How Trump Drives Smart People Moonbatty

Paul Kelly is a formidable journalist, but he lost me when he and Troy Bramston co-authored The Dismissal – in the Queens Name in 2015.  I was so appalled by the misrepresentations that permeate this book that I was inspired to write a response Villain or Victim – a Defence of Sir John Kerr and the Reserve Powers published by Connor Court. Thus, I often give his offerings in The Australian a miss.  But recently the headline on one of his stories caught my eye – Trump’s rebirth is still a threat to democratic system.  So, I thought I’d check it out.  It turned out to be as bad as I thought it might.  Here are some excerpts.

Donald Trump has command of the momentum. The transformation is astonishing – the renegade outsider has become the anointed frontrunner. Trump’s defiance of the assassination attempt creates a messianic glow around his persona. The danger for America is greater than ever.

Right, so Kelly is singing from Biden’s song-sheet.  Let’s see where this goes.

The Republican National Convention has become a celebration of unity, Trump’s complete hijack of the party and its re-invention with a “Make America Great Again” identity. Patriotism, Christianity and conservatism seem fused in looming cultural victory over the progressive establishment.

Trump, as a former President is hardly any longer the ‘outsider’ – either to American politics or to the Republican Party.  He announced his intention to stand for re-election based on certain policies and values, and on his record.  On that basis he has attracted a huge number of supporters within the GOP and was able to secure the number of delegates he needed to be nominated as the candidate.  He did not do that by bribing voters.  He did not do that by threatening voters.  He did it by the force of his personality, his determination and the fact that he is offering a vision that resonates with those voters.   How is that hijacking the Party?

The contrast between the 2016 Republican convention and the one now underway is marked. Back then, Trump was a divisive and much detested candidate by the GOP Establishment. Today, the Republican old guard has been swept away or prefers a diplomatic silence, and Trump rules.

And a victory of patriotism, Christianity and conservatism over the progressive establishment hardly seems like a threat to Democracy.  Not a good start, Paul.

The ultimate issue of campaign 2024 is rarely put: will this election – one of the most critical in US history – lead to a more united or fractured country? Will the polarisation only get worse? Forget the nonsense about a civil war: the issue is whether the domestic schism turns America into a malfunctioning giant.

Well, it may get worse, or it may not.  But that doesn’t depend on who wins the next election. It depends on how the losing side reacts.  There might be a clue about this in the actions of New York shopkeepers boarding up their windows in Nov 2020, ‘in case the wrong guy wins’. Does Kelly believe a Democrat win will automatically heal all division?  And what is a “malfunctioning giant?”  Is it a country that is no longer able to govern itself? Did that happen under Trump’s first watch?

Trump now has a choice. The lucky survivor of the assassination attempt, he has offered two competing responses: his “fight, fight, fight” fist-pumping declaration was a rallying cry of aggressive resistance while his response 24 hours later was to rewrite his convention speech, the purpose being “to bring the country together”, to project as an agent of calm and unity.

Which way will Trump go? The choice is to manipulate the violence for political purposes against the Democrats or to channel another, unseen side to Trump as a prospective president now thinking of how he will speak to the nation as its leader.

I think we’ve already seen the answer to this.  And I imagine Trump’s restraint will last as long as the Democrats are able to reign in their own inclination.

For eight years America has been moving closer to the abyss. It is a nation divided by two cultures but somehow, someway (sic), the descent needs to be checked, even if it cannot be reversed.

Is it Kelly’s position that a second Biden presidency, or even a Harris first-black-woman presidency, will check this divide?   According to Kelly, it seems, prior to Trump’s presidency, all was pretty much business as usual in the tempestuous world of American politics.  Setting aside the usual political rough and tumble, the country was essentially stable.  No abyss in sight.

Setting aside the usual political rough and tumble, the country was essentially stable.  No abyss in sight.

So, what changed in November 2016?  I’ll tell you, Paul.  The Left went crazy.  Trump didn’t win the popular vote, therefore the Electoral College system must be fatally flawed.  Trump colluded with Russia to steal the election. Trump slept with a porn star. And so on.

Trump’s selection of Senator JD Vance as his vice-presidential candidate is an alarming omen. It reveals Trump’s hyper-confidence. With Vance, he is doubling down on the isolationist, protectionist MAGA identity. Vance is a more articulate poor man’s Trump, more ideologically attached to the MAGA cult than even Trump, someone who will never buck the chief not like Mike Pence who eventually defied Trump.

So, Trump selected a running-mate who is more likely to help him achieve his legislative program than one apt to undermine him by drifting back into the swamp.  Trump’s aim is to bring more of the mainstream to his way of thinking. He could not do that by picking a running mate who thinks the status quo is just fine.  In fact, Trump and Pence made a good team until their final falling out. More on that later.

By selecting Vance, Trump gets an appealing yet polarising activist, not a centrist figure or someone with more geographical pull to help the ticket. After the event Vance tried to blame the Biden camp, saying its rhetoric “led directly” to the assassination attempt.

Well, that might be because there is more than a grain of truth in Vance’s assertion.

He will reinforce Trump, which means the likely betrayal of Ukraine under the rationale of standing up to China. Vance’s selection has nothing to do with sound governance. Vance at 39 is inexperienced, has never run anything, and constitutes a gamble for the US and the world given Trump’s age and the prospect Vance may need to step into the presidential chair. He is ill-equipped to do that.

Would Vance be any more out of his depth than Biden is now and has been through most of his presidency?

As to Ukraine, we will have to wait to see how Trump handles that.  China is a major threat to the USA, Russia is not.  But I doubt very much that Trump will ‘betray’ i.e., totally abandon, Ukraine.  He is more likely to broker a deal that involves Ukraine making some territorial concessions.   That is not something I would applaud but it would not be the end of the world.  And I don’t have the primary responsibility of keeping America safe and prosperous.

And in regard to qualifications, did Kelly raise an eyebrow about first-term senator Barack Obama contesting the White House. Compare the two and Vance’s CV — ex-Marine, Yale law school, success in business and best-selling author — is far and away the more lustrous.

Vance, however, is a symbol of Trump’s corrupting magnetism – an army of Republicans, many of whom disliked or distrusted Trump in earlier years, have joined the conga line of Trump loyalists.

Perhaps Trump’s ‘corrupting magnetism’ is actually the appeal of his calls for change. His pledge seal the border and stop the ongoing flood of undocumented and illegal arrivals, taken alone, is a huge vote-winner.

Trump loves nothing more than seeing his past critics, the so-called Never Trumps, recant and submit to his electoral pull.

What is your evidence for that, Paul?

The Democrats are at a point of extreme risk. If Trump displays even a limited capacity for restraint he will sway more middle ground votes. The Democrats need to confront their nightmare scenario – that Trump takes control of the US system of government, the White House, the vice-presidency, the House of Representatives, the Senate and can make even more Supreme Court appointments.

Just because it’s the Democrats’ nightmare, that doesn’t make it an existential threat to American democracy.  Why should swing voters be swayed by what perturbs the Democrats?

Don’t think the current eight-year crisis may not end with a decisive result. Any Trump victory, however, will be the outcome of the democratic process. The Democrats can choke on that truth; it would be the most galling thing for them – having preached that Trump threatens US democracy, to see US democracy put Trump back in the White House.

As to the first sentence, I think he means ‘Don’t think the current eight-year crisis will end with a decisive result’.  The only side which could now pull off a decisive result would be the Republicans.  If the crisis continues, that could only mean the Democrats and their supporters did not accept the election result.

The attempted assassination comes as a double curse for the Democrats – in the very short term it helps to keep Biden intact, weakening the impulse for change, yet it derails the ability of the Democrats to assail Trump as an agent of vengeance, reckless on policy and a threat to the system. Such personal attacks on Trump will backfire in the post-assassination bid atmospherics. Biden has lost his final and most effective pitch against Trump.

In other words, personal attacks on Trump, which contribute to the divide Kelly decries, have been the mainstay of Biden’s campaign. Does Kelly applaud this?

But that setback cannot obscure the political and moral issues at this election. Trump is manifestly a threat to American democracy. It is extraordinary how many people, faced with Biden’s decline and Trump’s momentum, have become craven apologists for Trump, now playing down or excusing his openly declared attack on the Constitution and his brazen assault on the democratic process.

This is where Kelly goes right off the reservation. ‘Manifestly a threat’ means so obvious that everyone can see it.  So, roughly 50 per cent of American voters are happy to see democracy overthrown just so that their favourite billionaire can again occupy the White House?  Was American democracy threatened during Trump’s first presidency?  Did he use the justice system to pursue Hilary Clinton for the mail-server scandal or the fake Russiagate scandal.  Did he abuse the justice system to imprison the 234 rioters charged over his 2016 Inauguration?  No, 21 pleaded guilty, the rest were acquitted or had charges dropped.

For the record, Trump refused to accept his legitimate defeat at the 2020 election, thereby rejecting the central premise of a functioning democracy. Indeed, he refuses to say he will accept any defeat at the 2024 election, raising the prospect of serious disturbance if he is defeated.

Trump did not say he will refuse to accept any defeat.  He said he would accept defeat if it was a fair election (or words to that effect).

Firstly, Trump did not say he will refuse to accept any defeat.  He said he would accept defeat if it was a fair election (or words to that effect).  Trump believed in 2020 that electoral malpractice, in various forms, robbed him of victory. He still believes that and so, as a matter of fact, do I and many others.  That he lost that battle in the courts, which declined get involved, might be more telling if we hadn’t seen the corruption of so many of the US courts in the past four years.

He encouraged the mob to protest at the Capitol on January 6, 2021, saying “we won this election and we won it by a landslide” and “if you don’t fight like hell, you’re not going to have a country any more”. This was incitement to act, but not specific incitement to violence. Trump called them “patriots”, displaying his ability to exploit violence.

Encouraging his supporters to protest is neither a threat to nor rejection of the democratic process.  As Kelly has the grace to note, Trump urged them to protest peacefully.

I’ll let Greg Sheridan address this:

Disgraceful and horrible as it was, January 6 was more a riot that got out of control at a radically under-policed sensitive government site. It no more renders the centre right fascist than the hundreds of violent defund the police demonstrations render the centre left communist revolutionaries.

And does anyone believe that the Jan 6 rioters thought they could reinstall Trump by taking over the Capitol?  Does anyone think Trump believed that?

Back to Kelly:

But Trump’s deepest skill lies in his media orchestration and, one way or another, he will turn the images from his near martyrdom into a powerful story through to voting day.

Trump controls the US media, really?  His road to martyrdom started the day he was elected and immediately attacked as an illegitimate president. Hillary Clinton repeatedly claimed that.  Why is that any different to Trump’s reaction on January 6?  And his ‘way of the cross’ is littered with bad faith and meritless court cases pushed through the justice system by the Democratic Party machine. Who is the real threat to American democracy?

The Democrats, their media supporters and left activists, however, bear a significant responsibility for fanning the hatred and violence during the Trump phenomenon – ranging from depicting Trump as a “fascist” to excusing the street violence during the 2020 mass protests against racism. As political scientist Yascha Mounk says, once Trump was cast as a Hitler-type threat – a tactic of the left – then since violence was justified against Hitler the question becomes “why shouldn’t it be legitimate to resist Trump by violent means?”.

It is a fine yet critical dividing line – between legitimate criticism of Trump as a threat to democracy and encouraging violence against him contingent upon that threat.

It is a non-existent dividing line. How about criticism of Trump for his policies?

The worse blunder of the Biden administration has been its political arrogance and ineptitude in reopening the door to Trump. In a literal sense Biden has created Trump Mark II. Having pledged to reunite America, Biden violated that pledge – he governed from the left, deliberately relaxed controls at the southern border, promoted identity politics, sought to create an electoral alliance of minorities, pitched his climate policies to a progressive constituency and for most of his presidency assumed that Trump was beyond any political recovery.

Biden misjudged Trump, misjudged America and has fatally exaggerated his own abilities. The Biden-Kamala Harris team has run its course. If the Democratic Party had the means and the ruthlessness it would liquidate them both and install a new, fresh team for the election. That’s probably impossible, yet the Democrats are on a doom march.

‘Liquidate them both’?  Careful what you say, Paul,  some right-wing fascist MAGA supporters might read your article.

This is not normal politics; it is crisis politics. That means extreme solutions are needed.

‘Extreme solutions’, Paul?  Again, with the dog whistling.

In the Australian context Biden and Harris would have been removed by now. The Democrats need the circuit-breaker of an entirely new team to disrupt Trump’s momentum. The risk now is that Trump wins with the country even more deeply divided.

Again, I ask, what guarantee is there that a Democrat victory will suddenly unite the country?  The Biden victory didn’t, as his primary aim was to eradicate Trump’s legacy rather than governing for the good of the country. His immediate revocation of Trump’s border-control edicts was done not because it is a good idea to flood a country with undocumented migrants but because it was a Trump policy and, regardless of merit,

So here we are the end of the article, and it seems the only evidence of Trump’s ‘manifest’ threat to American democracy is his refusal to accept that he was fairly defeated in 2020.  Yet in the end, the transition occurred relatively peacefully.

Kelly has every right to prefer a Democrat president over Trump, but his case would be much stronger were he to  compare and contrast the policy differences between the two, rather than rely on the divisive rhetoric that he claims to deplore.