How Will History Judge Trump? How About As An Entertainer-- Which Is Exactly What He Is (Plus All The Horrible Stuff)

They may regret it, but I don't see any Republican candidates trying to distance themselves from Trump. Quite the contrary. In primary races across the country-- and at every level-- Republicans are arguing that they are the most Trump-like and that their opponent is a faux-Trumpist. There are even red-state Democrats from the Republican wing of the Democratic Party-- say Joe Donnelly, Joe Manchin and Heidi Heitkamp-- who have gone out of their way to draw attention to the fact that they often vote for Trump's proposals and work well with him. But when it comes to Republicans... the whole primary in most districts is based on which candidate is deeper up Trump's ass. Even politicians who know how history will judge him and know what a danger he is to democracy and the country and who are well aware that every word that comes out of his mouth is a self-serving lie, are savvy enough to know what the Fox brain-washed GOP base wants-- Trump and his alternative reality-- and they know if they don't cater to that, they could wind up being the next Mark Sanford

Ohio Governor John Kasich isn't running for office this year and if he does run again in the future, it will be against Trump or at least against Trumpism. He was on Meet The Press yesterday (video clip up top). He was there to explain why the special election in his old district-- OH-12-- was not a good thing for the GOP, but I noticed something else he mentioned: "People just want the government to do its job, to improve the situation for them. Not to be, not to be on the front page and creating a chaotic environment all the time. They don't want that." Is that so? I think he was describing Democratic voters and independent voters, not most of the voters of his own party. They apparently crave cheap, gaudy entertainment-- exactly what Trump is and has always been. Trump may model himself after Mussolini, Hitler and Putin to some extent, but even more of a role model was P.T. Barnum. He's been compared to Barnum before-- and he's always said he takes it as a compliment.

Neither Phineas Taylor Barnum nor Señor Trumpanzee coined the phrase "there's a sucker born every minute," but both men have lived their lives as though they did. Barnum plagued American for most of the 19th Century, a hustler and grifter who Trump has always admired. He was a businessman/showman, author and politician. He freely admitted that his actions were meant to "put money in my own coffers" and, more than anything else he considered himself "a showman by profession." His name is synonymous with hoaxes and self-serving "philanthropy." Like Trump, he made some spectacularly bad investments and went bankrupt. And like Trump, he ran for office, as a Republican. He served 2 terms in the Connecticut state legislature and one term as mayor of Bridgeport.

When Kasich told Chuck Todd and the Meet The Press audience that he wasn't "making the case" against Trumpanzee but just trying to return the party to its roots, he was being somewhat disingenuous. The problems he has with the GOP are, after all, all Trump's policies. "The Republican Party has never been for protectionism. The Republican Party doesn't support a notion that families shouldn't be held together. The Republican Party never supported the notion that we should ring up debt... The Republican Party has never believed that we should walk away from our allies who have helped us keep the peace since World War II. These positions are... they don't even resemble the Republican Party. They do now... and the Republican base and GOP candidates around the country are fully embracing them-- like automatons.

Kasich's point about OH-12-- which is so close it has even been officially called yet-- was that Balderson should have been able to walk away with the win without breaking a sweat and that, nationally, Republicans ought to be worried, not celebratory.

"It wasn't a good night because this is a district that you should be winning by, you know, overwhelming numbers," he told Todd. "The last guy won by, I don’t know, 17 points. So, what you had is, I think, a message from the voters to the Republicans that you've got to stop the chaos and you've got to get more in tune and stop alienating people and try to figure out, how do families do better." Too late-- at least for the midterms.

Let me go back to the idea of politics on 24-hour news channels and on social media being all about entertainment. Look at the Meet the Press interview again. Was that entertaining? Not really. Kasich is pretty dull and Chuck Todd isn't much better. Nor is either trying to be entertaining. They're trying to be serious and deliver some kind of an interpretation of self-serving news. Trump supporters are stupid and ignorant-- drug addled and generally with incredibly low IQs and lower attention spans-- and they want that excitement and red meat and "owning the Dems" that Trump gives them. When he's finally gone from the scene-- losing in 2020 or impeached before that or whatever--  will they be able to calm down and go back to the status quo ante? Or has Trump set a tone that his successors will have to take into account from now on? Obama, more than most of his predecessors, actually was fairly entertaining, but in a relatively high brow way. Now we're talking about really low brow crap... like The Apprentice. Will that be Trump's ultimate contribution to America? This morning, John Kasich responded to one of his childish and delusional tweets: