‘I Think He’s a Very Dangerous Man for the Next Three or Four Weeks’ - Trump biographer

[highplainsdem]

From Politico this morning:

http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2016/10/donald-trump-2016-biographers-214350

Back in early March, Politico Magazine brought together five Donald Trump biographers for a conversation over lunch at Trump Tower. At the time, the country was just beginning to grapple with the reality that the presidential nominee from one of the two major American political parties stood a good chance of being a real estate mogul and entertainer. Wayne Barrett, Gwenda Blair, Michael D’Antonio, Harry Hurt and Timothy O’Brien knew him better than anybody, had studied him more than anybody, had written an aggregate 2,195 pages in books.

-snip-

In a conference call on Monday with Barrett, Blair, D’Antonio and O’Brien, the biographers were unanimous in their assessment of what we are seeing: They are not surprised. Trump is who they thought he was. This, they said, is not a show. It is not an act. This is the man they wrote about. In 1992. In 1993. In 1999. In 2005. In 2015. This is a man who has been one of the most famous people in America for going on 40 years. Only now, though, are many people, finally, really, getting to know Donald John Trump.

He is, the biographers said, “profoundly narcissistic,” “willing to go to lengths we’ve never seen before in order to satisfy his ego”—and “a very dangerous man for the next three or four weeks.” And after that? “This time, it’s going to be a straight‑out loss on the biggest stage he’s ever been on,” one biographer predicted. And yet: “As long as he’s remembered, maybe it won’t matter to him.”

-snip-

D’Antonio: Well, don’t you think this is a kind of thuggery, that this is a guy who is playing to a mob when he talks about how he can say these things, because he goes before crowds and they’re out for blood, and their anger and rage is the justification he has for saying these thuggish things? And now he’s going to plunge the whole country into an authoritarian dynamic because the mob is telling him to do so? This is beyond shocking, and it makes you think that he has no frame of reference other than himself, that the country doesn’t matter, the peace doesn’t matter. Hillary Clinton’s physical survival doesn’t matter to him. You know, he’s going to take it all down, if he’s going to lose.

-snip-

This is a bombshell interview with those biographers. Lots of insights into his mindset and behavior here, many of them terrifynig,


Just edited to add the link above. Apologies for leaving that out earlier -- I shouldn't try posting before I've finished my first cup of coffee, I guess...

[randome]

1. Who cares what these guys think? It's Meredith McIver who knows him best.

I agree with D'Antonio, however: Trump will have no choice -ego-wise- than to accept his loss with the caveat that he "has changed politics forever" or some nonsense like that. He will still be a winner inside his head.
[hr][font color="blue"][center]You have to play the game to find out why you're playing the game. -Existenz[/center][/font][hr]

[lapfog_1]

2. next 4 to 5 years

He will lose the election, claim that the system is rigged and the election was stolen, start the TNN with Hannity, Alex Jones, Roger Ailes, and the staff from Breitbart (Bannon)... and try to make real billions (so he can pay off his creditors)

They will do two things... continue with the conspiracy theories about everything and try to start a real honest to god armed revolution.

You think what they tried to do with Obama was bad, wait until President Hilary shows up in some city or county where the local police chief or sheriff along with an insane local prosecutor tries to arrest the sitting President for some imagined crimes

[mreilly]

4. A part of me wants them to start an armed revolution...

... to be perfectly honest, any of these assholes who grabs guns and races to Washington D.C. to "take our country back" gets exactly what's coming to them. If they get mowed down in the streets by the police and military I will waste one moment of my life grieving them. "Good. Bye-bye, assholes!" will be my response.

[lapfog_1]

6. What makes you think the police will oppose them

or the military?

[Hortensis]

3. Thanks for the Trump biographers' alarming current take

on what Trump is doing, why, and where this "red in tooth and claw" leader and his mob are likely to go.

And, you know, he brought that into this political campaign. He’s really destroyed a sense of decency or boundaries or civic behavior in the course of this election that involved almost polluting everything he’s touched in this process,...

I thought when he literally prowled the platform or the stage last night, we got a picture of what it’s like in his bedroom while he’s tweeting at 3 a.m. ... He now considers himself a victim of the national media, primarily, and a bit of the Republican establishment that abandoned him overnight, and I think he’s a very dangerous man for the next three or four weeks.

So maybe for the next three weeks, he’s going to be trying out, you know, Breitbart TV and proving to the masses that follow him that he’s as red in tooth and claw as he seems to be.

We have seen what kind of polarization he can evoke over the course of 15 or 16 months, but I’m afraid that he’s going to attempt to deepen that in profound ways in the coming weeks. As recently as the convention, he tried to cool down those who said “lock her up,” and now he’s saying he would lock her up and even describing the way in which he would do it.

So I think that what is really dangerous is, ... the primary button that he can push is racism. That’s been the undercurrent of the campaign throughout. Believe it or not, you can be more explicit about it than he has been so far,... and where he takes them is really quite threatening.

But, you know, he then starts to crawl into the realm of nuclear weapons and has had off‑the‑cuff statements about re‑arming Japan and South Korea, and China should just go ahead and invade North Korea. And you first had that on the foreign policy front—the actual parameters, how dangerous he could be, took shape there.

Well, don’t you think this is a kind of thuggery, that this is a guy who is playing to a mob when he talks about how he can say these things, because he goes before crowds and they’re out for blood, and their anger and rage is the justification he has for saying these thuggish things? ... This is beyond shocking, and it makes you think that he has no frame of reference other than himself, that the country doesn’t matter, the peace doesn’t matter. Hillary Clinton’s physical survival doesn’t matter to him. You know, he’s going to take it all down, if he’s going to lose.

Read more: http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2016/10/donald-trump-2016-biographers-214350#ixzz4Ms5siXyJ

[Thrill]

5. I expect him to be very nasty

And hateful from this point on

[Sunlei]

7. His own Republicans kick him. Trump only has a few days to get them off his back. Go large or lose.

All he has to do is knock out one of those Republicans with some new 'leaked' file and they'll all fall back in line.

[Pacifist Patriot]

8. I'm baffled by this. "one of the most famous people in America for going on 40 years"

Last edited Wed Oct 12, 2016, 02:50 PM - Edit history (1)

I've not exactly been hiding under a rock, but he's not been on my radar too much since I worked at a Waldenbooks starting in 1985 and had to see his smarmy face on the cover of "Art of the Deal." Even back then he somehow gave me the creeps. I hated having to even touch that book and now know why.

But honestly, when they brought out Melania I had no idea he was married or to whom. I had it in my brain that the first Mrs. Trump was gone, but somehow completely missed Marla and #3.

I knew he made a reality tv show, but couldn't have told you the correct name. Just not my taste in entertainment.

I don't pay the slightest bit of attention to beauty pageants and didn't even know he'd owned them.

My total knowledge of Donald Trump before he ran for president was essentially:

* Had a book back in the 80s I wasn't interested in reading.
* Business guy who goes bankrupt and somehow bounces back.
* Reality television host friends had mentioned in passing as "mean" and "obnoxious."

That's pretty much it. Never saw him as celebrity material. Just assumed he was a shitty business man who had to turn to television to make a buck.

[mnhtnbb]

9. The comments highlighted below from the article are very worrisome to me

D’Antonio: About the country, Tim is touching on something that’s really disturbing to me: I don’t think I knew that the country would be this receptive to his message, but among the things that I think I’ve learned is that he’s truly the offspring of Roy Cohn and Joe McCarthy. He’s more violent in his way of thinking than I understood him to be. He’s less attached to reality than I thought he was.

But the real thing that I’m taking away is that he’s actually been telling us the truth about himself all along, and that this is not a character he’s been playing. It’s the real Trump. And I think a lot of times, people have wasted lots of effort trying to figure out: Is he serious, does he really mean this, is this all just one big joke? And I don’t think it’s a big joke. I think that he really is this horrible creature, and he has no regard for anything but himself, and he’s willing to go to lengths we’ve never seen before in order to satisfy his ego. And now we know.

O’Brien: Yeah. I think the things we’ve learned about the country are that racism is still a deeply troubling and embedded feature of American life, and he’s exploited that. I think we’ve learned that American voters don’t really care if they have a leader who is wildly ignorant about foreign affairs and spins tales about foreign policy that don’t correlate with facts or reality. I think we’ve learned that sexism and chauvinism are alive and well in the United States, and in institutional ways that are going to take a lot of work for the country to overcome.

I think we’ve learned that the leadership of the GOP lacks courage, that their party’s internal division triumphed over any adherence to conservative values, classic conservative values, and that the leadership of that party waited until the eleventh hour to distance itself from Trump and still hasn’t completely, that there’s a complete lack of political courage in this country.

The entire Trump candidacy has been extremely destructive to this country.