Thursday, May 4, 2017

Trump's Big CON: How Does He Do It?

UPDATE:  "Is Trump nuts, ill-informed or a liar — or all three?"

Read the Washington Post, When is it okay to say the president might be nuts?

No, The Donald is not "nuts".  As noted before, Trump is a psycho-narcissistic con man, who happens to be President.

By pandering to fear, anger and hatred.

"For those who claim that Donald Trump has been pasteurized and homogenized by the presidency, his sour, 100th-day speech in Harrisburg, Pa., was inconvenient.

Trump used his high office to pursue divisive grudges (Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer is a 'bad leader'), to attack the media (composed of 'incompetent, dishonest people') and to savage congressional Democrats ('they don’t mind drugs pouring in'). Most of all, Trump used his bully pulpit quite literally, devoting about half his speech to the dehumanization of migrants and refugees as criminals, infiltrators and terrorists. Trump gained a kind of perverse energy from the rolling waves of hatred, culminating in the reading of racist song lyrics comparing his targets to vermin. It was a speech with all the logic, elevation and public purpose of a stink bomb.

On a selection of policy issues (Chinese currency manipulation, NATO, the North American Free Trade Agreement), Trump has been forced to accommodate reality. But those who find the president surprisingly “conventional” must somehow dismiss or discount this kind of speech, which George Wallace would have gladly given as president. They must somehow ignore the children in the audience, soaking up the fears and prejudices of their elders. They must somehow believe that presidential rhetoric — capable of elevating a country — has no power to debase it.

It is not sophisticated or worldly-wise to become inured to bigotry. The only thing more frightening than Trump’s speech — arguably the most hate-filled presidential communication in modern history — is the apathetic response of those who should know better."

Read the Washington Post, Trump’s 100th-day speech may have been the most hate-filled in modern history

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