The election of 2016 has produced small books, dishonest books, and now a sad book How Trump Won, bad enough that despite the fierce competition is the worst book on the election I have read so far. The subtitle might be: Trump Won and We Helped and So Everything Else We Say is True.
As arguments go, this is not much, but then Joel Pollak (Breitbart) and Larry Schweikart do not argue, they assume. Nobody who does not already agree with them will find the book persuasive, interesting, or even insightful. Pollak was there for events, but his at the moment reports (badly re-edited to move to the past tense in this book) read as if at the time he was seeing what his editor wanted him to see.
The entire book reveals nothing about the election one did not learn from reading Trump supporters’ Twitter. This “book” tells us what would happen if Twitter removed word limits: rants would still be rants, just more time consuming to read. If this is your idea of insight, or even English, there is much more of it in the book:
While the rest of the press corps, smugly oblivious to Trump’s appeal and obsessed with “ gotcha ” moments, squandered their access to the candidate and his supporters on increasingly feeble attempts to trip up the candidate ( or failing that, at least to make his supporters look really stupid), Joel used his opportunities to delve into the sui generis phenomenon that was the Trump campaign .*
The press was not just oblivious, they were smugly oblivious. Pollak and Schweikart can add an intensifier to anything. The press may not have been able to make Trump look bad or his supporters look stupid, but this book goes a good way to doing the job. Take this description of the African-American duo Diamond and Silk:
There are Diamond and Silk , two robust black women , volunteer emissaries for the ticket whose pro – Trump videos had made them an internet phenomenon .
In a different sort of book a person can read a robust argument and we have all seen a person in robust health, but it is an odd use of the word. “Look! Two robust black women . . . ”
It gets worse.
Look for the robust use of hack phrases in just one paragraph:
A motorcade — local police , highway patrol , and Secret Service — rolls out of the Trump International Hotel and down the back streets to the University of Nevada , Las Vegas . For a few minutes more , at least , the real estate tycoon — who had struggled to secure his place among the hostile Vegas oligarchs — can bring Sin City to a standstill . The outsider can bring his rivals to attention . But after November 8 ? Once the election is over , it seems they’ll be able to ignore him again .
The motorcade rolls out as they are want to do. Trump is a “tycoon” at war with “hostile Vegas oligarchs.” I assume this war took place while he ran an Atlantic City casino? Or was it while he was getting in bed with actual Russian oligarchs? This billionaire outsider, the poor little rich boy, this humble man has forced his rivals to pay attention . . . you get the style. It goes on for pages.
But then I would dislike the book, because I am #NeverTrump and you know us:
Many of Trump’s conservative critics — the # NeverTrump faction — chalked Trump’s success up to the support he enjoyed among popular alternative media outlets such as talk radio , the Drudge Report , and my own Breitbart News . These , it was said , had enabled his rise , along with the mainstream media , which had been overly friendly and accommodating to Trump during the primaries — partly to drive up their own ratings , partly to undermine the Republicans ’ chance of winning the general election on the assumption that Trump would be a weak candidate .****
Here is a thought: mainstream media gave billions of dollars of free coverage because Trump was (and remains) the most disliked major party candidate in history. Given that the Democrats were determined to nominated the second least popular candidate in US history, they had a good reason to pick Trump.
Mr. Trump took an election in a somewhat-Republican year and nearly lost. He narrowly pulled off an electoral college win, one that reasonable people knew could happen, but that reasonable people know was very unlikely. It happened, but thinking it was the result of genius or foreordained is rather like my first hand of poker. I got a flush. This is possible, but highly improbable. It has never happened again, but it might have created the illusion that I am very, very good at poker when, in fact, an unlikely, but possible thing happened.Trump always had a pathway to victory, see 538 on the election. A 1/4 chance to be the leader of the free world when you are one of only two major candidates is not good. Backing that kind of candidate as a sure winner does not make a man a genius, but a lucky fool.
But then critics can be dismissed, because:
And so Trump threatened not only the political control of the Republican insiders but also the intellectual primacy of professional conservatives . He rose to the top of the Republican Party — the party of Ronald Reagan — without their help , and despite their resistance .@
I have yet to meet anyone who opposed Trump out of a desire to retain “intellectual primacy” in a political party. First, I am not sure where one would go to receive this status. Second, being a Republican is difficult in any intellectual circle in America long before Trump. My postcard picture of Ronald Reagan would get thumb tacks through the eyes in grad school. Somebody must make money on being an intellectual conservative, if one means the think tank folks, but many of those folk got on board once the nomination was Trump’s and the donor base spoke. Exactly how (and from whom?) do these writers think “intellectual” conservatives will make money being #NeverTrump.
I wish they would tell me.
Every court has the sycophant, the man who nobody can match for flattery. He is not just for the leader, but works hard to find exactly what the leader longs to hear and then gives him more . . . so much more. Look:
I began this project thinking I was watching a tower collapse , a mighty man falling . Instead I find myself , improbably , writing the story of a man who descended from his tower and built the people up . I thought he would be humbled by defeat . Instead , I saw him humbled in victory — by the electoral process , by the people , and by the great trust placed in him . He helped America renew itself . He is already making America great again — because Americans have willed it so .@@
Donald Trump in 2015 was a weak man’s idea of a strong man: badly read, failed in business, but famous. Donald Trump has this great quality: he inherited a great deal of money and has messed about with it. This single quality is enough in a decadent age to attract attention and this books gives it to him.
If you have seen Trump “humbled” in victory or in defeat, then you are capable of telling me if the present King of France is bald.
God spare conservatives from a cult of power. When has that gone well?
God deliver conservatives from thinking short term victory justifies moral compromise: thus reasoned Benedict Arnold.
God save this Republic from glib men with adjectives for sale to the rich man and nothing for the common man they dupe with grift.
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* Pollak, Joel. How Trump Won: The Inside Story of a Revolution (Kindle Locations 87-90). Regnery Publishing. Kindle Edition.
**Pollak, Joel. How Trump Won: The Inside Story of a Revolution (Kindle Locations 128-130). Regnery Publishing. Kindle Edition.
***Pollak, Joel. How Trump Won: The Inside Story of a Revolution (Kindle Locations 135-139). Regnery Publishing. Kindle Edition.
****Pollak, Joel. How Trump Won: The Inside Story of a Revolution (Kindle Locations 159-163). Regnery Publishing. Kindle Edition.
@Pollak, Joel. How Trump Won: The Inside Story of a Revolution (Kindle Locations 238-241). Regnery Publishing. Kindle Edition.
@@Pollak, Joel. How Trump Won: The Inside Story of a Revolution (Kindle Locations 4338-4342). Regnery Publishing. Kindle Edition.
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