Friday, March 25, 2016
Trump is a Stand-up Guy on the Stump, and his Throngs Love It
As am I, so nutty I listen to just about every Trump speech on my long California commute.
Nothing on the air is more entertaining.
Aside from Build The Wall and We’re Gonna Knock The Hell Out Of ISIS — which ignite seismic cheers — Trump’s lines lasso fans with the levity of a stand-up comic.
“Folks, what’s more fun than a Trump rally?” he likes to bark while a disrupter gets hauled off.
The answer is in the numbers. Over 30,000 fans have jammed venues in Alabama, with 20,000 packing Mississippi, Oklahoma, Florida and Texas and 10,000 in Ohio, Vermont, New Hampshire, Iowa, Illinois, Georgia, Arizona, South Carolina, North Carolina, Arkansas, Louisiana, Nevada, Michigan and Missouri.
Why do so many like him? Because Trump speaks nationalist — the language of America first. Stop illegal immigration. Hold off the Muslim/terror flood. Treat veterans right. Lower taxes to keep companies in this country. Rework trade deals to bring back jobs.
City Cracks
Trump speaks New York, full of his trademark “that I can tell you.” He mixes gut with gag:
“I was watching the news a little while ago and one of the commentators, who I’m not particularly fond of — but these are minor details.”
“I don’t care if you’re dying. I don’t care if your wife just said she’s leaving you. Get out and vote.”
“I carried all the groups: tall people, short people, fat people, skinny people.”
“I’ll have the toughest people make our deals, guys who are so disgusting you’d never want to have dinner with them. Who cares?”
“First of all, I don’t believe anything Telemundo says.”
“Obama better be glad I didn’t run last time. He would’ve been a one-term president.”
“You know why we didn’t build the wall before? We couldn’t get environmental approval. Woulda hit a toad, maybe a snake. You think China got an environmental impact statement before digging up the South China Sea? I don’t think so.”
The Trumpet belts it all out without a script. Without teleprompters. He takes to the podium amid the hysteria, pulls out a piece of paper with notes, says “Oh wow” and riffs.
Comedic, Caustic Candidate
Other highlights on the Trump Trail of speeches and press conferences that started in June and will climax with his presidential victory Nov. 8.
Cutting off a long question from a radio guy: “No one’s listening to you.”
Dealing with his ground game: “We’re working hard on our ground forces.”
Answering a New Hampshire pacifist’s whine about our atom-bombing of Japan: “Do you remember this thing called Pearl Harbor? It turned out we were stronger, meaner and smarter.”
On a business backing from months before: “Carl Icahn endorsed me the other day.”
On a laudatory cover story from two months before: “You really have to read this week’s Time magazine.”
On the budget: “President Obama is a lousy negotiator with everybody except when he deals with the Republicans. Then he gets everything he wants.”
On Ben Carson: “How many people has he hired, a couple of nurses?”
On Mexican leaders bashing his border plan: “The wall just got 10 feet higher.”
On the crummy Iran deal: “The ayatollah would never be called the supreme leader by Trump. That I can tell you.”
On the past two elections: “McCain lost, Romney lost. I said, ‘The next time I’m just gonna do it myself.’ ”
“Sometimes there’s just no better word than the word stupid.”
“Most politicians want your money. They say: ‘I’ll take anything. Give us an undershirt!’ ”
“If you’re not gonna vote for me, don’t vote!
Chris Matthews: “What are your tools (to get things done)?” Trump: “Me.”
“Who’s gonna pay for the wall?” Crowd: “Mexico!”
Praising Ann Coulter’s best-seller “Adios, America”: “You have to go out and buy her book ‘Adios, Amigo.’ ”
On hitting Hillary with Bill’s philandering: “Believe me, they had a rough weekend after that. If they were even together.”
Analyzing Marco Rubio’s ragged try at trashing Trump: “Hostility is not for everyone.”
Prime Time For Primaries
The March 15 Trump Show turned into the funniest victory act since Costello beat Abbott.
“Nobody has ever, ever in the history of politics received the kind of negative advertising that I have. … By the way, mostly false. I wouldn’t say 100%, but about 90%.”
“Then a commercial comes on. The worst commercial, and I’m with these wonderful people from Cadillac and all these top executives, and I’m saying, ‘Look over there! Look! Don’t watch it. Don’t. You don’t want to watch it.’ I’m saying, ‘Isn’t the grass beautiful? Look! Look! Don’t watch.’ ”
The genteel Palm Beach audience howled and stood with fervor. Trump towered again.
Bucky Fox is an editor, author and columnist in Southern California.
Trump Towers Over Presidential Field
Will Donald Trump win the presidency?
Yes.
Good. Got that out of the way. No dialing a focus group. Tell it straight.
Like Trump at the Houston debate earlier this year, when asked whether Hispanics’ negative opinion makes him unelectable: “No.”
Like Trump recently on if he would consider David Petraeus as veep. “No.” The billionaire spotlights the general as unfairly hammered vs. what Hillary Clinton is skirting. Still, the Iraq War hero has too much legal baggage.
Regarding that vice presidential pick, would Trump seek a fellow biz type or go with a politician? “Politician.” The tycoon knows he has to close deals with Congress.
How about dunking terrorists to make them talk? Again, Trump gets to the point. As opposed to every other prez contender.
Mideast savages are “chopping off heads and they’re saying to themselves, ‘Can you believe how weak and pathetic the Americans are?’ So they’re asking Ted Cruz: What do you think of waterboarding? ‘Uh, uh, what do I say? I want to be politically correct. Waterboarding is so terrible … even though they’re chopping off heads,’ ” Trump taunted in Las Vegas in February, the day before nailing down Nevada. “He couldn’t answer the question. He was a mess. Then they said to me, ‘What do you think of waterboarding?’ I said I think it’s great, but I don’t think we go far enough. It’s true.”
Bold, Brash, Beloved
Answers. Trump rattles them off fearlessly. He doesn’t consult pollsters. He goes with his gut. Which is one reason he’s wildly popular — dominating the Drudge debate poll with 57% — and on the way to delivering the inaugural address on Jan. 20, 2017, as the 45th president.
As Ann Coulter says, President Trump will be halfway through that speech as the Republican Party keeps debating his viability.
Don’t limit that hedge to GOP bureaucrats. Throw in 99% of TV pundits: Karl Rove, Brit Hume, George Will, Bill Kristol, Rich Lowry, Steve Hayes, Charles Krauthammer, S.E. Cupp, Mike Smerconish, Ben Ferguson, Jeff Toobin.
They share a maddening trait — smug, glib and handsomely paid while belittling Trump’s odds of winning. Even though that’s all he’s done while building a titanic real estate empire.
The Right Side
About the only media types who had it right from the start last summer were Coulter, Jeff Lord, Charles Hurt, Michael Savage and Joe Scarborough. Let’s also not forget Fox Sports Radio’s Andy Furman, who sounded the Trumpet on his morning show, with sidekick Mike North lauding him: “If I bet on all those other guys who said Trump had no shot, I’d be broke.”
The smart ones see a runaway Trump Train, with Los Angeles radio host Doug McIntyre — hardly a Don fan — conceding after Nevada’s rout, “Donald Trump will win the Republican nomination.”
No “maybe.” No “very well could.” Trump will claim the GOP trophy in July in Cleveland. And win it all in November.
Why?
1. Issues. Trump owns immigration, trade, Muslim terror, self-funding his campaign to ignore special interests. As CNN’s sharpest panelist, Kayleigh McEnany, said after Tuesday’s Vegas jackpot, “Donald Trump isn’t so much ideological as America first.”
2. Moxie. Trump has it in spades.
Responding to ex-Mexican President Felipe Calderon saying his country wouldn’t pay for the Trump Wall: “It just got 10 feet taller.”
Lauding his supporters: “68% would not leave under any circumstances. I think that means murder. I think it means anything.”
Analyzing Nevada’s sweeping triumph: “I won with tall people, I won with short people, fat people, skinny people. I won with highly educated, OK educated and practically not educated at all.”
Hitting back at a protester: “I love the old days. You know what they used to do to guys like that when they were in a place like this? They’d be carried off on a stretcher, folks. … I’d like to punch him in the face.”
The Trumpet
Juxtapose all that with Tim Pawlenty, whose wilting beside Mitt Romney in the GOP’s 2012 debate cycle finished the former Minnesota governor. Pawlenty just endorsed Marco Rubio. Enough said.
Then there’s John Kasich, whose benign line about “many women who left their kitchen” to volunteer for him decades ago caused a tiny PC tremor – for which the Ohio governor APOLOGIZED. Even Trump detractor Matt Lewis said, “This is exactly why Trump is so popular. This is political correctness run amok.”
CNN’s Brianna Keilar is supposedly so shocked by Trump’s takes, she wondered, “Does this pay off, this kind of language?”
Yes.
Bucky Fox is an editor, author and columnist in Southern California.
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