by PATRICK COCKBURN
Donald Trump has fallen far enough behind in the polls as to raise the hopes of the world that it will soon see the back of him as US president come the election in 100 days’ time. Given his calamitous handling of the coronavirus pandemic, the decline in his popularity is scarcely surprising.
Yet Trump has always shown a Dracula-like ability to rise from the political grave. The writer and politician Conor Cruise O’Brien once wrote of the similarly amazing ability of the Irish taoiseach, Charlie Haughey, to survive scandals and crises. “If I saw Mr Haughey buried at midnight at a crossroads with a stake driven through his heart,” said O’Brien, “I should continue to wear a clove of garlic round my neck, just in case.”
The secret of Trump’s survival is his skill in using and manipulating the media to his own advantage. He may sound crass but he is expert at changing the topic of the hour so that today’s damning revelation becomes tomorrow’s old news. By outrageous antics he dominates the news agenda and, whatever his failings, he is never dull. This latter skill may not seem politically significant but the news business is all about what is new, interesting and entertaining. Trump’s utterances and tweets may sound eccentric or crazed but they are really news headlines geared to giving him gigantic publicity, often from newspapers and television networks that loathe him. Journalists understand that they are dancing to his tune, but there is not much they can do about it.
Critics correctly attribute his supreme ability to stay centre stage to his 14 years in the role of an all-powerful business mogul in the reality-television show The Apprentice. Yet the tone of the criticism is dismissive, as if starring year after year in an immensely successful television show is easily done. Of course, nothing is “real” about reality television: a single hour on air of The Apprentice was edited out of 300 hours of footage, producing an artificial end product.
The reasons the producers cast Trump as a business genius – though his hotels and casinos had gone bankrupt six times – help explain his political success. Several years ago, Richard Levak, a psychologist who consulted for The Apprentice, gave an interview to The New Yorker magazine in which he explained why Trump’s personality was appropriate for the show. He said the traits that got Trump the job had been “the energy, the impulsiveness, the inability to articulate a complete thought because he gets interrupted by emotions, so when he speaks it’s all adjectives – ‘great’, ‘huge’, ‘horrible’.” But what made Trump so magnetic to audiences, according to Levak, and this remains true to this day, was Trump’s willingness to transgress and to break the rules.
His shambolic spontaneity and unexpectedness have hitherto made his television appearances compulsively interesting. “That somebody can become that successful while also being that emotionally undisciplined – it’s so macabre that you have to watch it,” said Levak. “And you keep watching for the comeuppance. But it doesn’t come.”
But maybe Trump’s comeuppance is with us now in the shape of the coronavirus. People find his political box of tricks less enticing when he suggests that they inject themselves with disinfectant to cure infection.
Counterpunch for more