John Fund wonders what Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump is really up to. Fund shares his observations with National Review Online readers.
Many consider him a joke. Not true. Trump knows when he is being outrageous — and acts that way consciously to build his brand. Some consider him a menace, pointing out polls that show he would do well if he abandoned the GOP after the primaries and ran as an independent. But Trump is too smart to waste money on a futile effort to capture 270 electoral votes. He will conclude — like Michael Bloomberg, another billionaire — that American politics is a two-party duopoly.
But just maybe Trump is a double agent for the Left. He is nearly a cartoon version of what a comedian such as Stephen Colbert considers a conservative — the kind of conservative Colbert played on Comedy Central until this year. He reinforces all the Left’s negative stereotypes of conservatives as ignorant blowhards. During his announcement speech last week, Trump said of Mexican immigrants: “They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists, and some, I assume, are good people.” …
… Indeed, Donald Trump seems eager to alienate sane voters by embracing conspiracy theories wherever he can find them. He sees links between autism and pharmaceutical companies. He revived “birtherism” in 2011 when he declared he didn’t believe Barack Obama had been born in the U.S. The birther movement, let’s recall, was originally driven by some of Hillary Clinton’s liberal supporters. …
… In reality, Donald Trump simply flies his own flag of convenience as the head of the Opportunist Party. As a businessman seeking political access, he could be excused for making occasional contributions such as the ones he made to former Obama chief of staff Rahm Emanuel and Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid. But through the last presidential election, a majority of his political contributions went to Democrats. And then there is Trump’s decision to declare himself a registered Democrat from 2001 to 2009. He explained to the New York Daily News that he did so because he didn’t like George W. Bush and because “most of the politicians I know are Democrats.”
