Dr. Donald and Mr. Trump

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Roger Kimball:

Like many (but by no means all) conservatives, ever since Donald Trump became the presumptive Republican nominee, I have been scanning the horizonĀ for reasons to support him.

I have found a few. But candor requires that at the end of the day, when all is said and done, I acknowledge that the most compelling reason I’ve found so far is a familiar dactyl-trochee combination: Hillary Clinton. As I arguedĀ after the first day of the convention in Cleveland, The Wall Street Journal‘s Bill McGurn is right: the best case for Donald Trump is still this: that the alternative is the dowager empress of Chappaqua.

I’ve had flickers of hope that, post-primary, Trump would turn out to be something other than what he appeared to be throughout the primary season and what, by most accounts, he has been throughout his very public, very fraught business career.

So far, alas, I’ve found those hopes dashed, one after the next. After a tentative access of reasonable behavior on Trump’s part, bang, he blows it all by (for example) telling us what a great guy Saddam Hussein was at killing terrorists.

As I said to a friend at the convention, there is something vertiginous about Donald Trump. One day he approaches reasonableness, the next he reverts to petulant incoherence. It’s a sort of reprise of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. So one finds oneself — at least, I find myself — oscillating between tentative support and aghast horror.

The latest example, as most readers will know, was the discrepancy between Dr. Donald Thursday night in his acceptance speech and Mr. Trump Friday in his trulyĀ bizarre post-convention press conference. Donald Trump is not Cicero or Demosthenes, but as I wrote yesterday, his speech Thursday nightĀ presented a forceful, mature, almost circumspect character. That the mainstream media recoiled in disgust, almost universally labelling it “dark” and demagogic”Ā just shows how effective it was.

But then came Friday morning, when Mr. Trump took over from Dr. Donald. Ā It was supposed to be a casual, off-the-cuff, feel-good performance to thank Ā various people for their hard work but it soon degenerated into a very strange assault on Ted Cruz for not endorsing Trump in his speech at the convention. Mr. Trump careened around that subject, first saying that Cruz would eventually come round to endorse him, then declaring that he, Trump, wouldn’t accept it if he did.

I know that a lot of people believe that Ted Cruz committed political suicide with his “vote your conscience” line. Ā As I wrote here a few days ago, I think the hysteria over Cruz’s talk is overblown and wrongheaded. And I have to say, his later explanation that Trump’s attacks on his wife and father made an outright endorsement impossible struck me as honorable.

Back in March, Trump had an unflattering picture of Heidi Cruz circulated and ominously threatened to “spill the beans” on her. No beans were forthcoming. Ā He also insinuated Cruz’s father RafaelĀ was somehow linked toĀ JFK’s assassin, Lee Harvey Oswald, citing as evidence a photo in theĀ National Inquirer thatĀ purportedly shows the two having breakfast.

You might think that Dr. Donald would want to put that embarrassing episode behind him. But the presser was overseen by Mr. Trump, not the Doctor. He offered a rambling, semi-coherent defense of his actions with respect to Mrs. Cruz and doubled down on the supposed Rafael Cruz-Oswald connection.

Quoth Mr. Trump: “All I did is point out the fact that on theĀ cover of the National Enquirer there was a picture of him and crazy Lee HarveyĀ OswaldĀ having breakfast. Now, Ted never denied that it was his father.”

Let’s pause here. After the allegation, Team Cruz had this to say:

  • ā€œThis is another garbage story in a tabloid full of garbage,ā€ Communications Director Alice Stewart toldĀ McClatchy. ā€œThe story is false; that is not Rafael in the picture.ā€
  • ā€œItā€™s ludicrous, itā€™s ludicrous,ā€ Rafael CruzĀ told ABC NewsĀ on May 3. ā€œI was never in New Orleans at that time.ā€
  • Ted CruzĀ dismissedĀ theĀ EnquirerĀ story as ā€œidioticā€ and called Trump a ā€œpathological liarā€ who is ā€œutterly amoralā€ and a ā€œbully.ā€

If that’s not a denial, it will do until the real thing comes along.

But Mr. Trump wasn’t finished.Ā The National Enquirer, he said,

was a magazine that, frankly, in many respects, should be very respected. [I note as an aside that Trump is close to National InquirerCEO David Pecker.] They got O.J. They got [John] Edwards. I mean, if that was The New York Times, they would have gotten Pulitzer Prizes for their reporting. . . .Ā But anyway, so they have a picture, an old picture, having breakfast with Lee Harvey Oswald.Ā Now, nothing — I’m not saying anything.Ā They said — and here’s how the press takes that story. So this had nothing to do with me, except I might have pointed it out, but it had nothing to do with me. I have no control over anything.Ā I might have pointed it out. . . .

In fact, there is no evidence whatsoever that Rafael Cruz had breakfast with Oswald. The photo expert quoted by theĀ National EnquirerĀ called Trump’s assertion “stupid.” Furthermore, according to Factcheck.org, “Although Trump said the photo showed the two ‘having breakfast,’ the picture in question actually shows Oswald distributing pro-Castro literature in New Orleans in August 1963, a few months prior to Kennedyā€™s assassination in Dallas. According to theĀ Miami Herald, another man in the picture was never identified by theĀ Warren Commission, whose investigation concluded Kennedy was assassinated by Oswald and that Oswald acted alone.”

I have a few friends who are avid Trump supporters (and many more who are simply resigned to him). Those who are part of the cheerleading contingent see in Trump the Voice of the People, someone who is a man of business, not an establishment politician. As I’ve had occasion to note beforeĀ in this space, when it comes to the Donald Voice-of-the-People wheeze, I always recall P. G. Wodehouse’s Roderick Spode, the amateur dictator who wanted to ban all foreign root vegetables from the UK. ā€œThe trouble with you, Spode,” said Bertie Wooster in one gratifying passage,

is that just because you have succeeded in inducing a handful of half-wits to disfigure the London scene by going about in black shorts, you think you’re someone. You hear them shouting “Heil, Spode!” and you imagine it is the Voice of the People. That is where you make your bloomer. What the Voice of the People is saying is: “Look at that frightful ass Spode swanking about in footer bags! Did you ever in your puff see such a perfect perisher?”

But I digress. The phenomenon of Donald Trump’s rise, and in particular the curious and disturbing oscillation between Dr. Donald and Mr. Trump, offers a couple of lessons.

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Hitler was a great orator and the Nazis were geniuses at organization. Hitler was a political genius… to a point. Why is it inherently wrong to point out actual facts? Just because one points out an obvious fact does not mean one endorses the ideology. It’s like being accused of racism because you point out the statistical fact that blacks commit a percentage of violent crimes greater than their percentage of the population.

Facts are facts. Some are uncomfortable facts, but they are nonetheless facts.