-by NoahDuring the 2016 campaign half of me was amazed that anyone could watch candidate Trump speak even for two minutes and not realize that they are watching an insane person who had managed to not be confined to asylum only because of his money and economic status. It wasn’t even entirely about what he was saying, it was the persona itself. Sometimes it’s all in the vibe, the eyes, and a certain vocal quality.The other half of me, of course, knew the answer to the mystery perfectly well. The answer lay in his hypnotic hand gestures and the fact that anyone who found what he had to say profound, believable, or even interesting probably had an IQ south of 80. There was also the fact that some people just liked his message of grievance and blame, particularly when it came to race issues and minorities. Remember those hand gestures? It was more than his acting like he was waving a lantern or playing an accordion (two of his favorites), or even the clenched fist style of dictators throughout history. There was also the number one Trump hand gesture-- the white power WP, three extended fingers signifying the W with the thumb and index finger forming a P. Yes. Many people just see what they want to see and hear what they want to hear, especially when they are led right to it.Even given all of the above, it can still be hard to understand that 62 million fools would buy the crap this huckster is selling but they do. A lot of it has to do with Trump appealing to humanity’s baser instincts, i.e., the driving forces of what it means to be a Republican: greed, blame and the need to kick somebody, preferably if they’re down.Back in mid-October, MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell expanded on all of this in a piece he called “The Fantasy World Of Trump Followers” as follows:
To be a Trump voter, a Trump supporter is to be to varying degrees, a fantasist. Some businessmen supporting Donald Trump might like to live with the fantasy that they just vote to support his giant tax cuts that bankrupt the treasury of the United State and want his racism, not his vulgarity, not his rank ignorance about every subject he ever speaks about publicly.Some Trump supporters live in a complete fantasy about Donald Trump himself, the fantasy that somehow Donald Trump will still get Mexico to pay for the wall. The fantasy that there will be a wall to pay for. The fantasy that Donald Trump is smarter than anyone else in politics, the fantasy that Donald Trump is a tough guy, even though he grew up a spoiled rich kid. The fantasy that Donald Trump is brave, even though he got repeated draft deferments to avoid the war of his era and has never once since then exhibited a single moment of bravery of any kind in his life. Still, the Trump fantasists see him as tough and brave and even thin and energetic as they do in this video that was shown at a Trump campaign event at a Trump property in Florida.That’s about the only place where people would show this video publicly. We aren’t showing the video, and I noticed today the CNN hasn’t been showing the video because in this video, this fantasy version of Donald Trump shoots and kills someone from NBC, and someone from CNN, someone from CBS, and someone from BBC News, along with many other murder victims from many other news organizations. The fantasy Trump character shoots and kills Congressman Joe Kennedy whose grandfather was shot and killed while campaigning for president, and whose great uncle, President John F. Kennedy, was shot and killed, assassinated.... In the video, the fantasy Trump kills more people than you can count, including Rosie O’Donnell, Congresswoman Maxine Waters, Hillary Clinton, Bill Clinton, and, of course, of course, the fantasy Trump completes what is perhaps the most rewarding of the fantasies in this video for Trump fantasists by breaking President Obama’s neck and killing him. Everyone named Trump is now claiming they knew nothing about this video, including Donald Trump, Jr., who was at the event where the video was shown. President Trump has, through a White House spokesperson, condemned the video after claiming he has not seen the video....What are the chances Donald Trump has not seen that video? That is code language for his followers to understand that he really doesn’t condemn the video. When he tells them he’s condemning the video without having seen it, he’s telling them that this is just a political thing that I have to say right now about the video, which I hope you watch and I hope you think of me this way, especially the thin part, fantasy.
As I always say, context is everything. This video is not a one-off. Remember back in 2017 when Trump tweeted out a short fake video of him beating on a CNN reporter at a wrestling match?The newer video, this year’s model, described in such detail by Lawrence O’Donnell is really, in essence, just a longer and even more graphic version of that. It’s no longer Trump wrestling a reporter and delivering a beating. This time Trump is shooting and stabbing political opponents and journalists to death. It is the stuff of Republican dreams. This extended video is an altered form of a scene filmed in a church from the movie Kingsman: The Secret Service and it takes place in what the video names “The Church Of Fake News.” It was shown at an event held by a pro-Trump group that calls itself American Priorities. The event was held at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort which Trump himself now calls his legal residence and the “Southern White House.”As O’Donnell mentions, Donald Trump, Jr. was in attendance. That we’ve had mass-shootings in churches and a Trump fanatic mailing pipe bombs to many of the victims depicted in the video should never be seen as a coincidence. Rather, it should be seen as another Trump attempt to incite violence against perceived Trump enemies, people he and his supporters call “enemies of the people.” It is a pattern. When that mass-shhoting or other violent event does occur, Trump will again “condemn’ the action and deny any responsibility or connection. Then he will go off camera and laugh.
