The more offensive Teflon Don is, the more Americans want to vote for him
If the wind’s doing that to HER hair, why is HIS stuck solid?
THIS was billed as the Donald Trump show and it didn’t disappoint. The bombastic property mogul-turned-TV star took centre stage as the battle to decide the next Republican candidate for President of the United states went live across America.
Seventeen — yes, 17 — contenders flew to Cleveland, Ohio, to take part in televised hustings at the local basketball arena. There wasn’t room for all of them on stage, so they had to be split into two groups. Trump was in pole position for the main event.
Going into Thursday night’s beauty contest, The Donald (as he was christened by his former wife Ivana) led the field on 25 per cent — double that of his nearest rival, the cerebral former Florida governor Jeb Bush, brother of former President George W. Bush.
Trump is the Teflon Don. Nothing seems to stick to him, no matter how controversial. On the contrary, every time the liberal media accuse him of making a gaffe, his popularity has soared.
The Donald has claimed Mexico is deliberately sending rapists and murderers across the border. He has trashed the service record of former Presidential candidate John McCain, a Vietnam prisoner of war, saying: ‘I prefer my heroes not to be captured.’
None of this has harmed him, not even a dredged-up allegation that he raped Ivana while they were married.
Trump has approached this race like a contestant on his prime-time TV show, The Apprentice. He is boastful, gauche and brimming with self-confidence, even if lacking self-awareness.
His extraordinary hairdo is legendary, a cross between an Arthur scargill combover and a walnut whip. It looked as if a small animal had crawled on to his head and died.
As Eric Morecambe use to say about Ernie Wise: you can’t see the join. That’s because there’s not a single join, there’s dozens of them.
Trump’s barnet is the eighth wonder of the world, a feat of engineering which easily surpasses any of his grandiose construction projects. When he descended from his private jet in gale force winds in Cleveland, there wasn’t a hair out of place — unlike his unfortunate current wife Melania, whose chest- nut mane was plastered all over her face. Trump must have spent the entire flight standing on his head in a vat of lacquer. He uses so much hairspray he must be single-handedly responsible for the alleged hole in the ozone layer — which would explain why he’s a ‘denier’ when it comes to ‘man-made climate change’.
The Donald may come across to British observers as a rich man’s Nigel Farage in a Michael Fabricant wig, but to my mind his nearest equivalent i s the l ate Robert Maxwell, of Mirror newspapers fame, another selfpromoting high-profile tycoon with political pretensions.
Like Maxwell, he is devoid of modesty and is prone to exaggerate his wealth. Trump claims a net worth of $10 billion, an estimate refuted by those who have examined his finances in detail. In common
with the charmless Alan Sugar, who hosts the British version of The Apprentice, he is thin- skinned and notoriously litigious.
He once tried to sue the comedian Bil l Maher, who c hall e nged Trump to produce his birth certificate to prove he was not the son of an orangutan.
This was at a time when Trump was claiming that Barack Obama was a Muslim, born in Kenya, and therefore not eligible to be U.S. President.
In celebrity- obsessed America, there will always be a constituency for the kind of showboating and conspiracy theories i n which Trump specialises.
Even rival candidates acknowledge that he has tapped into a widespread sense of disillusion with established politicians.
WHETHER that will translate into electoral success is doubtful. Voters tuned in looking for a credible future President, not a reality TV show host. Trump was more like a radio shock-jock than a serious politician.
Up until now, he’s sucked all the oxygen out of the republican race. This was the first time Trump had to face his rivals and the first time he’s been seriously challenged.
Fox News presenter Megyn Kelly went for the jugular, confronting Trump with assorted remarks he’d made about women, calling them ‘fat pigs’, ‘dogs’ and ‘sluts’. Initially, he played it for laughs, saying he was only r ef erri ng t o rosie O’Donnell, a well-known Left-wing, lesbian comedienne.
But then his rizla skin got the better of him and he attempted to patronise and belittle Kelly, which infuriated part of the audience in the hall and no doubt millions of women watching at home.
He also became aggressively defensive over the fact that a number of his business ventures had filed for bankruptcy protection.
Trump was forced to explain why he used to be a Democrat and had given money to Hillary Clinton’s election campaign and to the Clinton Foundation.
He said candidly that he gave money to politicians to buy influence, just like every other donor. So what did he get from the Clintons?
‘I told her to be at my wedding. She came to my wedding.’
Since Hillary is most likely to be the Democratic candidate at the next election, it perhaps wasn’t Trump’s brightest move to admit they had such a cosy relationship.
It was also revealed that Bill Clinton had phoned Trump, encouraging him to run for the White House.
What will have harmed him most, however, is the very first question. The candidates were asked to raise their hands if they could not give a guarantee that they would support the eventual republican nominee and would not run as a thirdparty candidate.
Only Trump put up his hand, to the dismay of many in the arena and at home, who still believe multimillionaire businessman ross Perot running as an independent in 1992 split the republican vote and handed the White House to Bill Clinton at the expense of the i ncumbent, President George Bush senior.
He also broke ronald reagan’s cardinal rule that republicans should never speak ill of fellow republicans. Voters in America, as in Britain, dislike divided parties.
AND speaking of the Bush clan, what about the latest member of the dynasty to stand for President? Jeb may well have run back in 2000 had the electoral cycle been more favourable. But he was only a year into his first term as Florida governor, so Dubya got the gig.
Jeb’s intention in this debate was to present himself as the grown-up in the room — and to some degree he succeeded. He certainly looked presidential. The problem was that the President he looked like was his father, George H. W. Bush.
Jeb seemed old, grey and stilted next to some of the others on stage — though admittedly some of them had drawn deep from the Grecian 2000 well and had unfeasibly, glossy black hair.
Jeb has been successful in attracting the big money and may gain momentum, but he’s already beginning to look like yesterday’s man.
And there’s also the nagging doubt that with Hillary likely to be on the Democratic ticket, is America really gagging for yet another Bush or Clinton in the White House? Surely a nation of 320 million people can come up with a better alternative. That man could yet be Marco rubio, the 44-year-old Florida senator, who surprised many people by running against his mentor, Jeb Bush.
I saw rubio speak at a republican grassroots Tea Party rally a couple of years ago and he was electrifying. The son of Cuban immigrants, his dad worked as a bartender and rubio put himself through school, incurring $100,000 in student loans.
‘I don’t need lectures from Hillary Clinton about living from paycheck to paycheck. I was raised living from paycheck to paycheck,’ he said to wild applause on Thursday night.
rubio i s reported to be the candidate the Democrats fear most, especially as he commands huge support among the growing number of crucial Hispanic voters in swing states. Wisconsin governor Scott Walker — not to be confused with the pop singer from the Walker Brothers who had a Number One hit in Britain with The Sun Ain’t Gonna Shine Any More in 1966 — is another front-runner, popular for taking on the entrenched public service unions and winning.
Though this debate sometimes looked like the set of the TV quiz Fifteen-to-One, there was enough time to form a reasonable impression of most of the participants.
Some might argue that 17 is a ridiculously large field for such an important job, but I find it impressive. Even those on the undercard are considerable figures, with extensive political or business experience.
rick Perry is a two-term governor of Texas, which has the 12th-biggest economy in the world. The breakout star of the opening debate was the only woman in the race, Carly
Fiorina, former chief executive of computer giant Hewlett-Packard, who could well make a compelling Vice-Presidential candidate.
Compare this line-up of experienced former governors and first division players with the bunch of muppets and pygmies contesting the Labour leadership. Andy Burnham, Yvette Cooper and Liz Who would have been eaten alive. They’d have been horrified by the noholds-barred rules of engagement.
What was refreshing, if you’re only familiar with our TV election debates, was the willingness of candidates to offend, to transgress the diktats of political correctness which have stifled honest public discourse in Britain.
My favourite line of the night came from Mike Huckabee, the folksy evangelical Christian former governor of Arkansas, who has his own show on Fox which mixes hardcore politics with country and western music — imagine the BBC’s Andrew Neil at the Grand Ole Opry and you get the idea.
He was lamenting the fact that the Armed Forces are hamstrung by legal constraints, human rights and ‘diversity’ considerations — just as they are in Britain.
Huckabee said: ‘The job of the military is to kill people and break things. I can’t see how paying for transgender surgery for soldiers makes America a safer place.’ In Britain, he’d have been arrested for ‘hate crime’.
The presidential election is 15 months away. The Republican candidate will almost certainly have to face Hillary Clinton. However, her poll ratings are dipping and her support among older women voters has imploded, largely because they say they don’t trust her.
Hillary’s nearest Democratic contender is a self-proclaimed socialist called Bernie Sanders, America’s answer to Jeremy Corbyn.
One thing everyone agreed on in Cleveland is that the world is a better place when the U.S. leads from the front — not, as Obama has been prone to, from behind.
America’s disengagement has seen the rise of Isis, capitulation to Iran and an increasingly truculent and malevolent Russia under Putin.
The next President of the United States — and it won’t be Donald Trump — will have to confront that. Let’s hope they get it right.