Trump’s Lies Are a Loyalty Test for His Followers

National Review ^ | April 2, 2016 | Jonah Goldberg

[DrewsDad]

A Unified Fields Theory

Until Trump changed the subject to punishing women for having abortions, the Trump obsession of the week was Michelle Fields.

I’m glad that story is largely gone. I don’t think it was good for Fields or for the forces opposed to Trump. And it distracted from more important stories, like Trump’s willingness to nuke Europe.

RELATED: If Donald Trump Were Eight, His Behavior Might Be Endearing

Without rehashing the whole thing again with reference to frame-by-frame analysis best left for the Zapruder film, let me just say I think all of the important and relevant facts are on Fields’s side. There’s audio of her describing what happened immediately after the Corey Lewandowski incident. There are the bruises captured on film. There’s video and there are eye-witness accounts, all of which corroborate the basic story Fields has been telling.

To listen to Trump’s and Lewandowski’s defenders, this is all a big lie, the upshot being that Fields invented the whole story in a deviously clever gambit to trade her job at Breitbart and her regular gig on Eric Bolling’s show for something so much better. Indeed, I think her plan went something like this:

Step 1: Ask Donald Trump about affirmative action while he’s walking out of a press conference.

Step 2: Walk in just such a way as to dupe Corey Lewandowski into putting his hands on me.

Step 3: Pretend that he grabbed me too hard, convincing eyewitnesses on scene that something bad happened.

Step 4: Bruise my own arm and take a picture of it.

Step 5: Ask for an apology from the Trump campaign, which is like asking Trump to create a boulder too heavy for him to lift.

Step 6: Wait for my own news organization to throw me under the bus, then quit job.

Step 7: Wait for the checks to roll in!

Still, what happened to Fields was not Kristallnacht and Lewandowski should not, in my opinion, stand trial or be sent to even five minutes of jail. I think he’s a boorish lout and he behaved stupidly. If Lewandoswki had common sense or decency, he would have apologized for overreacting and thrown Fields an interview with Trump to make amends. The whole thing would have been over without any of us having heard a word about it.

Second Thoughts on Trump

But observing common courtesy and civility is not what Team Trump does. And that’s the real issue here. Donald Trump and his campaign take great pride in overturning the basic rules of politics and democratic discourse. For those who want to see “the establishment” — however defined — torn down, this bull-in-a-china-shop stuff is celebrated. Trump’s fans ascribe a brilliance to his actions that is wholly underserved. Breaking the rules in ways large and small is seen as self-justifying in every case.

RELATED: Trump Has No Clue What American Government Is All About

Or almost every case. This week there have been some cracks in the façade. Trump’s attacks on Heidi Cruz unsettled even Ann Coulter. And his abortion remarks are still sending tremors through the granite foundations of Trump can-do-no-wrong-ism. Joe Scarborough and Breitbart’s John Nolte are talking about what a bad week he’s having and gravely warning Trump to get his act together.

As Jim Geraghty has been writing, the problem with such second thoughts is the assumption that something is amiss with Trump or his campaign. This is Trump. This is his campaign. The Trump we see before us is the same Trump. It’s a bit like when Barack Obama said that the Jeremiah Wright he saw denouncing America wasn’t the man he knew. That was nonsense. Obama knew exactly who Wright was, having attended his church for 20 years. It was only when Wright’s act moved to a larger national stage that all of a sudden he became inconvenient to Obama.

RELATED: No, Trump Isn’t Actually Better than Hillary

The analogy isn’t perfect, of course. But the basic point is the same. The Donald Trump of the last week is the exact same Donald Trump many of us saw a year ago or five years ago. He’s always been full of sh*t. He’s always been a total ignoramus when it comes to public policy, lacking the simple sense of patriotic duty to do his homework on the issues. He’s always been a nasty and boorish cad. He’s always pretended to be a conservative while working on liberal assumptions of what conservatives want to hear.

#related#His “punish the women” comments were of a piece with his refusal to condemn the Klan on CNN. It’s not that he wants to punish women who have abortions — I’d bet he’s paid more abortion bills than he will ever sign — it’s that he thinks that’s what pro-lifers want to hear. It’s not that he’s a Klansman or that the pillowcases at Mara Lago come with eyeholes cut out in advance. It’s that Trump thinks lots of his fans like the Klan and he wants to pander to them. I have heard first-hand stories from people who’ve worked with Trump about how he disparages women’s appearance routinely. That’s who he is. If you’re attacking him because he retweeted a bad picture of Heidi, that’s not you being principled, it’s you getting cold feet.

Indeed, I am sure that the same opportunism that has caused so many supposedly principled conservatives to hitch their wagons to Trump is now causing some of them to question their choices, not because Trump has changed but because the climate might be changing around them.

By all means, if Trump continues to unravel (a huge if), please abandon Trump. But don’t think for a moment that the rest of us will automatically take your word for it when you say this or that statement changed your mind about the man. He hasn’t changed, your calculations have.

#share#

The Gravitational Pull of Lies

But can I go back to Michelle Fields for a moment? I think that whole affair was really instructive.

Trump is a master of a kind of passive aggression — though it can often just seem like plain old aggression. When caught in a lie, Trump doesn’t merely stick to the lie, he enlarges it. Not only did Lewandowski do nothing wrong, he saved Trump from an assault! That pen could have been a bomb! A bomb!!! (Remember when he suggested a protester who charged the stage was with ISIS?)

RELATED: When Liars Lie, the Honest Face Ridicule

By embracing and enlarging the lie, Trump gives his most ardent fans no escape. They must either fall in line with yet another comfortable story about how their leader is both supremely right and a victim of deceit or open themselves up to the possibility that this one instance of deception and boorishness isn’t unique but utterly representative, which it is.

I think many of us have known people like this. Inveterate liars and other kinds of sociopaths test the limits of polite society. They break the implicit bargain that says you can get away with lying only so long as everyone agrees not to notice. Obvious lies are insults, because they rest on the assumption that the person being lied to is either too stupid to recognize the lie or too weak to say anything about it. In this sense, Trump has been insulting his biggest supporters from day one.

RELATED: On Donald Trump and the Two-Bit Thugs Who Do His Bidding

We’ve all had dinner parties or family gatherings ruined by that oaf who refuses to bend to simple politeness. They force polite people to either swallow small — or large — insults for the sake of civility. “I didn’t want to make a huge deal about it because it would have just made things worse,” is a rationalization we’ve given voice to on the drive home.

Trump is doing this on a massive scale. Like all demagogues, he’s using his lies as a loyalty test for his followers. He’s exploiting his popularity and abusing the devotion of his fans to force them into going along with his fictions, until they are in so deep psychologically, they have no choice but to carry on. It’s an ancient psychological tactic of authoritarians, Mafia dons, and the like: Force your followers into sharing the blame for your misdeeds so that they can’t break ranks. For instance, when Trump was caught saying something typically ignorant about abortion, he told Eric Bolling that MSNBC cut out the nuance of what he really said.

“You really ought to hear the whole thing,” Trump told guest host Eric Bolling. “This is a long convoluted question. This was a long discussion, and they just cut it out. And, frankly, it was extremely — it was really convoluted.”

Of course, Trump knows that MSNBC ran the clip in its entirety, and Bolling probably does, too. But I am sure that if I went on Twitter and said, “Trump lied about his comments being edited,” within minutes I’d hear from people saying “No, MSNBC edited him!” or “Of course you RINOs would believe MSNBC!” I’ll also be interested to see if Bolling says anything about the fact that Donald Trump blatantly lied to him.

But I won’t hold my breath.

[DoughtyOne]

Yes, I guess it is pretty hard to say, “No.”

ROTF LMAO

You guys are such great entertainment.

[Bruce Campbells Chin]

No, not such as Cruz. Such as Trump.

No matter how lousy a candidate you believe Cruz to be, that doesn't make Trump any better a candidate in the general election. The fact that you think Cruz was worse will not help Trump against Hillary. That's why the whole "he started it" schtick was so juvenile and short-sighted.

[ifinnegan]

No. I don’t think Cruz has.

I think Trump has.

[nathanbedford]

Rebuttal from my previous reply to the preposterous slander that Cruz is an insider and Trump is an outsider:

Let me see if I've got the latest Trump speak well understood:

The son of an illiterate, impoverished, refugee dishwasher through merit and hard-won achievement becomes the national debate champion while an undergraduate at Princeton, law review at Harvard Law school, and clerk to the Chief Justice of the United States is tainted because he is an "Ivy League lawyer"

The same man whom Trump lovers habitually describe as one who could not get along with his fellow senators and could not accomplish anything is the same Senator Trump lovers accuse of "saying and doing anything to get elected." It is remarkable how such a smart Ivy League lawyer would be so stupid in real life about actually saying and doing anything to get elected.

Meanwhile Trump, son of a millionaire, social climber, the consummate insider whose telephone call before he ran for office would be taken by the President of the United States, the same man who admits to bribing politicians, is touted as an independent man of the people.

Ain't Trump speak wonderful?

[redangus]

Going, going, gone, that’s out of here. (The crowd goes wild) Yes he’s just hit a grand slam.

Of course he Trumpkins will be showing up directly to call Goldberg a commie and a rino, which makes his point better than he could ever had.

[Psalm 73]

"...the same man who admits to bribing politicians,..."

Nice. And Hillary even.

[DrewsDad]

That's a lot of rationalizing.

I've said before the whole thing was a minor incident that could be clearly justified in protecting the candidate except for the denial and the attacks.

Do you think a campaign manager should look into a matter a little more before tweeting out to the world that someone is delusional and denying that he never touched her?

[nathanbedford]

He is NOW a political partner with the worst of the worst in the GOPe.

Rubbish!

The GOPe and Cruz are using each other in a process that is normal in every election season as the field is whittled down.

[freedomjusticeruleoflaw]

Jonah Goldperv is not interested in fixing America... unless it’s his way with his people.

[roses of sharon]

I used to exchange emails with Jonah years ago on exactly this topic; the shabby treatment of the Republican base, and our candidates.

I told him that National Review seemed to be writing for the approval of their liberal peers in NY and DC instead of writing for us.

At one point he said I was being too dramatic...after reading this screed I think he should take his own advice.

[UnwashedPeasant]

"Trump’s Lies Are a Loyalty Test for His Followers"

And a Gullibility Test.

[pierrem15]

NR has become yet another barking mangy poodle of the GOPe. They had a mix of coverage until some big donor yanked their chain and it’s been nothing but full- blown Trump Derangement Syndrome ever since.

[pierrem15]

Yeah- it’s a shame but the NR has become a bad joke.

[Lurkinanloomin]

libbylu finally got the boot permanently, I think.

[The Continental Op]

Yes, Jonah has turned into another disappointment. True, he has in the past written well, on some useful topics, and not without some wit. But at his very core, he is an effete establishment prig.

He was raised on the upper west side of New York, and opted for an all women’s college (he was one of the first men admitted). He is married to another effete writer, who refused to take his last name. Momma’s boy extreme—remember mommy dearest, Lucienne?

Trump threatens people like Jonah. Trump was born in Queens NY. To the Upper West Side crowd, guys from Queens represent something to be scraped off the bottom of one’s shoe. They went wild when Trump had the temerity to build there. Truth is, Trump is a man, and Jonah is a pampered boy who never grew up, never ran a business (other than a brief stint running mommy’s publishing firm before it went away) and could not conceivably survive other than as a member of the NY Times/NR/Weekly Standard chattering class. He has suckled noisily at the teat of the GOPe almost since birth, and guys like Trump scare him down to his silk socks.

[E=MC²]

Trump is a ginormous liar.

[SubMareener]

Now we are getting somewhere!

All that you say is true, except the phony comparison to Obama.

They match characteristic by characteristic. Here are some more. Their mothers were Americans, their fathers were foreigners. They both held citizenship in other countries. Neither was well liked by their Senate colleagues. They both used "Data Analytics" to shape their message and identify likely receptive voters. They both used legal challenges to eliminate competitors. They both wrote auto-biographies before they were 50 years old.

Yes, Cruz has been interested in America since he was a kid.

As a foreign born child, this would be natural. Plus, he tells us in his book that he wasn't popular and decided to figure out and do what the popular kids did.

Maybe it was because of his father’s experiences in Cuba.

Yes, his father was a Communist revolutionary who claims to have been fooled by Castro, and now thinks that Christians should take over the world, not Communists. Look up Seven Mountains Dominionism.

Who knows what shapes people.

Well, if you have lived long enough, you identify family life as a primary molding factor. If the kids are old enough, you look at how they turned out.

He was particularly interested in the U.S. Constitution, how it works and how it has until now, kept America the greatest country in the world.

Well, if you think the Constitution kept America the greatest country in the world, how do you explain how we got to where we are? Obviously, when judges feel free to violate the clear reading of the Constitution, something is missing. I happen to believe that it was the Fear of the Lord that used to animate most of civil society. That made its formal exit in 1962.

No, he did not inherit money and proceed to do foolish things with it.

Donald and his four siblings inherited money when their father died, but that was well after Donald had turned a $1 million loan into his real estate empire. A loan that was paid back, by the way. Ted Cruz took out a $1 million dollar loan from Goldman-Sacks and CitiBank to finance his Senate campaign, and we will have to see if it has been spent on foolish things.

No, he is not a narcissist.

"Narcissistic personality disorder is a mental disorder in which people have an inflated sense of their own importance, a deep need for admiration and a lack of empathy for others." Are you sure you want to go there? As Yogi Berra used to say, "It ain't bragging if you can do it!"

People become interested in politics at different points in their life. For Ted, it was early because he wanted to help the country.

For Donald, it was at the age of almost 70 when he got tired of his 80 foot living room and his trophy wife collecting and wanted to get a really nice trophy ... like, say, the presidency.

Because Donald had NOT been interested in the constitution and politics in his life, he is now deeply over his head.

You seem to be misinformed about Donald Trump. This is Donald J. Trump in 1987, when Ted Cruz was seventeen.

What’s Next

Fortunately, I don’t know the answer, because if I did, that would take half the fun out of it.

This much I do know: it won’t be the same.

I’ve spent the first twenty years of my working life building, accumulating, and accomplishing things that many said could not be done. The biggest challenge I see over the next twenty years is to figure out some creative ways to give back some of what I’ve gotten.

I don’t just mean money, although that’s part of it. It’s easy to be generous when you’ve got a lot, and anyone who does, should be. But what I admire most are people who put themselves directly on the line. I’ve never been terribly interested in why people give, because their motivation is rarely what it seems to be, and it’s almost never pure altruism. To me, what matters is the doing, and giving time is far more valuable than just giving money.

In my life, there are two things I’ve found I’m very good at: overcoming obstacles and motivating good people to do their best work. One of the challenges ahead is how to use those skills as successfully in the service of others as I’ve done, up to now, on my own behalf.

Don’t get me wrong. I also plan to keep making deals, big deals, and right around the clock.

Trump, Donald J.; Schwartz, Tony (2009-12-18). Trump: The Art of the Deal (Kindle Locations 4242-4252). Random House Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

Donald Trump ran for President in 2000. He lost the Reform Party nomination to Pat Buchanan. He wrote "The America We Deserve" in 2009.

Yes, Ted Cruz is articulate, can speak and can debate and he knows his stuff. I don’t see that as a bad thing.

Neither can I, especially if talk is what you are interested in doing for a living.

[The Continental Op]

“Are you a past subscriber? (to NR) Have you read the last couple of editions (and not just the snippets on FR)? Or is this just something someone told you?”

Speaking for myself, yes. I subscribed for many, many years. In fact, I bought my first computer, a little MAC LC, so I could join their first online effort, Townhall, back in the 80s. I really loved Buckley. I still have an original copy of “God and Man at Yale”. Then, I watched as NR weakened, and went about the purges of anyone who dared speak in even a nationalistic whisper. They insisted in defining the boundaries of conservatism, and in so doing sought to shrink, not enlarge, the “big tent”. Off they went, one by one. We began with Russel Kirk, and now we are left with little Jonah.

Without question, NR is a shadow of its former self, in every way.

[central_va]

National Review really? LOL.

[mlizzy]

Do you think Trump has never paid for an abortion by any one of his numerous wives, girlfriends or mistresses?

---

From an article by Maureen Dowd:

Dowd: When [you were] a swinging bachelor in Manhattan, [were you] ever involved with anyone who had an abortion?

Trump: “Such an interesting question,” he said. “So what’s your next question?

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/03/opinion/sunday/trump-does-it-his-way.html?_r=0