Politics is the greatest of all the Blood Sports. Today we’ll look at Donald Trump
Donald Trump is either a bombastic idiot, a super patriot, both at the same time, something in between, or maybe something else entirely… Let’s take a look at some of the evidence.
On June 16, 2015, Trump announced his candidacy for president in the 2016 election, seeking the nomination of the Republican Party (sentence from Wikipedia). He had previously ran an ‘exploratory campaign’ in 2000.
Depending upon who you listen to, Trump is many things, many of them uncomplimentary, and often contradictory. It isn’t only Democrats who think this, many Republicans aren’t enamored of him either. His backers however think he is the only person who can save the United States. From what varies depending upon which backer you are talking to.
We can skip all of the good and bad things said about him. What everyone is ignoring, is Donald Trump himself.
Donald Trump and Money
Donald Trump is an intelligent man. Anyone who has made as much money as he has, can’t be stupid.
You’ll hear a lot of criticism about how he made his money. One criticism is that he was given money by his father, and because of that the huge amounts of additional money he has made doesn’t matter. This totally ignores all of the examples of people who started out fairly well off, and ended up broke.
Trump made deals, invested wisely, and increased his wealth dramatically. He’s number 121 on the Forbes list of the 400 richest people in America. Forbes has him listed as being worth 4.5 Billion U.S. Dollars, but Trump claims his net worth is 10 Billion U. S. Dollars.
Whatever his actual net worth, he’s very, very rich.
Donald Trump and Television
Many people know of Donald Trump from his television show, The Apprentice. He claims to have been paid $213 Million U.S. Dollars for his participation. He also earned a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
Trump also been an active participant in World Wrestling Entertainment events.
Trump is used to being in the limelight. He has a reputation as a loose cannon. This reputation has been fostered by the man himself. To manage on TV the way he has, Donald Trump has to have a a fair degree of self control.
What does this mean?
All indications from his career indicate that Donald Trump is a hard working, intelligent man. This is something that the media, and his political enemies totally ignore.
But when you add this to his 2000 exploratory campaign, and now his 2016 Presidential campaign, the only rational conclusion is that Donald Trump entered into this campaign with a goal. Exactly what the goal is, we don’t know, because we can’t read Donald Trump’s mind.
But we can infer some things, based on his history.
- Donald Trump has a plan. While the details of the plan aren’t known to us, the fact that he did enter the Republican Presidential campaign is solid evidence that he has one.
- Donald Trump would have ‘gamed’ out the situation in detail. This is standard business practice. Donald Trump is a businessman, and an extremely successful one, for who this is standard operating procedure.
- Donald Trump enjoys the limelight. But while he enjoys the limelight, his experience as a television personality, and a businessman, has taught him how to control his actions, and use publicity to gain his ends.
- Donald Trump does not like losing. That he is running for President indicates that he is certain that he has a good chance of winning. We don’t know the details of how he thinks he can win, and we don’t need to. That he is running is proof enough.
Which leads us to…
Donald Trump’s Politics
We don’t know what Donald Trump believes. We know what he has said, but that may not reflect his personal beliefs. What he believes doesn’t matter for the purposes of this article.
What matters is that based on his history, we can be certain that Donald Trump is in this to win.
In Closing
Donald Trump deciding to run for President was a big surprise to me. I’ve never considered Donald Trump to be ideologically driven.
Ambitious yes. But he has never had a political identity.
Take the Bush family. The family is Republican. The McCain family is Republican. So is the Romney family.
The Clinton family is Democratic. As is the Kennedy family.
Donald Trump? Nothing. No major political bread crumbs tied Donald Trump to either party.
So why did he choose to run as a Republican Presidential Candidate?
We don’t know. We may never know for certain.
But we don’t need to know. We know that Donald Trump is an intelligent man, who understands human nature, and understands how to make a plan, and an alternate plan, and an alternate alternate plan.
He’s far better placed than Ben Carson, the other political outsider who decided to run as a Republican Presidential candidate. Ben Carson may be smarter than Donald Trump. But Donald Trump has more experience making deals, and dealing with people.
Politics is very much about making deals, and dealing with people.
Tomi Ahonen, another outsider (he’s a Finn, I’m Canadian) who follows U.S. Politics has done an estimate of the Republican delegate count to the end of February 2016. Tomi is estimating that Trump will have 35% of the delegates awarded, putting Trump solidly in first place. I’ve gone over Tomi’s numbers, and in my opinion, they are plausible. In fact they may underestimate Trump’s potential delegate numbers. I strongly recommend reading Tomi’s explanation of how he sees the next fifty-one days playing out.
And then think about it. Could a bombastic idiot manage to gain so much support by accident?
No.
This has to have been planned. Planned very carefully, with a series of alternate plans to meet a variety of contingencies.
Unless something totally unexpected happens, Donald Trump will be the Republican Presidential candidate. The rest of the field has no chance to beat him.
Then we get onto the real Presidential race, and a head to head battle between Donald Trump and Hilary Clinton will be fascinating. I’d suggest investing in popcorn futures.
Regards
Wayne Borean
Friday January 8, 2016
Through the Looking Glass 