The Fortnightly Rant for May 6, 2011, from The New Hampshire Gazette, Volume 255, No. 16, posted on Sunday, May 22, 2011.
Here we are with only nine months remaining until New Hampshire’s® 2012 First in the Nation© Presidential Primary™, and for all the excitement we’ve had we could just as well have been in Minot, North Dakota. Finally, though, on April 27th, Portsmouth got a visit from what passes for a candidate these days: Donald Trump. The debate over whether or not America is on the skids has now officially ended.
In the two days preceeding Trump’s visit the Portsmouth Herald, Foster’s Daily Democrat, and the Boston Herald all used the term “mystery” in one form or another in their coverage. After it was over, one of the few mysteries remaining was how Trump’s hype squad had managed to orchestrate such uniform coverage.
Trump the Visitor
Initial reports made it sound as if Trump might confine his visit to the Pease Tradeport. That certainly would have made sense. What better locale for an artificial candidate than a sterile corporate hive?
But no. After landing in a sleek black helicopter, and holding a backlit press conference in an airplane hanger, successively summoning up imagery from Men in Black and Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Trump rode in an enormous black limousine to the most appropriate place he could find in downtown Portsmouth — the massive, aseptic hulk known as 100 Market Street.
There, on the top floor, in a facility local wags call “The Wallet Club,” Trump dispensed his putative wisdom to two dozen listeners, including local country club owner, would-be beach privatizer, and failed Senatorial candidate Bill Binnie. The Union Leader reported that they paid $1,000 for the privilege. For once, Trump may have actually been the smartest man in the room.
Trump the Birther
In the weeks leading up to his visit, Trump seemed to be basing his campaign on the rather sketchy premise that he should be president because President Obama had been born in Kenya. He actually told Joe Scarborough that Obama’s mother could have smuggled him into the country as an infant, while his grandparents conspired to get fake birth notices run in the Honolulu papers. Despite this clear evidence of psychosis, national news organizations continued to cover him. As previously noted, we’re on the skids.
Trump’s strategy took a hit the day he came to town. That morning President Obama released his long-form birth certificate. He did so, he said, so that the nation would not have to be “distracted by sideshows and carnival barkers” when we have serious business to be done. The Huffington Post reported that some sideshow workers and carnival barkers were offended that the President had compared them to Trump. Undeterred by the obvious, Trump boasted that he’d achieved something great.
Trump the Chickenhawk
Candidate Trump’s relentless demands for Obama’s birth certificate, coupled with his general belligerence — “There’s nobody more militaristic than me … I would take the oil. To the victor belong the spoils” —prompted some curiosity about his own draft card. Fox News’s New York affiliate WNYW asked Trump, who was born in 1946, the obvious question.
Here’s what the station reported: “When asked if he avoided the draft during the Vietnam War, Trump says he got lucky because, although he had a high draft number, his number was not called.”
Once again, by “reporting” the news, Fox has added to the nation’s cumulative ignorance.
By using “although” in that sentence, Fox suggests that Trump’s high draft number put him at risk of induction. In fact, it did quite the opposite.
It is impossible — or, more honestly, not worth the trouble — to determine whether Fox was misquoting Trump, or if Trump was just blowing smoke and Fox did not know or care. But that is a distinction without a difference. In the end, consumers of Fox’s news product are left in uncertainty — which is exactly the point. Fox has three overarching goals: the creation of fear, uncertainty, and doubt. With that sentence Fox has injected yet another unit of uncertainty into the public debate.
The old fogies at the website SmokingGun.com, practicing the quaint art of rudimentary investigation, did what they could to counterbalance the Fox effect. They discovered that by 1969, when The Donald got lucky in the draft lottery, he had already enjoyed four student deferments. He had also benefited from one fortuitous — and still mysterious — malady, which won him a 1-Y classification in 1968, shortly after graduating from college.
Trump the Short-Fingered Vulgarian
Trump’s visit to Portsmouth was the epitome of decorum compared to his appearance the next day in Las Vegas. He had been invited to address five of the Silver State’s Republican womens’ clubs. As he did so, he accomplished something no one before him had ever thought possible — or desirable. In the midst of an f-bomb-laden tirade, Trump became the first American politician to intentionally employ Oedipal obscenities as a rhetorical device.
According to the Las Vegas Journal-Review Betty Rumford, head of the Spring Mountain Republican Women’s Club, was delighted. “I can’t believe the enthusiasm,” Rumford was quoted as saying. “Is it for Donald Trump? I think it’s for the things he’s been saying.” Clearly they are not making dowagers like they used to.
Trump the Pathological Specimen
Trump concluded the week by attending one of the nation’s most prestigious soirées, the White House Correspondents’ Dinner, as the guest of the Washington Post. Later comment made it clear that many people thought that arrangement was a little strange, even inappropriate. After all, if the Post brings Trump, who is left for the National Enquirer to invite? Trump seemed to accept the invitation as his due, and was avidly lapping up the attention — right up until President Obama and Seth Myers let some air out of him. But the best of all the jokes on Trump went entirely unspoken, and its punch line didn’t arrive until the following night.
During the Correspondents’ Dinner, as Obama mock-praised Trump for firing Gary Busey on Celebrity Apprentice, a team of Navy SEALs, at President Obama’s command, was gearing up to attack Osama bin Laden. Sunday night, Obama appeared on live TV and announced that the operation had succeeded — and NBC pre-empted Celebrity Apprentice to carry the news.
Important members of America’s press corps — the sort that gets invited to the Correspondents’ Dinner — say that polls taken this early in a campaign are meaningless. Republicans should pray that’s true, because Trump is racking up some pretty good numbers. Romney has the edge among Republicans in general, but Tea Partiers gave Trump a three point lead in a recent poll.
If Trump got the GOP nomination he would be the perfect candidate — for comedians, for journalists, and, most of all, for the Democrats.
The thought that Trump is even being considered is hilarious. That’s good, because a nation where that could happen is in desperate need of something to laugh about.