‘Frontline’ looks at GOP and the prez
‘Frontline’ examines how president seized control of GOP
WGBH's Emmy Award-winning investigative series “Frontline” shines a spotlight on President Trump's often contentious relationship with the Republican Party.
To even casual students of current events, the brisk hour from acclaimed director/producer Michael Kirk is short on surprises, but it does conjure up a fascinating array of commentators, including Kellyanne Conway, adviser to the president; Sean Spicer, former communications director; Corey Lewandowski, former Trump campaign manager; and Arizona U.S. Sen. Jeff Flake.
The episode opens in summer 2016 with then-candidate Donald Trump doing, we are told in voice-over, the one thing he didn't want to do: meet with the Republican leadership for a get-to-know-you lunch that was known, previously, for its boiled broccoli and fish.
He and Flake immediately clashed. Flake was particularly sore about Trump's attack on his home state colleague Sen. John McCain for his POW status.
(“I like people that weren't captured,” Trump said.) The encounter turned out to be merely round one.
As Republican pollster Frank Luntz says, “Don't mess with Donald Trump. If he doesn't get the better of you in the meeting, he's going to get the better of you in his tweets, and you may have thousands of followers, but Trump's got millions, and Donald Trump doesn't forget.”
Such Republican leaders as Paul Ryan thought they could manage their new president, but as “Frontline” covers the greatest hits — and misfires — of Trump's first year in office, from the health care overhaul debacle to his tweetstorms to his troubling reaction to the white nationalists who marched in Charlottesville, Va., it's clear Trump won't be tamed.
Conway notes, “He is a non-politician who came to Washington owing no one anything. He beat the establishment of two parties. Not just one, but two.”
The Republican Party is now Donald Trump, and it will rise or fall on Trump. One commentator bluntly calls it a Faustian bargain. Republicans will get what it wants — tax cuts, conservative judges, etc., but as with all Faustian bargains, “the price is way more than you expected.”
With so much familiar territory stepped through, your attention may wander to other things. Others have commented on it before, but it becomes inescapable from the clips scattered throughout: Vice President Mike Pence stares at President Trump with absolute, abject adoration. He is the beginning and the end of his universe. Everyone should make that their life goal, to find someone who looks at them the way Mike Pence stares at Donald Trump. That's probably not the takeaway “Frontline” had hoped to leave us with, but it's something.