In the spirit of great tyrants like Joseph Stalin and Benito Mussolini, who commandeered their electoral systems in order to insure near unanimous support, Donald Trump has stumbled into a scheme that would cripple the campaigns of his political rivals.
The Billionaire Don was recently caught allegedly violating election laws by coordinating his campaign with a SuperPAC operating on his behalf. The “Make America Great Again PAC” is run by a close associate of Trump’s campaign manager and Trump held fundraisers for the PAC before he announced his candidacy while it was still legal to do so. However, the Washington Post reports that principals connected to the PAC were regular visitors to Trump’s campaign office and communicated with his staff. Trump’s campaign manager was even caught lying when he denied knowing a key PAC official, but later was forced to admit that he did.
The result of this budding scandal was that Trump made a public announcement denouncing all PACS and disassociating himself with those operating in his name. But he went even further than that.
Trump: I have disavowed all Super PACs, requested the return of all donations made to said PACs, and I am calling on all presidential candidates to do the same.
Taken at face value, that could be seen as a magnanimous gesture to remove unaccountable, big donor contributions from the political system, a worthy goal. But coming from Trump, further scrutiny is required. First of all, the only reason Trump is saying this is because he was caught cheating. He regularly accuses his opponents of being beholden to wealthy donors and has avoided taking any responsibility for his own obligations. But the real hypocrisy in this is his demand that other candidates ask any PACs supporting them to return all the money they’ve collected.
This would amount to a unilateral disarmament because Trump is the only candidate in the race that can self-finance his campaign. Consequently, he said nothing about candidates contributing unlimited amounts of their own money to electing themselves. In effect, Trump is asking every candidate to accept only the permitted donations for federal office (maximum $2,700.00), except for himself. A few candidates (i.e. Bernie Sanders) can generate significant sums from large numbers of small-dollar donors. Everyone else would be severely disadvantaged. What’s more, not many people could generate funds by pitching their branded campaign swag the way Trump does. He recently tweeted “Remember, official campaign merchandise (hats, apparel etc.) can only be bought at http://www.donaldjtrump.com . Be careful, don’t get ripped-off.” He is more Snake Oil salesmen than candidate.
The only way for Trump to fairly suggest this course of action would be if he were to also promise not to self-finance. Then all candidates would have to rely on building grassroots support. Then the country could have an honest democracy that wasn’t dominated by clandestine elites or wealthy megalomaniacs who buy their way into power.
Of course, that is not what Trump wants. He wants to be the only candidate with sufficient funds to mount a credible campaign. He wants to kneecap everyone that can challenge him. It is the sort of suggestion that would make Stalin blush. It is how dictators insure that they win elections with ninety-five percent of the vote. And combined with Republican efforts to suppress access to voting and to gerrymander districts to favor themselves, they might just approach that level of electoral corruption.
It shouldn’t surprise anyone that Trump is exhibiting these despotic tendencies. It is the lifestyle of privilege and entitlement that he has known his whole life. It is evident in his public commentaries that disparage minorities and women and the poor, while simultaneously embracing power structures that favor corporations and the imposition of government mandates on personal choices and religious practices.
Trump’s aspirations to monarchy are also apparent in his treatment of the press. He just held a rally in Florida where he barred any Univision reporters from attending. Univision is the nation’s largest Spanish language network. He said that because he is suing the network over their dissolution of a business arrangement with his Miss Universe pageant, it would be a “conflict of interest” to allow them into his campaign events. Apparently he has no idea what “conflict of interest” means. Nor does he have any understanding of the concept of freedom of the press. And this isn’t his first run-in with Univision.
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All of this is typical Trumpery. He lambastes other politicians for things he does routinely, then he blames anyone but himself when his corruption is uncovered. He displays a flagrant streak of superiority, but reverts to being a shameless crybaby when he doesn’t get his way. He’s an unrepentant narcissist who is convinced that he deserves special privileges. And somehow he has conned some really dumbass Americans into supporting him, much the same way religious hucksters dupe their followers into believing the End Times are beginning next Thursday.
As Trump has said, it’s easy to get Republicans to vote for you because they believe lies like “build the wall” and “deport three million people” and he may, indeed, get the Republican nomination by telling the base what they want to hear. That should be good for something like 20 percent of the general electorate.
Longtail, much of what you note is true – but what sounds foolish is the suggestion (belief/agreement with the donald’s statement in your case) that this is exclusively a republican problem – ie being told what you wan to hear. That is universal for politicians – both parties. To suggest it’s just “dumb” republicans that get told what they want to hear is incredibly naive. After Barack Obama of 2008 – how anyone can think it’s just the one party that is the problem is ridiculous. The electorate as a whole only wants to hear what it wants to hear. Issues such as the insolvency of Social Security or that the country is bankrupt – even with being able to print our own money – is just not popular. We’re in denial and a guy like Donald Trump being in the lead is the result. He is no worse than anyone else these days.
Eventually Trump is going to lose this contest, either in the primary process or the general election if he actually gets the nomination. It’s going to be fun watching the Donald get rejected by the American people and essentially told, you’re fired!