We were back from the alleys of Chicago, rolling through videotape in our office while trying to chip golf balls into a Styrofoam cup we’d taped to a filing cabinet. The television set was on. There was a black spot on the screen marking where it had been struck by an errant shot. Donald Trump was holding a press conference. He was announcing a run for president. The electronic bruise made it look as though Trump had been socked in the forehead with an iron skillet.
How many times is this guy gonna pull the chain? I said to Bob, lining up a ball.
Ever the master showman, Trump seemed to yank the presidential chain every election cycle. He toyed with it back in ’88 while hawking his book The Art of the Deal. He never actually entered the race then, but the publicity helped make the book a number one best seller.
Trump actually sort of got into the 2000 contest at the behest of Jesse Ventura, the former professional wrestler turned governor of Minnesota, and Roger Stone, the former Nixon dirty trickster and ultimate Beltway insider. He pulled fifteen thousand votes in the California primary as a Reform Party candidate before bowing out to the knuckle-dragging conservative Pat Buchanan, whom he referred to unmercilessly as a “Hitler lover.” He threatened to run again in 2004, this time very seriously, very seriously, he said. And why not? He was shopping a reality TV show. In 2008, he told the New York Post he was thinking about it, until he forgot about it. He teased us again during the 2012 cycle, with polls showing he was the leading potential Republican candidate. He repeatedly barked for President Obama’s birth certificate, until, you know, he decided he wasn’t running anymore.
Now he was back, really prepared to do it, maybe.
No one seemed to have told him that this was supposed to be Jeb versus Hillary, the epic confrontation between members of the imperial families of American politics. The power brokers and the money class had all but decided that they were the nominees, the cash and the endorsements all sewn up. But here comes Don, the preposterous, pompous, outrageous New York developer. Here comes the sizzle.
Trump appeared heavy, having packed on some noticeable pounds, his tailored jacket hanging on him like a wrinkled maternity robe. His skin was an unnatural hue of orange. And his hair. Was that a comb-over? Was it a weave? What color was it exactly? On my TV screen, he looked like a gigantic piece of candy corn with the orange top and the bruised face.
But Trump did not disappoint. He was bombastic and bilious: “The other candidates,” he said of his soon-to-be-GOP rivals, “they went in, they didn’t know the air-conditioning didn’t work. They sweated like dogs. They didn’t know the room was too big because they didn’t have anybody there.”
That’s true, I said to Bob, reminding him of the Iowa clown show.
“. . . I’m using my own money. I’m not using the lobbyists’. I’m not using donors. I don’t care. I’m really rich . . .”
Trump was blistering the political hacks, claiming they had turned First World workers into secondhand discount shoppers:
“. . . How stupid are our leaders? How stupid are these politicians who allow this to happen? How stupid are they?”
Yep. That was a good one too. It was going to play. Trump had by now worked himself up into a plump berry of bombast:
“. . . I will be the greatest jobs president that God ever created!”
He was funny. These were going to be good ratings. Terrific ratings. These were going to be the best ratings you’ve ever seen. Believe me.
Then Trump turned bigot: “When Mexico sends its people, they’re not sending their best. They’re not sending you . . . They’re sending people that have lots of problems and they’re bringing those problems [to] us. They’re bringing drugs, they’re bringing crime, they’re rapists, and some, I assume, are good people.”
Rapists? Well, that puts a fork in it, Bob said, turning away. He’s done.
One would have assumed. Trump thought Mexicans were rapists. Trump was going to build a wall to keep them out. It was already being looped on the ticker at the bottom of the screen. “Trump: Mexicans Are Rapists.”
The Don was done five minutes after he’d begun. A world record flameout.
But then Trump also said something you wouldn’t expect from a billionaire with a butler who lives in his own office tower high over midtown Manhattan: “Sadly, the American dream is dead. But if I get elected president I will bring it back bigger and better and stronger than ever before, and we will make America great again.”
Make America great again. He nailed it, I thought. He must have workshopped it, had it polled, overheard it from the hard hats on one of his construction jobs. The establishment right was still peddling the outdated notion of American transcendence. We were the greatest, strongest, most virile nation on the planet. Romney tried that line in 2012, but didn’t really believe it. After all, he had secretly denounced nearly half the American population as deadbeats suckling on the government teat. But in defense of Slick Mitt, who did believe it anymore? We had lost our wealth, our work, our way. The cities were destitute and on fire. The infrastructure was crumbling. The famous Chicago Skyway toll road had become as rough as a cheese grater and was sold to a foreign company for $2 billion to plug a short-term budget hole. Chi-Town’s parking meters went for an additional $1 billion. Pensions and health care had been slashed in Detroit to make room for the largest municipal bankruptcy in American history. Old women and crippled firefighters were given a couple hundred bucks a month, a pat on the head, and a “thanks for your service” before being tossed on the Obama health exchange. Former soldiers in Phoenix were dying while waiting for their appointments at the V.A. as administrators scurried to cover it up. And more servicemen and servicewomen were arriving home every day from our forever wars in the Middle East, wars that we had yet to pay for—preferring to burden our children rather than tax ourselves. What was exceptional about any of this?
At the same time the establishment left was bogged down in the narrative that America was never great, never exceptional, that it was racist and slothful. The way forward was more cosmopolitanism, greater globalism, open borders, and more generous benefits for the historically oppressed minority groups. Problems? Yes, the country had many, but there was little acknowledgment from the liberal elitist camp that ours was the most nimble, most rapidly changing culture in the world. It was a culture able to correct itself through law and reason. The archaeological ruins of the American Century lay everywhere, the empty machine shops and storefronts in both small towns and large, testaments to an economic greatness that was slipping away. Somehow Americans were racist and yet Obama earned 43 percent of the white vote in 2008 as the economy had collapsed under Republican control. Obama was offering hope and some change in our pockets. Americans of all colors thought they were voting for a new New Deal. What we got instead was health care and little else.
Make America great again. It was brilliant in its simplicity. It was the economy, stupid. It’s always been the economy, stupid. And it was the fault of the government and the big banks. The Everyman had been forgotten and he was angry. We had seen this in our travels: low wages and strangled opportunities. It cut across all races. All parties. All regions. Make it great again. Fix it. Help us.
I turned to Matt and Bob.
We gotta track this guy down. He might be a clown, but he’s on to something.
They agreed, but the Dawn of the Don would have to wait. The very next evening, a deranged white terrorist named Dylann Roof, precise and plotting in his hatred, murdered nine black parishioners as they worshipped in a South Carolina church. The man’s hope was to ignite a race war.