Trumptanic

Jim and Charlie discuss the Hubris of Trump on the High Seas of politics

Charlie: The HMS Titanic, the supposedly unsinkable ocean liner, set sail in the North Atlantic on a journey that would carry her and everyone who didn’t escape to the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean. All of those who thought she was invincible were wrong, of course. All it took was an iceberg and some bad decision-making from the captain of the ship to send her to her doom.

Trump has also hit an iceberg, this one in the form of a long-awaited federal indictment that reads like a movie script. It presents in detail every felony Trump committed as he ignored reality and tried desperately to stay in the Oval Office, which had been clearly and cleanly won by Joe Biden. All those things he said about stealing the election and corruption in the selection process and dead people voting and god only knows what else was wrong. He lied, not at all a surprise if you followed his career and his presidency.

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Expanding the metaphor, I would argue that the Republican Party loyalists, and there are a lot of them, sticking with Trump, resemble the Titanic victims who chose to ignore the realities of what would happen. They are going to find their feet, their ankles, their waists, their shoulders and finally their heads slipping underwater. In fact, the floor is already getting wet. They may well shout, “Make America Great Again,” but you must imagine how that would sound underwater.

Is this going to be the swan song for this inflated balloon of a man, and will it finally make the Republican Party wake up from years of ignoring reality? Jim?

Jim: I don’t think so, Charlie. The Trump wing of the Republican Party will go down with the ship before they give up on Captain Trump. The problem isn’t totally with the party’s professionals. Some of the more thoughtful ones have closed ranks to oppose the former President. The main problem lies with independent crossover voters who once voted Democrat. They’re aligned themselves with the religious wing of the Republican party and back Trump, just as they did in the 1980s with President Ronald Reagan. Why? They see Trump as the only one with the guts to call out the elite professional class in both parties that make rules for everyone to live by except themselves. David Brooks wrote a great column in the New York Times about the subject.

Trump shrewdly capitalizes on the anger of the lower and-middle-class voters. They’ve seen their jobs sent off to Asia or somewhere because of policies championed by the nation’s elitist fraternity that never seems to leave Washington. Now voters who lost their jobs fear the Silicon Valley types, who lean heavily Democratic, will use artificial intelligence to eliminate any jobs that are left. Anyone who reads the indictments meticulously crafted by Jack Smith, the special prosecutor, can’t help but conclude Trump is guilty. The guy should go to jail. None of Trump’s champions will read them, though, because they view the charges as one more attempt to silence a man who gives the politically privileged class what it deserves: A thumb in the eye. I think the disaffected wing now in the GOP trenches will make Trump the Republican nominee regardless of the charges.

Just this week, Trump noted that his approval ratings go up with each indictment. Whether Trump will be elected President again is a different question. What do you think, Charlie?

Charlie: This all pulls me back into history, and to Louisiana’s Governor Huey Long, who ran for the White House in 1934 using the slogan “Every Man A King!” a tremendous thought in the depths of the Great Depression, proposing a “Share the Wealth” administration. He was murdered on September 19th, 1935, by a political enemy who believed he had amassed too much power, but not before he constructed a vast following by using radio speeches to spread his message.

Hmm. Who does that sound like? I am certainly not suggesting that Donald Trump will be slain but look at the force he helped unleash on the capitol on that fateful January sixth. He is a demagogue with a narcissistic personality disorder, and I would suggest the smart people will be in the lifeboats before he goes down. He already wrecked the midterms for the Republicans, and if he does get the GOP nomination despite the string of indictments that pursue him, that party will be headed for Davy Jonse’s locker. Jim?

Jim: I think voters just might elect Trump again, not by design but by unintended consequences. He’s already poised to win the nomination fight which will kick off in the Iowa caucuses. Laura Belin, who writes the Bleeding Heartland blog, knows more about Iowa politics than the national political correspondents for big news organizations. They occasionally drop in Iowa and speculate on the campaigns underway there now. Laura does reporting, an increasingly rare practice in journalism. She wrote a great analysis that said that a Trump victory in the caucuses at this point seems inevitable. No one’s even close to him. By most accounts, such a victory will propel to the GOP nomination. If the race becomes a choice between President Biden and Trump, I think Biden will win.

The problem is fringe candidates in the race, people like Robert Kennedy, Jr., whose dad, Bobby Kennedy, was killed while campaigning for the Democratic nomination. Then there’s Cornel West, an academic, civil rights leader and Bernie Sanders clone, or Senator Joe Manchin, a Democrat in name only exploring a run for the so-called “No Label” movement. All these candidates could siphon off enough potential Biden votes to give Trump a victory. A Green Party candidate, Jill Stein, lured enough votes from Hilary Clinton to hand Trump the keys to the White House. History could well repeat itself. Too many voters cast ballots against a candidate rather than for a leader. The result may be a felon in the White House.

—James O’Shea and Charles Madigan

James O’Shea is a longtime Chicago author and journalist who now lives in North Carolina. He is the author of several books and is the former editor of the Los Angeles Times and managing editor of the Chicago Tribune.

Charles Madigan is a writer and veteran foreign and national correspondent for UPI and the Chicago Tribune, where he also served as a senior writer and editor. He examines news reporting, politics and world events.

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