Trump’s election will transform the Republican The US shows it could care less

7 6 Nov/Dec 2016

In December, Trump proposed a ban on

Muslim travel to the United States and this prom-

ise clinched his lead. He entered 2016 and the

ﬁnal lap to the GOP Convention with the support

of a massive 36% of GOP voters. His nearest

rival, the equally disordered Ted Cruz from

Texas, trailed twenty points behind. The nomi-

nation was all but his and in July, in Cleveland,

Ohio, he was crowned.

Throughout Trump’s extraordinary, disturbing

and appalling expedition towards the White

House, the US media were divided in their

response. To cable and network TV chieftains,

Donald Trump - the former reality TV show host

- was a gift from the Gods of ratings.

The head of CBS, Les Moonves, admitted as

much in an extraordinarily candid speech he

gave to a media conference in San Francisco in

March this year. “I’ve never seen anything like

this, and this going to be a very good year for

us”, he said at the event. “Sorry. It’s a terrible

thing to say. But, bring it on, Donald. Keep

going”.

He added: “It may not be good for America, but

it’s damn good for CBS”

And, of course, it was also ‘damn good’ for

Donald Trump who wallowed in all the free pub-

licity that CBS and the other networks and

channels bestowed on him.

But the print media, especially the establish

ment print media just did not know how to deal

with Trump.

American journalists approach presidential

elections in an almost reverent and passive

frame of mind. Digging into a candidate’s dirty

past is mostly something the rival camp does but

as Trump’s xenophobia became more outra-

geous, his ﬂirting with violence more dangerous,

his claims about rivals and opponents more

extreme, his threat to perceived American values

more real and, above all, his rise in the polls

more dramatic, the pressure grew to change

tack.

Nothing in recent times has challenged the

American media’s almost spiritual commitment

to notions of balance and neutrality in its cover

age of public affairs like the Trump candidacy.

The dominant tendency in the print media since

the White House campaign began, which was to

hope that one morning they would wake up and

ﬁnd that Trump had just been a bad dream, gave

way slowly but relentlessly to alarm and with

that came the ﬁrst signs that in this election the

media would almost unashamedly take sides,

against Trump mostly, and therefore by default

for Clinton.

It wasn’t just that Trump was an ignorant,

sexist, racist brute who threatened to take Amer-

ica to dangerous places, but that Clinton was

part of a system they knew and recognised, and

were comfortable with.

It was therefore appropriate, perhaps, that it

was an episode touching one of their own that

highlighted the media’s reluctance to confront

Trump.

Serge Kovaleski is a South African-born, Pul

litzer-prize-winning investigative reporter for

The New York Times. He suffers from arthro

gryposis, a congenital condition which causes

sometimes severe distortion and contraction of

the joints.

Trump and Kovaleski clashed in the wake of a

claim from Trump that he had seen on TV “thou

sands’ of people”, presumably Muslims, in

Jersey City cheering as the Twin Towers col

lapsed on 9/11. Trump cited a contemporaneous

article that Kovaleski had written as proof of his

claim. But Kovaleski denied Trump’s assertion,

saying that the article he wrote only said that

police had questioned “a number” of people -

not thousands - who “allegedly” had been seen

celebrating the attacks.

At a public meeting, Trump caused outrage by

lampooning Kovaleski’s disability, imitating his

misshapen limbs and awkward movements on

television. This is how The New York Times

reported Trump’s comments: “'Now the poor

guy, you ought to see this guy', Mr Trump said,

before jerking his arms around and holding his

right hand at an angle. 'Ah, I don’t know what I

said! I don’t remember!'”.

When taken to task for this, Trump claimed he

had never met Kovaleski and therefore could not

know about his disability - a contention the

reporter strongly denied, adding that he and

Trump had been on ﬁrst-name terms and had

met repeatedly over the years.

It would be comforting to think that it was this

episode that turned the media worm but whether

it did or not, it was at about this time that the cry

went up among many journalists that Trump’s

lies should be challenged and exposed for what

they were - even during televised debates

between the two candidates.

Once Trump won the GOP nomination and the

polls tightened between him and Hillary, the dig-

ging began into his past, something the media

had until then, with a few exceptions, stayed well

clear of. Some reporters, notably freelancer

David Cay Johnston, had highlighted Trump’s

sharp business practices and his association

with mob ﬁgures in New York and New Jersey -

but they were the exception, their articles

conﬁned mostly to the internet.

But the media also responded in another way,

which brings the story back to that ‘tick tock on

Libya’ email written for Hillary Clinton by her

staff but so blatantly ignored by the mainstream

media.

Other stories embarrassing to Hillary Clinton

leaked by Wikileaks from its dump of hacked

emails or from other sources were either ignored

or played down, or rubbished on the grounds

that Russian agents were behind the email theft,

the failure to report the stories rising in tandem

with Trump’s growing threat to Clinton.

The leaks included claims that the Clintons

had used the family foundation almost as a per-

sonal bank and that its coffers had been stuffed

with funds raised by ‘cash for access’ schemes.

The King of Morocco is said to have donated

$12m, the state of Qatar $1m and in return were

promised a sympathetic hearing from the woman

who appeared likely to be the next US

president.

As the campaign trundled into its ﬁnal weeks

and days the conviction grew that the American

media, which once prided itself on its profes-

sional neutrality, had morphed into virtual

Clinton ciphers, a charge which reﬂected wider

establishment terror at the prospect of Donald

Trump in the White House.

The 2016 presidential election will leave Amer-

ican politics completely changed. Trump’s

election will transform the Republican party

beyond recognition and the Democrats, shaken

to the core by Bernie Sanders’ nearly successful

challenge to the party establishment, and re-

challenged by the ultimate humiliation of

Clinton, will never again be the same.

But the politicians will not be alone. The elec

tion has also changed the American media.

Trump’s election will transform the Republican

party beyond recognition and the Democrats,

shaken to the core by Bernie Sanders’

challenge to the party establishment, and re-challenged

by the ultimate humiliation of Clinton, will never again

be the same

Serge Kovaleski was mocked by Trump

US ELECTION

Nov/Dec 2016 7 7

NTIL 1980 the USA was more or less in the

hands of well-meaning, bar Richard Nixon,

liberals. Reagan may have brought morning

to America in 1980 but in fact he touted a

freedom without responsibility, a contempt

for equality: greed and heedlessness. His successors,

including Democrats, never challenged institutionalised

selﬁshness, Wall Street ascendancy, proﬂigate consum-

erism or inequality, and they have become wrapped up

with the American Dream. It is not surprising there has

been a backlash. What is unforgiveable is its nature.

What is unforgiveable is Donald Trump.

Donald Trump humiliatingly impersonated a disabled

person. The new President of the USA has incited vio-

lence at public events, lies casually and pervasively, and

thinks, and will act on the basis that, climate change is

a hoax perpetrated by the Chinese. This will be a

President whose disdain for women and minorities, civil

liberties and scientiﬁc fact, to say nothing of simple

decency, has been repeatedly demonstrated. A Trump

government would cultivate the richest and disdain the

poorest. Trump is vulgarity incarnate, a knowledge-free

and uninquisitive demagogue who will not only set mar

kets tumbling but will strike fear into the hearts of the

vulnerable, the weak, and, above all, the many varieties

of Other whom he has so deeply insulted. The African-

American Other. The Hispanic Other. The female Other.

The Jewish and Muslim Other. This is not a good week to

be a Latvian or a Ukrainian, and a dire one to be a Syrian

oppositionist.

His temperament and apparent intelligence – and,

let’s indulge ourselves, his looks - make him horribly

unsuited to leading the nation that the rest of the demo-

cratic world looks to for leadership, the

The US shows

it could care less

Trump has killed tolerance, equality,

international comity, the future of this

planet, and of course decency

by Michael Smith

Donald Trump

humiliatingly

impersonated a

disabled person

7 8 Nov/Dec 2016

US ELECTION

commander-in-chief of the world’s most powerful armed

forces and the person who controls America’s nuclear

deterrent.

If he were writing “The Art of the Deal” today, Trump’s

biographer Tony Schwartz said, it would be a very differ

ent book with a very different title. Asked what he would

call it, he answered, “The Sociopath”.

While researching the book, Schwartz asked Trump to

describe his childhood in detail. After sitting for only a few

minutes in his suit and tie, Trump became impatient and

irritable. He looked ﬁdgety, Schwartz recalls, “like a kin

dergartner who can’t sit still in a classroom”. Even when

Schwartz pressed him, Trump seemed to remember

almost nothing of his youth, and made it clear that he was

bored. Far more quickly than Schwartz had expected,

Trump ended the meeting. The discussion was soon anni-

hilated by what Schwartz considers one of Trump’s most

essential characteristics: “He has no attention span”.

No American experience has been as unprepared for

ofﬁce as this Reality TV star with an inherited fortune and

a penchant for shagging.

After a year and a half of erratic tweets and roving

speeches, we don’t know how Trump would carry out basic

functions of the executive. We don’t know what ﬁnancial

conﬂicts he might have, since he never released his tax

returns, breaking with 40 years of tradition in both par-

ties. We don’t know if he has the capacity to focus on any

issue and arrive at a rational conclusion. We don’t know if

he has any idea what it means to have his ﬁnger on the

button.

As between Hillary Clinton and Trump, in almost every

instance the Democrat’s policies were preferable. Trump’s

primary policy, after self-furtherance, is aiding both the

richest and the ordinary white Joes he knows from his

building sites. While Clinton wanted to raise taxes on

high-income households Trump seems to aim to cut taxes

for all income brackets – with no budgetary concern. Clin-

ton is pro-choice, Trump is pro-life; Clinton supported

citizenship for undocumented immigrants, while Trump

wants to deport illegal immigrants, make Mexico build a

beautiful wall on its border and start a trade war with

China for its currency manipulation and for hoaxing eve-

ryone on climate; Clinton wanted to expand gun control

legislation, Trump’s constituency is the National Riﬂe

Association; Clinton was apparently for LGBT rights;

Trump says he sees himself as a "traditional guy" on the

issue and would “strongly consider” appointing judges

to overturn the Supreme Court’s same-sex-marriage deci-

sion. But none of these policies and there conduciveness,

for example to the common good, seemed to matter to the

electorate, and in part therein lies the key to Trump’s suc-

cess. Traditionally the Republican Party uses cultural

issues such as abortion and gay marriage to capture red-

state America’s votes, convincing even the poorest state

in America to vote for the party of big business, a phenom

enon analysed by historian Thomas Frank in his 2004 book

‘What’s the Matter with Kansas?’.

Nevertheless Clinton was tainted, her relatively meagre

indiscretions and failures unforgiven and a legion of insin-

cerity attributed with little evidence, to the point of

sexism. What we can criticise is that her tone was pol-

ished but jaded. When he came on television, it was hard

not to watch him. She tended to shout and tensely smile.

She let Trump set the agenda. And now she is history.

Empires get moribund and careless, sag and are

replaced.

After this awful election, The Guardian editorialised that

this was primarily an American catastrophe that America

has brought upon itself. “When it came to it, America

failed to ﬁnd a credible way of rallying against Mr Trump

and what he represents”. This seems about right, though

in fact America has to take responsibility for not wanting

to rally against Mr Trump and what he represents. US sen-

ator and unsuccessful Presidential candidate, Bernie

Sanders, has said Donald Trump had “tapped into the

anger of declining middle class” to secure the presidency.

But that doesn’t explain the direction the anger took.

Some of the statistics are shocking – all sorts of sectors

that should have derided the lies, the intolerance, the

crudeness voted Trump in droves. White men opted 63%

for Trump and 31% for Clinton; white women voted 53% for

Trump and 43% for Clinton. 54% of male college graduates

voted for Trump. More 18- to 29-year-old whites voted for

Trump (48%) than Clinton (43).

There is much that is great about America: the freedom

it so vigorously champions, its facilitation, more or less,

of a melting pot, its role as peace enforcer. But the bal

ance has turned negative. America is the home of

inequality, of greedy and throwaway consumerism, of

mediocre cultural homogeneity, of too many colonial and

oil-securing wars.

What is most dramatic about the upshot of Trump in the

Whitehouse and Republicans dominating both houses of

Congress is that the climate-change agenda to which

Barack Obama had ﬁnally been warming is now dead. No

prominent Republicans even accept the scientiﬁc reality.

Trump will pack the EPA with climate-sceptic stooges and

appoint a Supreme Court judge to replace Antonin Scalia

who will bring down Obama’s attempts to reduce coal con-

sumption. Trump is an enthusiast for gratuitous

environmental destruction. It makes him feel macho. It

will disgust future generations as the Paris Agreement

unravels and the planet heats to the point of runaway

catastrophe. We had our moment to deal with the prob-

lem and for no reason, squandered it.

What we have witnessed in the miserable contest

between a dynastic, uncharismatic wonk who has made

a fortune from politics, and who couldn’t even muster

anger in the teeth of a personalised threat by Trump to jail

her if she lost, and a narcissistic, dishonesty, groping,

racist, misogynist, a serial corporate bankrupt, with bouf-

fant hair, a fetish for gold taps, and a career in reality TV.

To any historian it is a simple manifestation of an empire

in decline.

The problem is that sophisticated empires don’t easily

recognise their fates. In the era of climate change and

global terrorism a decadent empire in denial could bring

us all down with it.

While there is little hope that this Irish Government will

rise to the task of tackling this evil administration (though

Michael D Higgins did manage some impressive evasive-

ness when offering congratulations), especially when our

economy is unstrategically dependent on US Revenue

goodwill, many in this country are horriﬁed.

There is little to be done but keep Ireland unTrumped,

and wait.

We don’t know if

he has any idea

what it means

to control the

largest nuclear

arsenal in the

world