The Trumpet

The season recently concluded is known to most of us as the time when we shed outer garments , take vacations,  head to the beach or pool, and watch baseball. To the media and body politic, however, the past few months have been known as “The Summer of Trump.” It has been a time when a wealthy real estate developer and reality TV star, sporting a spray-on tan and triple comb over coiffure, bragged and insulted way to the lead among Republican presidential candidates. This was quite an accomplishment when one considers that his past political foray in 2011 was short lived and based solely on the contention that President Obama was not a citizen of the U.S. Refusing to reconsider his position even when Obama’s birth certificate was staring him in the face, The Donald faded in the polls and dropped out of the race.

No such luck this time. Instead, the Republican base found his simplistic, bombastic pronouncements charming. They liked hearing that we should deport all 12 million illegal immigrants (parents and children together), and build a really big wall to keep them all out. Trump’s support did not decline when he declared that John McCain was not a war hero despite his years in captivity undergoing torture during the Vietnam War (because Trump likes guys who do not get captured), nor when he charged that debate moderator Megyn Kelly gave him tough questions because she was menstruating, or that Carly Fiorina was too ugly to be elected president. No, these comments were welcomed as a refreshing break from “political correctness”, a term which Trumps seems to confuse with common decency.

The media, of course, ate this all up. They attached themselves to The Donald day and night. CNN, once a bastion of hard news coverage, joined the other cable outlets in following Trump wherever he might appear. So we had Trump at the Iowa State Fair giving young tykes rides in his private helicopter; Trump addressing religious groups (opining that The Bible might even be a better book than his Art of the Deal); and Trump in New Hampshire, the state with the first presidential primary - all of this covered live, and pre-empting regularly scheduled shows. Do you think it occurred to the media that their very own coverage was fueling and sustaining Trump’s top spot in the polls?

I admit that I liked seeing some of the fallout from Trump’s rise, namely the fall of candidates like Rick Perry and Scott Walker. Perry, who probably still hasn’t succeeded in recalling the last federal agency he would do away with if he were ever elected president, “suspended” his campaign to return to his family. He made no mention of the fact that his poll numbers stood at zero. Walker, the union-busting governor from Wisconsin, was next to see “suspension” as the only real option. He returns to the state where his major success was in so bitterly dividing its electorate that he faced a rare recall election just one year into his term.

One thing about this Trump drama - it was real, which is more than can be said for Trump’s own “reality show.” No, The Donald wasn’t really considering hiring Dennis Rodman as his real life apprentice. And, no, the other popular “reality” shows aren’t real either. Surviving on a remote island, dating naked, and being naked and afraid in the Gobi Desert are all setups. At one time, reality shows were actually real. A camera documented what took place in a given scenario. These were called documentaries. There are some still being made, and they bear little resemblance to “Celebrity Apprentice.” Of course, “Celebrity Apprentice” is no more. NBC fired Trump when he became a full time presidential candidate. Or, as The Trumpster tells it, he quit NBC to become leader of the free world. Trump, you see, can never be fired, because he is a “winnah”, not a “loser” like all his competitors. Everything he does is “huge” and “tremendous” so he cannot be fired. Got it?

That being said, it must be noticed that Trump’s rise has levelled off lately. He might even have peaked a couple of weeks back. Some recent polls show him in decline. How can this be? Well, it seems that even at the height of Trump’s popularity, his negatives were higher than all other candidates. When folks were asked which candidate they would never vote for, Trump came out on top. When asked to briefly characterize Trump in a word or two, “idiot” seemed to be the most common description. So, when guys like Perry and Walker drop out, their supporters migrate to some other candidate – someone who is not Trump. This might well mean that The Trumpet will not soon reside in the White House. He might not even get the Republican nomination (much to relief of the GOP establishment). But, we must admit, he gave a lot of American viewers a helluva diverting reality show this past summer.