They say that art imitates life. Sadly, it seems to be coming true in the ongoing psychodrama that domestic US politics has become – and Donald Trump is at the center of it all.
In 2016, Donald J. Trump ran as the real-life version of the character he played for years on The Apprentice. That exaggerated version of Trump was himself built from the New York Times bestselling 1987 book, The Art of the Deal.
Donald Trump, the Happy Warrior of 2016
In fact, Trump’s entire 2016 campaign was a live-action, political interpretation of his hit 1987 book in which the dynamic Manhattan real estate magnate offers his best advice for being successful and living a rich life.
One of Trump’s memorable quotes from that book was when he mused, “And if it can’t be fun, what’s the point?”
During the 2016 Presidential Election, in which Trump broke the back of the hermetically sealed, bipartisan, US political elite, it was obvious that Trump was having fun; that he was a happy warrior. The attitude appealed to many, looking for a real change in American leadership.
Another famous quote from the book explained Trump’s marketing style, “Good publicity is better than bad publicity,” he starts. But then concludes that, “From a bottom-line perspective, bad publicity is sometimes better than no publicity at all. Controversy, in short, sells [emphasis added].”
Trump played up his purported business acumen throughout the 2016 campaign and compared that to his Republican primary rivals. He accused the Bush Family of having lied to get the United States to invade Iraq.
After winning the GOP nomination, Trump pivoted, and went hard after Hillary Clinton.
Again, in The Art of the Deal, Trump says that his “style of deal-making is quite simple and straightforward. I aim very high, and then I just keep pushing and pushing and pushing to get what I’m after.”
The American people were desperate for a deal-maker-in-chief rather than a haughty ideologue. Trump was the only one talking to the vast, silent majority of American voters who wanted a man who’d cut through the partisan noise in Washington and get things done that’d benefit the most amount of Americans as possible.
Trump Never Trusted the Experts
One final quote that summed up Trump’s 2016 campaign—as well as his four, turbulent years (and may have contributed to them being so chaotic) in office—was the quote about how Trump proudly shunned expertise.
In The Art of the Deal, Trump writes, “I don’t hire a lot of number-crunchers, and I don’t trust fancy marketing surveys. I do my own surveys and draw my own conclusions.”
As a first-time, wildly successful, presidential candidate Trump made this mentality a hallmark of his campaign in 2016. He believed that his refusal to employ hacky campaign consultants and high-priced presidential advisers who had a long resume of advising Republican candidates and elected leaders was the basis of his unlikely victory over both the Bush Clan and the Clinton Crime Family.
Certainly, Trump defied the norm with his 2016 campaign.
Sadly, I believe Mr. Trump overestimated the cause of his victory. He was the right man at the right time against the right sort of opponents. Things were vastly different just four years later (as I alone warned they’d be in 2019 and no one in Trumpworld dared to listen).
Trump brought that notion with him into the White House. It was a dangerous notion that, in part, led to his inability to win a second term. Personnel is, after all, policy in Washington, D.C. as former President Ronald Reagan famously observed.
Now that Trump is out of office, having lost to the worst possible candidate imaginable—“Sleepy” Joe Biden—Trump has convinced his followers (and likely himself) that he did not lose but had the White House outright stolen from beneath his large feet.
But Trump’s attitude did not help him in the aftermath of what was the most controversial and caustic handover of power from one presidency to the next.
Trump 2024: Getting Even
Since those dark days for our democracy, Trump has been indicted for multiple crimes and is under investigation for many more. In Trump’s opinion, “There was an unwritten rule” to never prosecute a former president or one’s political rivals—especially during an election year.
To some extent, Trump is correct.
To be clear: Trump is the most prosecuted president in history. Some of those prosecutions were warranted. But most were not. Of the prosecutions that Trump faces, he is the first presidential candidate to have been not only investigated for these crimes that so many others (including President Joe Biden) have committed but to have been indicted for them.
The forty-fifth president is now not only running to reclaim what he believes is rightfully his—the White House—but to have the power to pardon himself from the criminal charges he now faces.
More than that, though (and this is where art starts to imitate life), Trump is now geared for living through the live-action version of his sequel to The Art of the Deal, the revenge-laden The Art of the Comeback. Trump has already indicated that, if reelected, he would “appoint a real special prosecutor to go after the most corrupt president in the history of America, Joe Biden, and go after the Biden crime family.”
To be fair, Trump isn’t wrong.
Not only is he facing overzealous, politically motivated prosecutions, but it is likely that the Biden Family has been engaged in what looks like a decades-long illicit, international influence peddling scheme—that the very same people seeking to prosecute Trump refuse to even investigate.
This, after Trump made a show over the last year of highlighting how, if reelected, he would finally do that which he had proven utterly incapable of doing in his first term: draining the swamp that is our federal government.
The Trump Campaign’s official platform includes a program for decimating the ranks of the permanent bureaucracy by reinstating his 2020 executive order reclassifying all civil servant positions that are involved with the formulation of policy as at-will employees (what’s known as “Schedule F”) so that they can more easily be fired by the president.
Thus, we are in store for a vengeful campaign in 2024.
That might appeal to the MAGA base, who are already predisposed to believe that the only way Trump lost in 2020 was because the election was stolen from him. Or that the prosecutions into him are all witch hunts.
Trump, in their eyes, is simultaneously the world’s greatest victim as well as the only political savior.
Yet, it must be noted that, while the prosecutions against Trump are politically motivated, the prosecutions would have never been able to go forward with indictments had not Trump exposed himself with his loose talk, thoughtless actions (especially in the mishandling of classified documents), and constant social media posts.
He is being unfairly targeted, but he didn’t have to hand his hunters the ammunition that is now being used against him.
What’s more, beyond the MAGA coalition, most voters are upset with both former President Donald J. Trump as well as President Joe Biden’s various potential criminal violations.
And reports indicate that most Americans outside the GOP are not sold that Donald Trump is the only man who can reverse America’s decline. In fact, a wrathful campaign of grievances and rage-tweets might be just the opposite that the Republicans need to win back power in 2024.
Ronald Reagan overcame the stifling advantages that the Democratic Party enjoyed over the Republicans just five years after the “long, national nightmare” of Watergate and the Vietnam War had ended (which Republicans had found themselves hated for) by being optimistic.
Reagan did not fixate on the grievances of yesteryear and instead promised a sunnier future for all Americans with a bold strategy for achieving those ambitious goals.
In 2016, Trump was both a happy warrior and a candidate who promised a bold plan for “Making America Great Again”.
In 2024, Donald Trump sounds less like Reagan and more like Hannibal, cutting a swathe of destruction across ancient Rome in retaliation for a slight against his homeland of Carthage that probably should have been ignored.
What’s needed in 2024 is not The Art of the Comeback. Instead, the GOP—and America—needs The Courage to Be Free. America needs another wave of sunny optimism about our future.
A 19FortyFive Senior Editor, Brandon J. Weichert is a former Congressional staffer and geopolitical analyst who is a contributor at The Washington Times, as well as at American Greatness and the Asia Times. He is the author of Winning Space: How America Remains a Superpower (Republic Book Publishers), Biohacked: China’s Race to Control Life (Encounter Books), and The Shadow War: Iran’s Quest for Supremacy (July 23). Weichert can be followed via Twitter @WeTheBrandon.
From 19FortyFive
Donald Trump Is Starting to Scare Everyone
