Political Irony

Donald Trump is going off the deep end over the whole Trump University scandal and lawsuit.

As if calling the judge in two of the cases against Trump U “a hater” and saying that the judge should be removed from the case because “he’s a Mexican” isn’t bad enough. First of all, the judge is not Mexican. He was born in Indiana, the son of immigrants from Mexico who came to this country in the 1920s. But reality doesn’t matter to Trump. And attacking someone because their parents came from another country makes Trump completely against everything for which this country stands. Indeed, in his view, would any American be qualified to judge Donald Trump?

Even Trump’s strongest supporters, including Republican politicians being considered for the VP slot, denounced Trump. Newt Gingrich called his racist attacks “inexcusable” and said “I don’t know what Trump’s reasoning was, and I don’t care. His description of the judge in terms of his parentage is completely unacceptable.” Top Trump campaigner Ben Carson warned “Every human being is an individual first rather than a member of an identity group. The moment we forget that is the moment we enter into a phase of moral descent.” Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell said “I couldn’t disagree [with Trump] more.” Speaker Paul Ryan called it “the textbook definition of a racist comment“. GOP Senator Jeff Flake says “Let’s face it: meet the old Trump, just like the new Trump. We’ve got what we’ve got. That’s not somebody who can win the White House.” Senator Lindsay Graham accused Trump of “playing the race card”. Graham is urging Republicans to rescind their endorsements of Trump, saying “This is the most un-American thing from a politician since Joe McCarthy. If anybody was looking for an off-ramp, this is probably it. There’ll come a time when the love of country will trump hatred of Hillary.”

The only people who have praised Trump for his disgusting comments are prominent white nationalists.

But that is not what this post is about. Unbelievably, Trump has now ordered his campaign surrogates (including former Arizona Governor Jan Brewer, former Senator Scott Brown, and current Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi, who asked for and received $25,000 in campaign contributions from Trump and then refused to investigate complaints into Trump University) to join him in attacking the judge and to impugn reporters as racists. He says, “The people asking the questions—those are the racists. I would go at ’em.”

But when Brewer informed Trump that his own campaign had ordered the surrogates to stop talking about the lawsuit, Trump immediately started attacking his own campaign staff, and told the surrogates to “Take that order and throw it the hell out”. He then asked “Are there any other stupid letters that were sent to you folks? That’s one of the reasons I want to have this call, because you guys are getting sometimes stupid information from people that aren’t so smart.”

So much for hiring the “best people” for his campaign.

Trump wants his supporters and surrogates to attack anyone who asks questions about his fraudulent university and to call them racists. And on the call he boasted “We will overcome. I’ve always won and I’m going to continue to win. And that’s the way it is.”

But in the five weeks since he became the presumptive Republican nominee, Trump has failed several times: he refused to release his tax returns, lying that he couldn’t because he was being audited; he denied that it was him on a recorded phone call pretending to be his own publicist and bragging about himself; he failed to donate to veterans groups as he promised until pressured by the media; and after promising that he would self-fund his campaign so he couldn’t be bought, he is now working with multiple super-PACs and courting billionaire donors; and of course his Trump University scandal and resulting racism.

His warlord-like siege mentality is a preview of what a Trump presidency would look like, and it scares the hell out of me. Trump has the potential to destroy America, ruin our economy, incite racial violence, dramatically increase corruption, sink the dollar, bankrupt our government, alienate our allies and trade partners, increase the nuclear threat, and invite terrorist attacks with his hostile rhetoric.

UPDATE: Let’s add that — according to Fox News’ Megyn Kelly — Trump’s attacks on the judge in his trial could destroy our legal system.

When Donald Trump created Trump University, he called it a noble endeavor with an emphasis on education over profits. In fact, he promised that if the (fake) university made a profit, he would turn the funds over to charity.

Is anyone surprised to find out that even though Trump University had revenues of $40 million and netted an estimated $5 million in profit, not a penny of that ever went to charity?

And as already noted, Trump somehow got the Texas attorney general (who is now the governor) to mysteriously drop a lawsuit against Trump University, and then donated $35,000 to his gubernatorial campaign.

And for even more examples of Trump fraud, see what John Oliver has to say about Trump University.

There are many theories of why people support Donald Trump. One theory is that the voters are angry and hate the political establishment. Middle class workers have been hurt by the economy and are desperate to find someone who can shake things up. Or at least stand up to the special interests who are sucking our country dry for their own benefit. For example, an article in The New Yorker summed up Trump’s appeal this way:

The base of the [Republican] Party, the middle-aged white working class, has suffered at least as much as any demographic group because of globalization, low-wage immigrant labor, and free trade. Trump sensed the rage that flared from this pain and made it the fuel of his campaign.

But a detailed analysis of the 2016 American National Election Study has a simpler explanation. First, the analysis found that there is little correlation between how people feel about the state of the economy and whether they support Trump.

What the analysis found was surprising, but ultimately already right in front of our eyes. If people answer yes to the following two questions, there is a (stunning) 94% probability that they are a Trump voter:

1. Are you white?
2. Do you believe Barack Obama is a Muslim?

The next best predictors are the person’s level of resentment toward blacks, and whether they feel that Muslims are “violent”.

That’s right. You can predict (with 94% accuracy) whether someone is a Donald Trump supporter by determining if they agree with racist statements and (slightly delusional) racist theories about the president.

The analysis also found a strong correlation between racial resentment and how much they disapprove of the job Obama is doing as president. This in turn leads to a strong correlation between a person’s job approval rating for Obama, and whether they support Hillary Clinton. These correlations hold true regardless of how people feel about the economy.

Indeed, because racist statements and actions can be socially unacceptable, it appears that people use statements about the economy as a (more acceptable) proxy for expressing their racist feelings.

The more things change, the more they stay the same.

© Dan Wasserman

The ironic thing about being conned is that you don’t know you are being conned until it is too late.

The evidence is building that at best, Trump is a charming con man who has hit upon the ultimate con: getting himself elected as the leader of the free world (with his finger on the nuclear trigger).

I’ve been watching the unfolding scandal around “Trump University”, whose very name is itself a scam. Calling an educational program a “university” without going through an accreditation process is like calling yourself a medical doctor without going to medical school. It is illegal. As the Attorney General of New York puts it “It’s fraud. This is straight up fraud.”

And Trump knows it is fraud because he has tried to reach an out-of-court settlement in the case, despite the fact that he has loudly proclaimed that he “never settles” cases. More lies.

Trump has now doubled down by fighting allegations of fraud with more fraud. The Trump campaign released a video “The Truth About Trump University” featuring three former students saying they benefited greatly from their courses there. Trump has claimed that 98% of the people who attended liked the school. However, the three students featured in the video are all beholden to Trump through business and personal connections, and none of them are actually in the real estate business, which was the subject matter of Trump University. One of the three even claims in the video that “because of Trump University I ultimately enrolled in 2007 in the Wharton Business School.” Sounds great, but it turns out that he was never enrolled as a student there, he just attended a two-week seminar held by the school. This same guy has often described himself as an alumnus of the prestigious business school. I wonder where he learned to misrepresent himself and lie like this?

But what I’m really curious about is, will any of this make Trump supporters realize that they are being conned?

Trump claims to be an expert deal-maker who will make America great again by negotiating better deals for us. But many of his “deals” have been transparent frauds that only seem to have benefitted Trump himself. Are world leaders really so stupid and gullible that they will fall for that?