Feb 11th 2016

Donald Trump: The First TV Character to Win a Presidential Primary

by Mitchell Bard

Assistant professor at Iona College in New Rochelle, N.Y.

If you are angry about Donald Trump's position as the leader of the Republican presidential race and winner of the New Hampshire primary, just remember this: It's all Stephen Colbert's fault. Well, Colbert and the takeover of the Republican party by its extreme right flank.

It's not really Colbert's fault, of course, but I do believe that like Colbert on his old Comedy Central program, Trump is playing a character who shares his name.

Which is something that we should take into account when evaluating what is going on with Trump's campaign for the presidency. On Vox.com, Ezra Klein argues:

Trump is the most dangerous major candidate for president in memory. He pairs terrible ideas with an alarming temperament; he's a racist, a sexist, and a demagogue, but he's also a narcissist, a bully, and a dilettante. He lies so constantly and so fluently that it's hard to know if he even realizes he's lying. He delights in schoolyard taunts and luxuriates in backlash.

It's hard to argue with Klein if you are not a Trump supporter. At the same time, though, who is the "he" in Klein's description? Is it Trump the man or Trump the character?

Yes, I am arguing in this piece that the Donald Trump, who has been running for president since July, is a fictional character, and we really don't know what the real Donald Trump would do if he was elected president.

To make my argument, let's take a step back and look at Trump's career in the spotlight. Trump was never a stranger to publicity seeking and self-advertisement. He always struck a confident -- many would say arrogant -- pose. But as his business evolved, so did his public persona. He went from being a real estate magnate to someone in the business of licensing his name and brand. At the same time, he went from being primarily a real estate developer to primarily an entertainer.

As entertainment became his primary business, Trump started playing a character named Donald Trump, a bombastic real estate mogul who is a walking symbol of opulence and a modern, garish appropriation of the notion of class. He bellowed, "You're fired!" week after week on a network reality show, like a 21st century version of the Fonz's, "Ayyyyy!" or Urkel's, "Did I do that?" I mean, he has literally played the Trump character in the epitome of false-reality entertainment: the WWE.

Trump wasn't always as unhinged as his current character. For example, look at Trump's 1988 appearance on "Oprah," in which he has praise for George H.W. Bush, Michael Dukakis and Jesse Jackson (yes, Jesse Jackson) as presidential candidates. In the clip, Trump is confident -- even arrogant to some eyes, I'm sure -- and emits the familiar air that he thinks he knows better than anyone else. But his voice is quieter, and he speaks with more restraint.

Similarly, promoting his book The Art of the Deal on David Letterman's show in 1987, Trump downplayed his net worth and the amount of money he earned from his casino and real estate investments, preferring to talk about how great his properties are. Letterman hammered away at Trump trying to get him to talk about how much he's worth, but Trump refused to give in. Again, the confidence -- or arrogance -- is there, but, also again, Trump's voice is restrained, and he is not quick to brag. When Letterman asks him if he is a driven person, Trump responds:

I don't think of myself as driven ... I would say I am somebody that enjoys what I do, and I enjoy it so much that, perhaps, I do it well.

Perhaps!

Trump later tells Letterman:

I don't look at failures as failures. I think a failure is something that you really want to learn by.

The word loser was never uttered. If the 2016 Donald Trump character watched this clip, I bet he'd scream "loser" at the guy on the screen talking to Letterman.

Watching those late-1980s clips is eye-opening. Trump was a divisive personality even back then, but he was more human. I don't pretend to know what Donald Trump really believes. I am not convinced, though, that any of Trump's positions in the 2016 campaign are, necessarily, what he believes. Colbert (the real one this time) showed in a clever Trump v. Trump debate bit how often Trump has contradicted himself.

It seems clear to me that beginning with his birther attacks on Obama in 2011, Trump decided to create an extension of his entertainment character that would be geared toward running for president, using the rightward tilt of the Republican party as his vehicle. The character would be the raging id of the Republican party.

After all, doesn't "Make America Great Again" seem as on the nose and oversimplified as one of Colbert's declarations on the Colbert Report?

In the way that Colbert created the character of Colbert, a thinly veiled parody of Bill O'Reilly, Trump created the character of Trump, who is, as the Huffington Post puts it in an editor's note at the base of its stories about Trump:

A serial liar, rampant xenophobe, racist, misogynist, birther and bully who has repeatedly pledged to ban all Muslims -- 1.6 billion members of an entire religion -- from entering the U.S.

It's like Trump watched the Republican fringe get more and more doctrinal and unhinged and said to himself, "If I go nuts and pretend to be one of them, I'll get endless press coverage, and these idiots will vote for me. The crazier the stuff I say, the more I'll be beloved." Or maybe it's more like he thought he would retain support even if he shot someone on Fifth Avenue.

Donald Trump is punking us. Every last one of us. He is extremely skilled at manipulating the news media, and he clearly has an eye and ear for what has become of the Republican party. Now he is pretending to be a crazy person AND winning the Republican presidential nomination in the process.

Colbert played the character Colbert to be funny and to comment on the ridiculousness of right-wing pundits like O'Reilly. Why is Trump playing the character of Trump? Is he secretly the business-friendly but socially liberal real estate developer with a xenophobic streak he appeared to be in the 1980s and 1990s? Or has he become a power-hungry proto-fascist looking to turn the United States into 1930s Germany? Or is he looking to parlay his character's run for the presidency into the biggest reality television show of all time, the first one based in the White House and following the first family? Sadly, don't all three of those seem equally plausible?

Ezra Klein is right to point out how dangerous Trump is as a presidential candidate. That says a lot about where we are as a country in multiple ways. But, of course, odious people finding success in politics is not really a new story. Just look at Wisconsin, Maine or the guy who beat Trump in Iowa, just to name a few.

To me, what is truly scary about Trump's success is that, somehow, a big chunk of our country wants to elect as president a fictional character, with its creator using the campaign as a giant piece of entertainment. That may be the most American thing ever.

Colbert's transition from character to real person hosting Letterman's old "Late Show" has been a little rocky. What would Donald Trump's transition be like from character candidate to real person president? Or would he even make that transition? Maybe we would have the first television character president. Take that, Jed Bartlet!

Let's hope we never have to find out what a President Trump -- person or character -- would be like.

First posted on the Huffington Post.



To follow Mitchell Bard on Twitter, please click here.


TO FOLLOW WHAT'S NEW ON FACTS & ARTS, PLEASE CLICK HERE!

Browse articles by author

More Essays

Loneliness is contagious – and here’s how to beat it
by Olivia Remes
Jul 16th 2018
Getting rid of loneliness is also about letting go of cynicism and mistrust of others. So next time you meet someone new, try to lose that protective shield and really allow them in, even though you don’t know what the outcome will be.
An Artist for Dark Times: Giacometti at the Guggenheim Museum
by Sam Ben-Meir
Jul 12th 2018
From the beginning Donald Trump’s administration has been marred by corruption and outright contempt for the rule of law – with the president’s firing of FBI Director James Comey “because of the whole Russia thing”, and persistent efforts to undermine Robert Mueller’s Russia probe; with his refusal to divest himself of private businesses, his attacks on judges who rule against him, and much else besides. Trump’s shameless claim to unbounded executive power manifested itself recently in repeated calls to deprive unauthorized immigrants of their due process rights. The conditions in migrant detention centers are horrifying and photos from one facility in McAllen, Texas showed children being held in cages. According to Senator Elizabeth Warren’s Facebook report, this border facility is an enormous warehouse “filled with cages. Cages for men. Cages for women. Cages for mamas with babies. Cages for girls. Cages for boys.”  Such an unconscionable state of affairs makes the current exhibition of Alberto Giacometti at the Guggenheim Museum in New York City all the more electrifying. The show features more than one hundred and seventy-five sculptures, paintings, and drawings, spanning more than forty years and across all the various media with which he worked.  
Truth in Painting: Cézanne’s Portraits at the National Gallery of Art
by Sam Ben-Meir
Jun 12th 2018
Extract: “Nothing is beautiful except what is true,” Cézanne once said, “and only true things should be loved.” As the philosopher Jacques Derrida put it: “The truth in painting is signed Cézanne.” Perhaps it is this above all else that makes him the indispensible painter for our times, this era of so-called ‘post-truth.’ For Cézanne “painting was truth telling or it was nothing.” That is what it meant to paint from nature, to be primitive, to be free from all affectation, to be like those “first men who engraved their dreams of the hunt on the vaults of caves…” This is why we need to look and look again at Cézanne. And it is perhaps best that he has come to the National Gallery, to D.C., but a stone’s throw away from where truth is daily made a mockery of, and lies are proffered with breathtaking ease.
Alzheimer’s disease: why insulin is a new suspect
by Christian Holscher
Jun 6th 2018
Extracts from the article: "Johnson and Johnson recently announced that it was halting a clinical trial for a new Alzheimer’s drug after safety issues emerged. This latest failure adds to the dozens of large, costly clinical trials that have shown no effect in treating this devastating disease. The growing list of failures should give us pause for thought – have we got the causes of Alzheimer’s all wrong?".............."Another option is to look at the risk factors for developing Alzheimer’s. One of these is type 2 diabetes." ............"Testing these [diabetes] drugs in animal models of another neurodegenerative disorder, Parkinson’s disease, also showed impressive effects, ............These new theories bring a fresh view on how these diseases develop and increase the likelihood of developing a drug treatment that makes a difference. To see any protective effect in the brain in a clinical trial is completely new, and it supports the new theory that Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s disease are caused, at least in part, by a lack of growth factor activity in the brain. These new theories bring a fresh view on how these diseases develop and increase the likelihood of developing a drug treatment that makes a difference."
Truth is valuable in itself
by Sam Ben-Meir
Jun 1st 2018
Extract from the article: "The most common defense of truth is the pragmatic one – namely, that truth works; that true beliefs are more likely to get the job done than those that are not true. The pragmatic account of the value of truth is not wrong, but at the same time it is not enough. Truth is not valuable for solely instrumental or extrinsic reasons. Truth has intrinsic value as well. When we reduce the value of truth to instrumentality, it is a very short step to saying that we just want beliefs that work for us, regardless of whether they are true or not."
Two Hares and a Tortoise
by David Galenson
May 14th 2018
During the first century of modern art, Paris was a magnet for ambitious artists from all over Europe. Remarkably, the current exhibition at Paris’ Petit Palais tells us that “Between 1789 and 1914, over a thousand Dutch artists traveled to France.” Prominent among these were Ary Scheffer, Johan Jongkind, Jacob Maris, Kees van Dongen. But of course most prominent were Vincent van Gogh and Piet Mondrian.
In the Flesh: Chaim Soutine at the Jewish Museum
by Sam Ben-Meir
May 10th 2018
The Jewish Museum in New York City is currently presenting the work of Chaim Soutine (1893-1943), featuring just over thirty paintings by one of the most distinctive and significant artists of the early twentieth century. Focusing on still life paintings, of which he was a master, "Chaim Soutine: Flesh" includes his vigorous depictions of various slaughtered animals - of beef carcasses, hanging fowl, and game. These are dynamic works of great boldness and intensity, and taken together they constitute a sustained and profoundly sensuous interrogation of the flesh, of carnality - of blood, skin and sinew.
Air pollution increases crime in cities – here’s how
by Gary Haq
May 8th 2018
The impact of air pollution on human health is well-documented. We know that exposure to high levels of air pollutants raises the risk of respiratory infections, heart disease, stroke, lung cancer as well as dementia and Alzheimer’s disease. But there is growing evidence to suggest that air pollution does not just affect our health – it affects our behaviour too.
The need to work less is a matter of life and death
by David Spencer
May 5th 2018
 

The May bank holiday is intimately linked to labour history and to struggles over time spent at work. In the US, May Day has its origins in the fight for an eight-hour work day at the end of the 19th century.

Management ‘Gurus’ and Global Risk Agility
by Daniel Wagner
May 1st 2018
Quote from the article: "Who is talking about how globalized the world was between 1880 and 1914 -- until war broke out and fascists subsequently determined the course of history -- and the parallels between then and now? Globalization always had a down side, and was never meant to last forever -- but the gurus chose not to talk about it. It is always just a question of time until economic nationalism reappears, but the gurus have done a poor job of addressing the nexus between economics and politics, and its impact on business, which is the real story."
End of ageing and cancer? Scientists unveil structure of the ‘immortality’ enzyme telomerase
by Richard Faragher
Apr 29th 2018
"......if we did manage to stop the kind of ageing caused by senescent cells using telomerase activation, we could start devoting all our efforts into tackling these additional ageing processes. There’s every reason to be optimistic that we may soon live much longer, healthier lives than we do today."
Artificial sweeteners linked to diabetes and obesity
by James Brown and Alex Conner
Apr 29th 2018
Many countries have introduced a sugar tax in order to improve the health of their citizens. As a result, food and drink companies are changing their products to include low and zero-calorie sweeteners instead of sugar. However, there is growing evidence that sweeteners may have health consequences of their own. New research from the US, presented at the annual Experimental Biology conference in San Diego, found a link with consuming artificial sweeteners and changes in blood markers linked with an increased risk of obesity and type 2 diabetes in rats. Does this mean we need to ditch sweeteners as well as sugar?
Female doctors show more empathy, but at a cost to their mental well-being
by Rajvinder Samra
Apr 25th 2018
Female doctors show more empathy than male doctors. They ask their patients more questions, including questions about emotions and feelings, and they spend more time talking to patients than their male colleagues do. Some have suggested that this might make women better doctors. It may also take a terrible toll on their mental health.
American Arcadia: Thomas Cole at the Metropolitan Museum of Art
by Sam Ben-Meir
Apr 25th 2018
The English-born Thomas Cole (1801-1848) is arguably America's first great landscape painter - the founder of the Hudson River School, the painter who brought a romantic sensibility to the American landscape, and sought to preserve the rapidly disappearing scenery with panoramas that invoke the divinity in nature. The Metropolitan Museum of Art's "Thomas Cole: Atlantic Crossings" is an astounding exhibition featuring a painter of extraordinary power and vision, underscoring his environmentalism and the deep sense of loss that pervades many works as he reflects on deforestation, the intrusion of the railroad, and the vanishing beauty of the untrammeled wilderness.
The Two Life Cycles of Artistic Creativity
by David Galenson
Apr 23rd 2018
Quantitative evidence from three independent sources — auction prices, textbook illustrations, and counts of paintings included in retrospective exhibitions — all pointed to the fact that some important modern artists made their greatest work late in their careers — Cézanne, for example, in his 60s, and Kandinsky and Rothko in their 50s. But the same evidence indicated that other important artists produced their greatest work very early — Picasso, Johns, and Stella, for example, all in their 20s. Why was this was the case: why did great artists do their best work at such different stages of their careers? I couldn’t answer this question until I understood what makes an artist’s work his or her best.
Loneliness on its way to becoming Britain’s most lethal condition
by Joe Smith
Apr 19th 2018

People of all ages are at risk from diseases brought on by loneliness, new data has revealed.

I lived through Saddam Hussein's fall – and the horror that came next
by Balsam Mustafa
Apr 9th 2018

I was a senior university student in Baghdad, Iraq. It was March 2003, and over the past few months, my classmates had whispered to each other about the possibility of a US-led invasion and the likelihood that 35 years of dictatorship and tyranny could be brought to an end.

Goya in Old Age
by David Galenson
Mar 26th 2018
In 1815, 69-year old Francisco de Goya painted a small self-portrait. Today it hangs in Madrid’s majestic Prado Museum. Next to it are the two enormous paintings of the uprising of May, 1808, in which Madrid’s citizens had been slaughtered by Napoleon’s troops, that Goya had painted in 1814 for King Ferdinand VII, to be hung in Madrid’s Royal Palace. One of these, of the execution of Spanish civilians by a French firing squad, is now among the most famous images in the history of Western art.
Stephen Hawking: Martin Rees looks back on colleague's spectacular success against all odds
by Martin Rees
Mar 15th 2018

Soon after I enrolled as a graduate student at Cambridge University in 1964, I encountered a fellow student, two years ahead of me in his studies, who was unsteady on his feet and spoke with great difficulty. This was Stephen Hawking.

Why nutritional psychiatry is the future of mental health treatment
by Joyce Cavaye
Mar 3rd 2018

A lack of essential nutrients is known to contribute to the onset of poor mental health in people suffering from anxiety and depression, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia and