Trump Fans, It’s Time for An Intervention

There have been times in the past when I’ve gotten crosswise with certain segments of the conservative base and/or with the readership of National Review. And, because, like the Elephant Man, I am a not an animal but a human being, I have always had at least some self-doubt. That’s as it should be. People who share principles should not only hear each other out when they disagree; they should be able to see each other’s points and hold open the possibility that one’s opponents have the better argument.

I truly, honestly, and with all my heart and mind think Donald Trump’s most ardent supporters are making a yuuuuuuge mistake. I think they are being conned and played. I feel like a guy whose brother is being taken advantage of by a grifter. I’m watching helplessly as the con artist congratulates him for taking out a third mortgage.

Now, before I go on, let me clarify a few things. I get it. The base of the party is angry. They’re angry about Obama’s lawless chicanery on immigration. They’re angry about the GOP’s patented inability to cross the street without stepping on its own d*ck and then having to apologize for it. They’re angry that the Left’s culture warriors are behaving like an invading army that shoots the survivors even after they’ve surrendered. They’re angry that Republicans have to bend over backward so as not to offend anyone, while Democrats have free rein (and at times free reign) to do and to say as they please.

Enter Trump, stage left. He makes no apologies. He’s brash. I can understand why some see him as a breath of fresh air. If you want to give him credit for starting a worthwhile debate about sanctuary cities and illegal immigration, fine. I think that argument is way overdone, but certainly reasonable enough.

Trump supporters need an intervention. I want to sit them down at the kitchen table, reach into a manila envelope, and pull out the proof that he’s a fraud.

Maybe you just like him. On that, we can respectfully disagree, as there is no accounting for taste. Perhaps you just like his musk and the way it assaults your nostrils, which is fitting, given his line of cologne. Fine.

I, on the other hand, find him tedious, tacky, and trite. He’s a bore who overcompensates for his insecurities by talking about how awesome he is, often in the third person. Jonah can’t stand that.

You see the next Teddy Roosevelt and all I see is someone who talks big and carries a small schtick.

In words George Will shall never write, this is a good moment to talk about my pants. Earlier this week, Donald Trump attacked Charles Krauthammer and me. By the way, I don’t blame Trump one bit for his hostility. I’d hate me too, if I were him. Still I do marvel at how this supposed Master of the Universe can be unnerved by such criticism. If it takes so little effort for me to set up shop in his head, by all means, let’s give him thermonuclear weapons.

I’m worth a fortune. . . . I went out, I made a fortune, a big fortune, a tremendous fortune . . . bigger than people even understand. . . . Then I get called [a failure] by a guy that can’t buy a pair of pants, I get called names?

As the intern said to Bill Clinton, this puts me in a weird position. I don’t like to brag, but I’m actually quite adept at buying pants. I don’t enjoy it. But I can do it. It never occurred to me to put it in my bio or anything — “Jonah Goldberg is a senior editor of National Review, a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, and a successful pants-buyer” — but maybe I should.

Now, I will say that I sometimes choose not to wear pants, and not just because I’m so fond of my spaghetti-strainer codpiece (which affords me the satisfaction of telling really attractive women, “Hey, my eyes are up here. Thank you very much”). But these are my choices. If I want to identify as a pantless American, who are you to say otherwise?

More to the point, what I find so gaudy about Trump is his constant reference to the fact that he made a lot of money, and his expectation that it somehow makes him immune to criticism or means that he’s a better person than his GOP competitors, never mind yours truly.

Moreover, I find it horribly disappointing that his fans like this about him. If you met someone in real life who talked this way, you would think he’s a jerk. But somehow he’s awesome when he does it on TV?

The most troubling defense is this claptrap that he ‘tells it like it is.’ Well, first of all, no he doesn’t. He tells it the way you want to hear it, which is an entirely different thing.

His biggest fans disappoint in other ways as well. I marvel at how they can simultaneously despise Obama’s arrogance but revel in Trump’s. (I chuckle at all of the people who tell me he’s a heroic truth-teller for “telling it like it is” and “calling it as he sees it” but who at the same time fume at me when I tell it like it is about Trump and call it as I see it.)

But most grating of all are the people who sincerely think he should be the Republican nominee for President of the United States.

On this, I’m afraid we’re going to have to disrespectfully disagree. First of all, he’ll never be president of the United States. I won’t go into all of the reasons I think this, but a few off the top of my head: his enormous negatives, even among Republicans; the Midas’s hoard of oppo-research material that surely lurks beneath the surface; and his comments about women, which alone would turn the gender gap into a chasm. To borrow a line from Mark Steyn, a President Trump would have more ex-wives than the previous 44 presidents combined.

But my objection isn’t to the political analysis of Trump supporters. It’s their judgment of the man that stews the bowels.

I’ve written many times about how I hate the term RINO because conservatives should consider themselves Republicans in Name Only. The Republican Party is a vessel, a tool for achieving conservative ends. It’s nothing more than a team. Conservatism is different. It’s a body of ideas, beliefs, and temperaments. The amazing thing is that Trump is both a RINO and a CINO. I’m sure he has some authentic and sincere conservative views down in there somewhere. But the idea that he’s more plausibly conservative — or more loyally Republican — than Ted Cruz, Rand Paul, Scott Walker, or any of the others is just flatly absurd. It is vastly more plausible that he is a stalking horse for his dear friend Hillary Clinton than he is a sincere conservative.

Trump supporters need an intervention. I want to sit them down at the kitchen table, reach into a manila envelope, and pull out the proof that he’s a fraud. The conversation would go something like this:

Immigration: You seem to think he’s an immigration hardliner, and he’s certainly pretending to be. But why can’t you see through it? He condemned Mitt Romney as an immigration hardliner in 2012 and favored comprehensive immigration reform. He told Bill O’Reilly he was in favor of a “path to citizenship” for 30 million illegal immigrants:

Trump: You have to give them a path. You have 20 million, 30 million, nobody knows what it is. It used to be 11 million. Now, today I hear it’s 11, but I don’t think it’s 11. I actually heard you probably have 30 million. You have to give them a path, and you have to make it possible for them to succeed. You have to do that.

Question: Just how many rapists and drug dealers did Donald Trump want to give green cards to?

Abortion: In 1999 he said, “I’m totally pro-choice. I hate it and I hate saying it. And I’m almost ashamed to say that I’m pro-choice but I am pro-choice because I think we have no choice.”

Now he says he’s pro-life. But I’ll spare the mocking on this because at least he’s flip-flopping in the right direction, and I don’t like to second guess peoples’ professed religious convictions.

Obamacare: The man wrote in his own book and said elsewhere that he was in favor of Canadian-style socialized medicine — which would put him to the left of Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, and on pretty much the same page as Bernie Sanders.

Hillary: Speaking of her, Trump praised Hillary Clinton and her health-care reform plan — in 2007! She attended his (most recent) wedding. He donated to her campaigns and to the Clinton Foundation. In 2008, he couldn’t get his head around the fact that Obama didn’t pick her for VP. “I’m a big fan of Hillary. She’s a terrific woman. She’s a friend of mine.”

Economics: People tout the guy’s business record. But he represents almost exactly what his supporters think he opposes. He’s a crony capitalist par excellence. He gives to whatever politician can grease the skids for his next deal — and he makes no apologies for it. He’s an eminent-domain voluptuary. He abuses bankruptcy laws like a stack of homemade get-out-of-jail-free cards.

The most troubling defense is this claptrap that he “tells it like it is.” Well, first of all, no he doesn’t. He tells it the way you want to hear it, which is an entirely different thing. He is like William Jennings Bryan, only his cross of gold has an all-you-can-eat buffet under it, and looks remarkably like a capital “T.”

He is like William Jennings Bryan, only his cross of gold has an all-you-can-eat buffet under it, and looks remarkably like a capital “T.”

“The people of Nebraska are for free silver, and I am for free silver,” Bryan announced. “I will look up the arguments later.” That is Trump’s approach. He’s saying what understandably angry people want to hear him say.

He reminds me a lot of Mitt Romney, at least in one respect. I always said that Romney “spoke conservatism as a second language” (a line some people ripped off, btw). That’s why Romney called himself a “severe conservative,” talked about how he “likes to fire people,” and anathematized the “47 percent.”

Trump is even less truly conservative, but he’s trying to speak in an even grubbier dialect of conservatism. And, having grown up in the tabloid politics of New York, he’s better at faking it.

Eventually, I suspect, this will be the cause of his undoing. He doesn’t know what he doesn’t know about conservatism, and at some point he will say something that even his biggest fans will recognize as a damning revelation about the real man beneath the schtick. The only question is whether he implodes before or after he does permanent damage to the GOP’s chances in 2016.

Look, these are rough times for conservatives, for reasons too lengthy, and all too familiar, to go into here. But none of our problems — demographic, political, cultural — can be solved unless conservatives take the cause of persuasion to heart. All of our problems can be fixed by convincing people to join our cause. That is what politics is about — persuading people that their interests and concerns are better addressed by coming to our side. And, given the degraded nature of our culture, I won’t deny that having a celebrity on our side has its utility. But it’s only helpful if that celebrity convinces people to switch sides. As a purely mathematical proposition, it is insane to believe that Donald Trump will convert more voters than he will repel.

For those who are interested in persuasion, I heartily recommend Arthur Brooks’s new book, The Conservative Heart (full disclosure: He’s my boss at AEI and a friend). I’ll be writing more about it in the future because I think it’s an important book. But I will say for now that it is almost a mirror image of Trump’s approach. It’s thoughtful, humble, fact- and data-driven, and informed by a deep moral case for conservatism. It won’t satisfy your desire to scream at the opposition, but it will equip you to explain to the opposition why they are wrong............

That doesn’t mean we should elect the Devil or the squirrel President.

Clinton, Obama? You might be justified in believing that he already owns the office. Seems a bit silly to have people running around with their hair on fire worrying about it happening.

People who share principles should not only hear each other out when they disagree; they should be able to see each other’s points and hold open the possibility that one’s opponents have the better argument. This is not one of those times . . .

Unfortunately, Constitutional conservatives have always been given a wink and then kept in the back of the bus and only let out to do the leg work. I've been listening to this kind of crap for nearly forty years as the establishment pubbies have failed to carry the platform over and over when they have had the power and the opportunity to really make change. Now that we're on the brink of forever, this nattering nabob of negativity want us all to participate in the Punch and Judy show one more time.

....Donald Trump did not get his wealth from robbing the federal coffers and that is why he can speak the truth....

Trump likes to utilize Eminent Domain.

".....A decade and a half ago, it was fresh on everyone’s mind that Donald Trump is one of the leading users of this form of state-sanctioned thievery. It was all over the news. In perhaps the most-remembered example, John Stossel got the toupéed one to sputter about how, if he wasn’t allowed to steal an elderly widow’s house to expand an Atlantic City casino, the government would get less tax money, and seniors like her would get less “this and that.” Today, however, it takes a push from the Club for Growth to remind us of Trump’s lack of respect for property rights....."

“Jonah Goldberg: Trump Is a ‘Bane of Humanity,’ ‘Drives Me Crazy’ That Fox Takes Him Seriously”

Like Jonah, but he and other news media types are missing the fact that many of us are tired of hearing “ opinions” which in most cases have been wrong about topics that we care about.

Love him or hate him, its not hard to understand Donald. He’s an old school straight talker who has won and lost in life , and at this point seems to be the one most willing to talk about success for America in simple terms.

Well, it does prove that if you have a lot of personal wealth, you would have had to do a few things right, but that doesn’t mean you are a good politician...

That being said, I do not think Trump is in this to win...He’s in there to make a splash, and a few under the table assurances for future money making endeavors...

I do not see Trump sticking around after Super Tuesday...By then a lot of these campaigns will be done for at that point, and his purpose will be done...

To push the GOP’s Jebby to the convention and another hold your nose at the polls next year...

If that happens to be the result, you can be assured Hillary will be the next president...

I really, really hope to be proven wrong next year...

Except for Ronald Reagan, and even he changed his stance on abortion, you can not find a politician — one who studies the impact of his statements — who has not uttered inconsistent beliefs. How much more so than with someone like Trump, who has only dallied with it in the past.

After the November election, when the democrats were handed one of the biggest defeats in history, and it was COMPLETELY NULLIFIED by the Republicans, what on earth do we have to lose with a guy who at least is PREACHING the right thing. Which one of the Republican candidates can you count on to break out of the RINO mold? With the immigration crisis, this will be out last chance to preserve our nation. Literally.

Goldberg completely negated any perceptive ability he claims to have about Trump when he suggested Trump is a stalking horse for Hillary Clinton; he also wrote that Trump is a “failed man”. How is it possible to regard Trump as a “failed man’? And so he whines when Trump belittles him (he left him no choice) and he whines about Trump hurting the Republican brand, and as you point out, Trump is no where in the league with Boehner and McConnell for accomplishing that.

Here is the thing about all those previous positions: Trump is just waiting for thiose questions. I think he salivates over getting them. Because he's going to be the only candidate out there who can (and will) legitimately say, "Yes I did endorse Obama in 2008 and like many Americans I am very disappointed in what a terrible job he has done. He let us all down and now we need to fix what he messed up." Or, "yes I had high hopes for Hillary, but as we have seen she was a disaster."

Trump is not an ideologue and is no conservative. Few think that.

He is a business-oriented problem solver. I would rather have a guy in there with whom I believe on three issues, but who fixes those three issues, than a guy who shares 100% of my views but can't stand up to the media and elites to get anything done.

Jonah is right, anger is not an issue. But you know what? Neither was "hope and change" or "a chicken in every pot" but they win elections because Americans anymore don't seem to have the capacity to talk issues, only passion and personality. Heck, Reagan ran on one line: "Are you better off today than you were four years ago?"

Goldberg us stuck in policy wonk world where this or that candidate's cute little tweaks impress him.

I remember Trump in the 1970s and what a local joke he was.

I moved out for good in 1980. Seems like the boy has made good since then.

People do grow up.

“What is Trump’s motivation?”

At some level it’s the same motivation as all of them have - ego. Ego is the absolute central motivator of politicians - except for those whose primary motivation is making money, and the small number who actually want to help make the world a better place. Beyond that, I think he truly believes what he is saying. Just my take.

“If you want to give him credit for starting a worthwhile debate about sanctuary cities and illegal immigration, fine. I think that argument is way overdone, but certainly reasonable enough.”

Way overdone? Does Joanne have ANY IDEA that there are 30,000,000 ILLEGALS in this country. Or does she just think that it’s only the handful he sees at Home Depot once in a while?

This is SCARY STUFF.

You seem to have been asleep for the last two decades. "Dirty laundry?" Absolutely irrelevant unless you are a play-by-the-rules Republican that will meekly apologize and go away when you bring up a kiss with a staffer at a party. Does that really sound like the Donald? It never deterred Obama or Warren or Hillary or ANY Dem.

That stuff all will come out and it won't matter any more than Emmitt Smith quitting as a Miss America judge. Because TRUMP DOESN'T CARE.

This is what the old style pols and analysts don't get. With the exception of Cruz---who has yet to weather this level of attack, though I think he can---Trump is the only one with enough money and enough ego to tell yahoos like Jonah to piss off.

Calm down Joanne, if you gals REALLY want to silence him, you gals can start addressing Illegal immigration.

But since that isn’t happening, TRUMP OWNS THE STAGE - and it is YOUR FAULT that is the case, not our fault. We’ve been SCREAMING FOR YEARS for Republicans to address the issue, and we get laughed at and stepped on by your type of people.

You can’t do that to Trump - the only option you have is to ADDRESS THE ISSUE - or you may very well be covering his inauguration, because there are a lot of DEMOCRATS and Independents also fed up with what this country has become due to Open Borders.

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