“The irrelevance of facts is part of what observers mean when they say that the normal rules of politics don’t apply to Trump”

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The irrelevance of facts is part of what observers mean when they say that the normal rules of politics don’t apply to Trump. What’s also abnormal is his obliterating the boundary between campaigning and reality TV, an absorption of politics by entertainment that is abetted, and profited from, by the media. This transformation of the election into a soft-core S&M reality show is also where Trump’s greatest vulnerability lies.

Reality TV is the spectacle of humiliation. So is Trump’s campaign. He won the primaries by humiliating his rivals. Now he’s unifying his party by humiliating them again.
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Trump will lose if his fans figure out it’s not just his rivals who are being humiliated – that they, his voters, are a bunch of losers to him, too. The political press calls Trump’s steady abandonment of his signature positions a “pivot.” That’s too elegant. What he’s really doing is demonstrating his contempt for his base.

Marty Kaplan, “Let Trump Be #NeverTrump”, Jewish Journal (20-26 May 2016), 9.

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