Published: The Good Men Project (November 24, 2015) – co-authored with Jill Di Donato
Donald Trump’s ascent as a presidential frontrunner is, without question, one of the major political events of our lifetime. Even if he doesn’t ultimately win the Republican nomination next year, he has already dominated in the polls long past the time when most experts believed his star would wane. As a result, Republican leaders are already beginning to panic that he may actually become their candidate, with some even turning to a reluctant Mitt Romney as their potential savior.
There are many variables that have contributed to Trump’s success, but one detail in particular deserves further explanation: Trump’s prominence in the current news cycle says something distasteful about the political agenda-setting power of celebrity in our country.
This explains, for one thing, why he is able to withstand indignities that would be politically fatal to other presidential aspirants. Take his parody of Drake’s “Hotline Bling” on his Nov. 7 SNL appearance (which was pretty money). Let’s say SNL’s “Hotline Bling” sketch was a parody of a parody—Drake dogging himself is the ultimate form of cool, especially when he’s in the middle of a beef with Meek Mills. That said, Drake isn’t running for president. Why was Trump in on the joke?
Part of the problem is that, because Trump has been a pop culture icon since the 1980s, his image allows him to embrace certain causes simply by appearing to be the embodiment of them. Over the past six months, every time Trump said something outrageous, his numbers went up. Taking on the persona of a celebrity allows Trump (or whoever is running his campaign – Ivanka, is it you?) to avoid discussing many important election topics and instead focus on his cult of personality. As Salon’s Conor Lynch put it in an Aug. 24 article, the Republican debates have attracted record-breaking numbers of viewers because Trump’s participation:
“…Donald Trump is a famous reality star, and the American people crave fame and entertainment. Trump is the antithesis of Sanders, in the sense that his entire campaign so far has been about his ego, rather than ideas. There can be no denying that he is entertaining to people across the political spectrum, and he has largely turned the GOP primaries into a reality show.”
This also explains why Trump’s disturbing ideological views – many of which would normally be hard to swallow, like, Trump’s stance on border control or his views on women) become easily digestible. As political journalist Alisa Solomon wrote in an Oct.31 article in Fortune:
“At a time when voting is treated with the gravity of clicking on a Facebook ‘like’ button … SNL’s invitation to Trump reveals how politicians aren’t just exploiting the entertainment industry for its reach. The entertainment industry can exploit their blustering buffoonery for laughs.”
This celebrity image allows Trump to play Marie Antoinette at a time when many Americans are in dire need for a slice of bread. Rather than sustenance, however, people seem to delight in the spectacle Trump provides instead. Throughout much of his career, Trump’s fame allowed him to serve as the embodiment of concepts that were ingrained in our zeitgeist. In the 1980s and 1990s, he was the personification of wealth and luxurious excess that seemed to define first Reagan era yuppie-ism and then Clinton era prosperity. In the 2000s, right around the time the reality TV boom took off, Trump’s hit show “The Apprentice” captured society’s newfound obsession with fame as a reward for its own sake. Now that Trump desires a political career, he has simply evolved that gift to the next level – the 2010s are an era in which Trump’s Republican Party is in the midst of a reactionary backlash against racial diversity, one exacerbated by the election of the first black president. Consequently his aborted presidential campaign in the last cycle focused on a conspiracy theory tinged with racism (i.e., birtherism) and this time around was kicked off with disparaging characterizations of Mexican immigrants and fueled by subsequent rants against political correctness.
Trump’s shtick of being politically incorrect has worked because like his daughter Ivanka, a purported advisor to her father’s campaign, declared, “He says what he means and he means what he says.” But there’s a point where “straight-talk” became a euphemism for racist, xenophobic, capitalist misogyny, and Trump has been praying on that tacit understanding of hate for the past six months of this election. This is not to say that the public is completely acquiescent. The activist group MoveOn has proactively been rolling out “Dump Trump,” petitions, attacking his corporate backers like Macy’s and NBC. Are petitions enough for the showman-turned-politician?
Because Trump is a seasoned performer, with hosting gigs on “The Apprentice” franchise, before NBC cancelled it, he’s been playing the role of pop star politician with success. This is a man whose hero is Reagan, not only a two-term president, but star of the Oscar-nominated Kings Row and Santa Fe Trail (opposite Errol Flynn).
Will Trump actually clutch the GOP nomination? It’s a long race. However, Trump’s presidential candidate rhetoric and the wave of celebrity that’s carrying it is cause enough for alarm.