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.

[nathanbedford]

You’ve done round the bend.

I think the people are beginning to catch on to this kill the messenger counterattack by Trump supporters to divert attention from the underlying flaws of Donald Trump's character.

I think Bruce Campbells Chin in his reply #43 said it very well:

Trump is leaving a trail of bodies of all the people we need to try to turn this country around. He'll probably win the nomination, and then he and his supporters will cry like hell when all the people they smeared and insulted don't leap to support him.

There was a reason for the 11th Commandment.

[altura]

Love that you dug up and posted that Buckley quote.

Buckley dealt in elegant insults.

[TTFlyer]

Good. I have no use for GOPe snowflakes.

[bigbob]

Saving your post so we can revisit this after you are proven to be full of it.

[DrewsDad]

Drew is doing great. Thank you.

Why do Trump supporters feel the need to attack you personally?

[heights]

Because we’ve learned to despise lying Cruzdavidians.

[dforest]

Who Cruz? He’s the one spreading his lil _ecker all over DC and Texas.

[dsc]

“Trump presents an alluring siren’s song.”

Another way to put that is that Trump is the only one who even *says* the right things.

All the others—ALL the others—are depraved political-class scum, who will stab us in the back before we even hear the scrape of the dagger coming out of its sheath.

Trump is the only one who actually loves America, and the only one who even *might* do some of the right things.

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/3413956/posts?page=181#155

Just watch the clip.

[SubMareener]

Ted Cruz is a clean, articulate Harvard Law graduate and Harvard Law Review editor, who gives great speeches, with no experience outside of government or a law office, and who, as a first-term U.S. Senator, started running for President almost immediately after being elected.

Now, can you tell me which one of those characteristics is not true, or even derogatory, let alone nasty?

It is true that these characteristics are the same as those of Barack Obama. But like Democrats believe about Socialism implemented by them, Cruz supporters believe that, because Ted is a “true conservative”, this time it will have a different outcome.

[dforest]

Because YOU and fat Jonah the whale are attacking them.

Do you have a clue at all?

[altura]

Not posting to heights in particular, he just called me a nut. Typical.

But I have counted the posts that defended Trump here by insulting Ted Cruz. Sadly, one of my favorite dudes made 3 of those posts.

The posts blaming and insulting Ted to divert from Trump’s failures and shortcomings:

6, 9, 11, 14, 25, 27, 40, 43, 59 and 62.

[heights]

“He’ll probably win the nomination, and then he and his supporters will cry like hell when all the people they smeared and insulted don’t leap to support him.”

Yeah, we should kiss illegal a**, and pander to Muslims.

[RFEngineer]

” 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.”

This is interesting misdirection. He lays out a multi-step fiction and then says that it “boorish” to maintain security around your candidate. Trumps guy has got nothing to apologize for and the little princess was not given the time of day, that is her actual complaint in my estimation. One thing we know for sure is it would NOT have been over with as Jonah says. It’s about perpetuating a meme to preserve establishment power.

[heights]

Let’s see, you just said Trump wants to ‘Run Over’ ordinary looking girls with his limousine. Yeah, nothing Crazy about that.

[DoughtyOne]

It’s really not worth the effort to lead you folks around by the nose to your own candidate’s glaring problems.

You don’t care. Neither do I.

[PIF]

Trumpeters do not care about DJT’s electability they just want him to be the candidate so they have bragging rights or similar. They are not conservatives despite their protestations and lamentations just like their god. As usual anything critical of their god is false and a slander, while anything favorable is the blessed truth, but above all, facts just do not matter and neither does electability.

I would contend were it not for these fools pushing so hard for their hero someone else might have emerged from the pack - someone that would have been electable and a real conservative.

[nathanbedford]

Easier just to drive by.

[hawkaw]

I completely agree with your analysis.

[euram]

Jonah Goldberg, another worthless neo-con artist, spewing crap.

[altura]

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

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

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

Who knows what shapes people.

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.

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

No, he is not a narcissist.

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.

Yes, Ted Cruz is articulate, can speak and can debate and he knows his stuff.

I don’t see that as a bad thing.