August 7, 2016
Trump Sees a Monster


At a recent campaign rally in Green Bay, Donald Trump belatedly endorsed Speaker of the House Paul Ryan and Senators John McCain and Kelly Ayotte. Credit PHOTOGRAPH BY EVAN VUCCI / AP PHOTO

As Donald Trump was telling an audience in Green Bay Friday night that Hillary Clinton lacked “the judgment, temperament, and moral character to lead this country,” he heard someone shouting from the crowd. Trump paused, listened, then raised his index finger vertically before bringing it down like a shutter. “He just said, ‘Plus she’s a criminal.’ ” There were gleeful chants of “Lock her up,” as Trump continued, “She’s a dangerous liar who has disregarded the lives of Americans.” Clinton was weak and had put the entire country at risk. “And she is unhinged. She’s truly unhinged. And she’s unbalanced. Totally unbalanced.” A moment or so later, he added, “In one way, she’s a monster, O.K.?”

The news from the Green Bay event was that Trump, after saying he was “not quite there yet” in terms of endorsing Speaker of the House Paul Ryan in his primary fight, had given Ryan his support. He’d done it with two thumbs up, a smile, a line about the “wonderful things” he and this “good guy” would do together. “And while I’m at it,” Trump said, he was also finally endorsing Senators John McCain and Kelly Ayotte, both of whom are in close races and both of whom, like Ryan, have said that they were backing him. (Ayotte has tried to say that her commitment to voting for and electing Trump is not technically an endorsement, but she has not explained the semantic difference well.) Though the candidates themselves made efforts to hide any hurt, Trump’s delay in endorsing them had occasioned cries of dismay from Republican stalwarts, who were aghast that Ryan, in particular, after all that he had done for Trump—including serving as the honorary chair of the Party’s Convention—might have to face an opponent without the benefit of Trump voters and Trump rhetoric. Didn’t Donald owe them that? The week began with calls for Republican leaders to renounce their endorsements of Trump, who had crudely insulted the parents of Captain Humayun Khan, who died for America, in Iraq. It ended with pouting about Trump’s failure to endorse those leaders—something that, in another, more honorable life, might have been a point of pride—and gratitude when, at last, he did. Both Ryan and Ayotte expressed their appreciation through spokesmen; earlier, McCain had already said that nothing this week changed anything about his support for Trump.

The two threads of Trump’s speech—Republican unity and Clintonian monstrosity—were closely entwined. This is one of the traps for Republicans who endorse Trump. Some, like Senator Jeff Sessions, just say they love him unabashedly. Others, like Paul Ryan, have backed their Presidential candidate, on the whole, by saying that, although they disagree with him on certain points, Hillary Clinton would be far worse. But as Trump’s policy statements remain outrageous, and his behavior makes his comments about Clinton’s “unhinged” temperament look like a study in projection, balancing that equation demands ever more from G.O.P. politicians. To say that Clinton is more dangerous than Trump requires signing on to a picture of her as a criminal madwoman, and of the political process that produced her nomination as irretrievably corrupted and broken. It leads to diatribes about Benghazi. It means believing in conspiracy theories.

“This campaign is not about me or any one candidate,” Trump said in the endorsement portion of his speech. It was about the need to “change a rigged political system that works only for the insiders.” That was his gesture toward the rest of the Party. He then, quickly, made it about him and a “very, very corrupt system”: “I know both sides, I’ve been on the other side, believe me. I actually like this side better”—that is, on the non-politician-bribing side. “I'm not part of the system, I ran against the system. . . . I ran against the donors.” And: “I have a lot of money in this deal.” And the Republicans have, all too willingly, put a lot of capital on Trump.

A particularly baroque Trumpian line this week was the notion that the election might be stolen from him. The occasion for this was the issuing of court decisions overturning overly restrictive voter-I.D. laws. (Jedediah Purdy has more on that.) In Green Bay, Trump said, “What does that mean? You just keep walking in and voting?” (No.) He added, “So you have to be very careful, very vigilant.” And yet this is also a point where he is in unity with the larger Party, which has long supported measures that are supposedly aimed at insidious attempts to destroy the integrity of the ballot but that serve, really, to suppress the turnout of minority and low-income voters.

Trump’s raw material has long been there, in other words—Benghazi, voter fraud, and the perfidy of Clinton were the subjects of fervid nights on Fox News well before this election cycle—but there is less deniability for allegedly respectable Republicans who might want the electoral benefits without the taint. (Add to that the accusations of media dishonesty: in Green Bay, Trump complained about how dishonest the press had been about his contretemps with a crying baby, whose vocal strength he said he admired. “The baby liked me!" he exclaimed.) Trump’s accusations against Clinton and election-rigging seem to be the one aspect of his rhetoric that doesn’t make “establishment” Republicans uncomfortable. Yet if she wins, by preëmptively questioning the legitimacy of a Clinton Administration they will have made sane governance all the harder.

“So we have the Queen of Corruption, she’s the Queen of Corruption, she’s a disaster,” Trump said. “I said before, if Hillary Clinton becomes President, terrorism will destroy the inner workings of our country.” A few minutes later, he got another round of “Lock her up!” going by saying, “Her single greatest achievement is being caught in a crime and getting away with it. It’s true!” This has become one of his stock lines; he repeated a variation of it, along with the analysis of her temperament—which, he noted, he had written down, as though it were an official diagnosis—in New Hampshire the next day, adding, as he pointed to his forehead, “I don’t think the people of this country want someone who is going to short-circuit up here.” (This was a reference to Clinton’s muddled explanation after she misstated F.B.I. Director James Comey’s comments on her forthrightness about her e-mail server; she has, at times, made it easier for Trump than it ought to be.)

Among other things, Trump said, Clinton would do away with the Second Amendment. He thought maybe her Secret Service guards should give up their weapons, and see how just trying to reason with an attacker went. “Got to do some really quick talking, Hillary!” Trump said. “I don’t think even Hillary, with her phony lies and disgusting habits, I don’t think Hillary could get away with that one.” His expression curled a little.

“Hillary Rotten Clinton!” Trump shouted, as the speech neared its end—a play on Rodham, her maiden name, that the crowd seemed to like. “That’s why she doesn’t want to use the name anymore, because everyone was saying that.” He shrugged, perhaps aware, perhaps not caring, that she began using the Clinton name about thirty-five years ago, when her husband was running for governor, in Arkansas. “I don’t know; I’ve been saying that.” How soon will how many Republicans be joining him?

http://www.newyorker.com/news/amy-da...-a-monster/amp