FOCUS: Amy Davidson | Trump: Loose-Haired Agent of Chaos
Amy Davidson, The New Yorker
Davidson writes: "On consecutive days last week, two Republican senators, both of whom are hoping to be the next President, released videos in which they destroyed stuff."
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Amy Davidson, The New Yorker
Davidson writes: "On consecutive days last week, two Republican senators, both of whom are hoping to be the next President, released videos in which they destroyed stuff."
READ MORE
n consecutive days last week, two Republican senators, both of whom are hoping to be the next President, released videos in which they destroyed stuff. First, Rand Paul went at a pile of paper, which he said was the United States tax code, with fire, a wood chipper, and a chain saw. (He wore safety goggles—he may be against regulations, but he’s also an ophthalmologist.) The next day saw Lindsey Graham attacking his Samsung flip phone with a cleaver, a blender, and a golf club. He also dropped a concrete block on it, threw it off a roof, and doused it with lighter fluid and ignited it. These videos suggest that Fox News, which is co-hosting the first G.O.P. Presidential debate, in Cleveland, on August 6th, should have in place firm rules regarding props, and that, perhaps, extra fire marshals should be deployed. With sixteen declared candidates, there is already a crowd-control problem; now the campaign threatens to be defined by demolition.
The loose-haired agent of much of the chaos has been Donald J. Trump. About a week ago, John McCain, the Party’s nominee in 2008, told Ryan Lizza, a writer for this magazine, that Trump had “fired up the crazies” in the G.O.P. with his descriptions of undocumented immigrants as rapists. Trump demanded an apology, and said that, anyway, McCain is “not a war hero.” Graham then asked that Trump “stop being a jackass.” Any New Yorker, having witnessed decades of the Donald, could have told Graham that this wasn’t going to happen. On Tuesday, Trump gave out Graham’s personal cell-phone number at a televised event in South Carolina. “Let’s try it,” Trump told the crowd. That inspired Graham, who had complained that Trump was turning the race “into a circus,” to make his video.
Some other numbers that became public last week may cause the Republican Party more worry. A Washington Post/ABC News poll showed Trump in the lead among the candidates, with twenty-four per cent of the vote. Scott Walker had thirteen per cent, followed by Jeb Bush (twelve), Mike Huckabee (eight), and then, in order of diminishing returns, Marco Rubio, Ben Carson, Rand Paul, Ted Cruz, Rick Perry, Chris Christie, John Kasich (who signed on last week), Bobby Jindal, George Pataki, Rick Santorum, Carly Fiorina, and Lindsey Graham—in last place but with a chance of moving up, now that Trump has made sure that everyone knows where to reach him, as soon as he gets a new phone.
The poll results matter, even now, more than a year before the election, because Fox and the Ohio Republican Party, which are co-hosting the first debate (with Facebook), have said that the final five national polls leading up to it will determine who takes part—just the top ten. If things keep going as they are, Trump will be front and center, and he may need to be restrained from slapping a gold-lettered nameplate on the lectern. Another reason that the stakes are so high is that other efforts to cull the field have failed. Jeb Bush, whose campaign and its associated super pac have raised more than a hundred million dollars, can’t shake off the insurgents. In an attempt to make the primaries less of a carnival than they were in 2012, Reince Priebus, the Republican National Committee chairman, pushed to have only nine sanctioned debates. This creates a strong temptation for candidates to stage a scene while they can. The second debate, in September, hosted by CNN, will also use polls to limit the participants to ten. (CNN and Fox will both hold secondary events for any left-out candidates polling higher than one per cent.) For the hopefuls at the bottom of the list, this is the moment to make some noise.
It’s hard enough to be heard in a crowded room without having to compete with a man who ended the week in Laredo, Texas, so that he could inspect the border, professing, “They say it’s a great danger, but I have to do it.” (He added that, once he is elected, “the Hispanics” are “going to love Trump.”) It’s harder still when you’re trying not to offend his supporters. After Trump insulted Mexicans last month, Bush said that he was personally offended, but others were more cautious. Christie commented that although some of Trump’s remarks may be “inappropriate,” he is “a good guy.” Cruz said, “I think he speaks the truth.” But if Trump weren’t around would the other Republicans behave that much more responsibly?
There is a serious discussion to be had over the Iran deal, yet the G.O.P. contenders seem willing to shatter years of diplomacy in the name of grandstanding. Cruz announced that “the Obama Administration will become the leading financier of terrorism against America in the world,” and Graham thought that the deal looked like “a death sentence for the State of Israel.” Rubio, in a Trump-like move, said that Obama lacked “class.” Bush and Walker got into a fight about whether they’d renounce the deal and start planning military strikes on Inauguration Day or wait until the first Cabinet meeting. Saying it’s Trump who’s wrecking the Republican Party ignores the ways that he embodies it.
Trump is not going to be elected, but he is intent enough on staying in the race to have filed financial-disclosure paperwork with the F.E.C.—a step that many observers thought he would stop short of—and he promptly put out a press release stating his worth at “ten billion dollars.” (Forbes estimates four billion; the biggest discrepancy comes from Trump’s assertion that his name alone is worth three billion.) In this election, the post-Citizens United financing mechanisms have fully matured, effectively removing the limits and the disclosure requirements for individual donations to campaigns. The money may have to be laundered through a super pac, but that is just a formality. This distorts the process in both parties and might help explain the large assortment of candidates. Cruz may seem like a preening opportunist, unpopular among his colleagues, but, having attracted more than fifty million dollars in contributions, he is a credible candidate. The Times reported that a significant portion of his early money came from a single donor: Robert Mercer, a hedge-fund executive who is so private that one of the few traces of his personal life in the public record is a lawsuit that he brought against a toy company that installed a model train set in his home and, he felt, overcharged him—by two million dollars.
To mount a Presidential campaign these days, you need just two people: a candidate and a wealthy donor. Or, in Trump’s case, just one: he is his own billionaire. And he is the unadorned face of American politics.
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