Win or lose, Trump will continue to cause havoc in Washington
WHATEVER happens next Tuesday, the Donald Trump Reality Show is about to become even scarier.
If he wins another four years in the Oval Office, Trump is going to let rip with a ferocity that’ll make his first term seem gentle. His first faltering year was an organisational disaster, but since the departure or sacking of key aides and office holders he has grown in self-belief. Who reckoned that was even possible?
His demagoguery and off-thecuff, narcissistic madness, at home and abroad, will intensify with the endorsement of a second term.
Bob Woodward, in his recent book Rage, went a long way to explaining the Trump phenomenon, leaning heavily on insights from the president’s sonin-law Jared Kushner. Kushner endorsed a description of Trump as ‘crazy … and it’s kind of working’.
More revealing was Kushner’s reference to the Cheshire Cat character in Alice in Wonderland, as a means of getting inside Trump’s head – ‘if you don’t know where you’re going, any path will get you there’.
In that light, Trump’s directionless and utterly disruptive policies on almost everything make more sense.
What he’s absolutely committed to, however, is taking a wrecking ball to the Washington establishment. And that’s where his populist appeal is grounded – anti-big government, blue collar rednecks and rust bucket disaffected who’d prefer to die in a ditch of treatable diseases rather than avail of governmentsponsored health cover.
Gun-toting and deer hunting with Jesus types, too dumb to know they’re being conned by people like Trump. They’ll love the next four years if he wins. But if he loses, the Donald will create havoc as a president scorned for the entire 11 weeks to January 20 when Joe Biden is sworn in.
The tweet machine will be smoking well into the late hours as the vitriol rachets up, the menace spikes and the risk of an evenmore-divided America escalates.
The Donald will not go quietly.