent on doing everything he could to lose the election, might have actually been Trump doing everything he could to lose the election, because he never in a million years wanted to be President. I think there was some mighty big pressure brought to bear behind the scenes. We’ll get that story one of these days, in spite of all the non-disclosure agreements everyone who works for him has to sign.

I have no interest in re-hashing the whole FBI last-minute Anthony Weiner’s laptop hoopty-doopter, although it’s fair to say that it was the final nail in the HC coffin. I am instead interested in two other nails: Vlad the Impaler’s meddling and voting by those who didn’t think their votes mattered.

Let’s look at the Russian hacking. Evidence keeps growing that Russia did indeed interfere in this election and that its purpose was to support Trump. (We also know that the Obama administration knew about this hacking weeks before the election but made no public outcry. As has, again, been said numerous times, no one expected Trump to win, for heaven’s sake. So Obama bided his time, expecting to be able to say something along the lines of, “Ho-kay, Mr. Putin, you tried to elect your nominee but you didn’t succeed. So there!”)

There are two reasons why the Russians would want to exert an influence on our election.

The first reason is general. In essence, any totalitarian government wants to bring down or at least weaken democracies. They’re just too dangerous. Their own people might start getting ideas. So it’s always good to stick a tire iron into the democratic machinery wherever you can. Evidence of Russian meddling has been evident in any number of countries, with right-wing populism’s being their favorite flavor. And why would that be? Take a look at your history books and see if you can figure that one out.

So Russian general taste for mischief against fair elections and trust in government can explain much of their actions. But why would they want Trump specifically?

Here’s where I try very hard not to put on any kind of conspiracy theory tinfoil hat. The fact of the matter is, we just don’t know exactly why, although Putin does seem to dislike Hillary Clinton quite a bit because of her remarks about Russian elections perhaps being just a little bit rigged. But there seems to be more to it than that. Trump’s fawning over Putin makes one wonder because it seems so out of character for him. It almost looks as if there’s some kind of quid pro quo going on here. Trump plays lapdog to Putin, praises him lavishly and slavishly, and in return gets . . . what? The obvious answer is that he gets some kind of loosening of the terms of his debt to Russian oligarchs. Oh wait. Does Trump owe money to the Russians? We don’t know. He could halt this speculation in five minutes if he released his tax returns. Mark my words, someone’s going to leak them someday. And then we’ll see. But right now it’s all mighty suspicious. After all, the only American bank that will lend him money is Deutsche Bank, which is actually a German bank with a strong US presence. Otherwise, no dice. So where’s his capital coming from? If you’re looking right at a situation, and all the indications point a certain way, then maybe you have to say, well, until I get further information here’s what I think. Prove me wrong!

But there’s more to the story than Russian hacking. There’s also the fact that for lots of people their vote was just a stunt, a poke in the eye of the establishment, a story they could tell in years to come. This description applies to primary voters as well as general election ones. (“Yeah, I voted for a crazy man in 2016! It was so much fun to watch those liberals squirm!”) I am firmly convinced, and I will remain firmly convinced until my dying day, that a substantial minority, at least 10%, of the people who voted for Trump didn’t think their votes mattered. Hillary was going to win. There was no risk involved. So they went into that voting booth and pulled that lever, laughing to themselves over how clever, how iconoclastic, they were. That would show ‘em!

But guess what? Their votes did matter. Big time. Those tiny, tiny majorities in the four swing states were made up of about 78,000 votes. (I’m not going to try to figure out what percentage that is of the total votes cast. It’s too depressing to think about.)

Well, we shall see what we shall see. I have to get this post up so that my rather snarky opening about working on a holiday can be justified. More to come as the ship of state lumbers on.