Trump on making Mexico pay

The New Neo Posted on by

Donald Trump made a big announcement today about his plan to force Mexico to pay for the wall. You can see several articles about it, plus links to all sorts of commentary on it, here.

It’s a mouthful. But the gist of the proposal itself is this:

The proposal would jeopardize a stream of cash that many economists say is vital for Mexico’s struggling economy. But the feasibility of Trump’s plan is unclear both legally and politically, and also would test the bounds of a president’s executive powers in seeking to pressure another country.

In the memo, Trump said he would threaten to change a rule under the USA Patriot Act antiterrorism law to cut off a portion of the funds sent to Mexico through money transfers, commonly known as remittances. The threat would be withdrawn if Mexico made “a one-time payment of $5-10 billion” to pay for the border wall, he wrote…

Nearly $25 billion was sent home by Mexicans living abroad in 2015, mostly in the form of money transfers, according to the Mexican central bank. In his memo, Trump said that “the majority of that amount comes from illegal aliens.”

But that figure includes cash from around the world, not just the United States. In addition, a Government Accountability Office report in January said that it is difficult to track how much money illegal Mexican immigrants are sending versus those working legally in the United States…

The memo includes rationales for a number of potential intimidation tactics, including increased trade tariffs, the cancellation of visas, and higher fees for border-crossing cards.

The are constitutional problems inherent in this. There are legal problems inherent in it. There are economic problems and there are international relations problems. And—if this is the sort of thing you care about—there are also human problems.

Then there are problems that are merely ones of execution: will this even have the effect Trump says it will? And last but not least, there is the contradiction inherent in Trump’s saying he will both deport all (or nearly all) of the illegal immigrants in this country and he will simultaneously execute this plan to extract large payments from the Mexican government by threatening the transfer of money that these same illegal immigrants send home to Mexico while working here. I suppose the idea is that he will do this first, and then he’ll deport them all after they’ve served their purpose.

If you read that whole WaPo article—or the other commentary at the memeorandum link I gave—you’ll see that there are many many ways to criticize Trump’s proposal. To do so point by point would be to write something much longer than I’m prepared to do here, so I’ll just say follow the links for that, and let’s just focus on the very very practical. As someone in the comments section of the WaPo article wrote:

OR – Mexicans can remit money via ANY of the world’s other 193 countries. And THEY can remit it to Mexico for a few bucks.

OR – Mexicans can remit money home via Hawala – the ancient, global, trust-based, person-to-person, money transfer system.

OR – a new class of money smugglers can rise up to do it.

Seems reasonable to me. There’s a lot more here:

If the guy who picks tomatoes in the San Joaquin Valley can no longer send money home what will he do? Will he actually stop coming to the US to work? Or will he save the money up and take it home in cash? Or (my favorite) will he decide that the whole migrant worker life has become too uncertain and just bring his whole family to the US for good?

Is targeting wire transfers going to work? What stops an illegal from buying a pre-paid Visa/Mastercard and mailing it home? How about debit cards on US banks? PayPal accounts? Wouldn’t this spawn an unregulated market in moving cash to Mexico?

Is an (more) economically and politically unstable Mexico on our southern border likely to result in more or less illegal immigration? Is a destabilized Mexico a desirable thing from a US national security point of view?

That piece goes on to explain why threatening trade with Mexico would hurt American workers, and this article goes into that issue and others even further. After putting the plan into perspective as part of a Trump “extractive, neo-mercantilist worldview,” the author adds:

…[T]o “make America great again,” [Trump’s] willing to rethink and upend the key components of [US] indispensability: America’s intricate alliances, overseas military bases, and mutual defense pacts, plus the pillars of the post-World War II international system””NATO, the UN, free trade, the global nuclear nonproliferation regime””that the United States helped design…

In an economic model produced for The Washington Post, Moody’s assumed that Trump honored his campaign promises, imposing a 35-percent tariff on imports from Mexico and a 45-percent tariff on imports from China. The model found that if both those countries retaliated with tariffs on U.S. exports, unleashing a trade war, all three countries could fall into recession. American consumers would face higher-priced Mexican and Chinese goods. U.S. companies that sell goods and services to Mexico and China, or are otherwise integrated with the Mexican and Chinese economies, might be forced to lay off workers. The tumult could cause stock markets to plummet and economic growth in Europe to contract. Millions of American jobs could be lost, at least in the short term, while the country’s manufacturing sector scales up to meet the demand for lost imports.

Any of these measures””the remittance regulations, the visa fees, the trade wars””would deal a severe blow to the U.S.-Mexican alliance. The fulfillment of Trump’s related campaign pledges””the renegotiation of NAFTA, the deportation of unauthorized immigrants en masse””would only harden the blow. Coordination between the U.S. and Mexico on intelligence and law-enforcement activities at the border would suffer. America’s commercial ties with its second-largest export market and third-largest trading partner would fray.

As I said, this is just the tip of the iceberg. The submerged part of the iceberg is (at least in part) the instability and unpredictability of a Trump presidency and how it would affect our relations with other countries. A lot of people on the right have been critical of Obama’s foreign policy, but Obama has been a model of predictability compared to loose-cannon Trump, who proposes a re-ordering of America’s position in the world at least as great as the one Obama has tried to effect, if not more so. Here’s one theory about what might happen in a Trump presidency, and it seems rather plausible to me:

After his election, other countries will immediately hedge against the risk of abandonment. There will be massive uncertainty around America’s commitments. Would Trump defend the Baltics? Would he defend the Senkaku Islands [in the East China Sea]? Or Saudi Arabia? Some nations will give in to China, Russia and Iran. Others, like Japan, will push back, perhaps by acquiring nuclear weapons. Trump may well see such uncertainty as a positive. Putting everything in play would give him great leverage. But by undoing the work of Truman and his secretary of state, Dean Acheson, it would be the end of the American era.

[NOTE: Although this isn’t really part of the Mexican issue, it’s related to the bigger picture, and is also worth reading. It’s about Trump’s proposal to eliminate the national debt. I’m no whiz at economics, but I’m beginning to wonder whether Trump has any grounding in macroeconomics as opposed to microeconomics.]

More from Klemperer

The New Neo Posted on by

Every now and then I’ve offered excerpts from the fascinating WWII-era memoirs of Victor Klemperer (see this for one of them, as well as an explanation of who Klemperer was). The following quotes are from his I Will Bear Witness: A Diary of the Nazi Years 1933-1941.

March 20, 1938:

The last few weeks have been the most wretched of our life so far.

The immense act of violence of the annexation of Austria, the immense increase in power both internally and externally, the defenseless trembling fear of England, France, etc. We shall not live to see the end of the Third Reich. The flags have been waving for eight days, since yesterday a broad yellow handbill with the Star of David has been stuck to every post of our fence: Jew. Warning against the unflagged plague barracks. Der Sturmer has dug up its usual ritual murder I would truly not be surprised if next I were to find the body of a child in the garden.

June 19, 1942

In Shaw’s Saint Joan there is a wild hunter of heretics, who breaks down in despair when he sees Joan burning. “I did not know…!” He was unable to imagine the horror. Until now I had found our situation just as literally unimaginable: I had always been told about being beaten and spat upon, of trembling at the sound of a car, at every ring of the door, of disappearing and not coming back again—I had not known it. Now I know it, now the dread is always inside me, deadened for a couple of hours or become habitual or paralyzed by, “So far things have always turned out well in the end!” and then alive and at one’s throat again. It’s a point of difference between Eva and myself. She says to her it was nothing new or surprising; she had heard it all a hundred times before. I: but only now am I experiencing it; my imagination or my altruism were not strong enough to experience it only through others.—I compare this dread of death with that in the field [Klemperer had served in WWI]. This here is a thousand times more horrible. There it was at worst “the field of honor,” there I was certain of every assistance were I to be wounded. Now—these horrible disappearances. What became of Friedheim? What happened to him, when he was dragged out of here? What happened in prison? How did he die? Snuffed out; drowned in the dirt after agonies. It is a thousand, a thousand times more horrible than all my fear in 1915.—And always being afraid, always running to the window, in case a car…

SCOTUS renders unanimous decision

The New Neo Posted on by

That’s unusual right there, isn’t it? Here’s the decision:

The Supreme Court unanimously ruled against challengers seeking to change the long-held interpretation of the principle of one person, one vote. Siding with a lower court, the 8-member high court held that total population could be used to draw electoral districts.

The decision for the case, Evenwel v. Abbott, was written by Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Justice Samuel Alito and Justice Clarence Thomas each filed concurring opinions.

“Appellants have shown no reason for the Court to disturb this longstanding use of total population,” Ginsburg wrote.

The challengers had argued the use of total population — which includes non-citizens, but also children and disenfranchise prisoners — to draw districts was unconstitutional because it diluted the political power of eligible voters.

In this case—unlike other recent cases—the absence of Justice Scalia doesn’t appear to have changed anything.

Today’s Trump roundup

The New Neo Posted on by

Trump doesn’t seem to quite understand the nomination process—unless, of course, he “misspoke” again. But I think that words—especially ad-libbed words like the following from Trump—can reveal what’s in/on a person’s mind better than scripted ones, and Trump has used a very interesting phrase:

“[John] Kasich shouldn’t be allowed to run,” he said. “Look, under the grounds that Rand Paul could’ve stayed in, and he had nothing. Marco Rubio could’ve stayed in. Jeb Bush could’ve stayed in. They all could’ve stayed.” Trump said the Ohio governor is “1-for-29,” and the only thing he “barely” won was his home state. “If I spent one more day in Ohio, I would’ve beat him,” he said. So far, 32 states have held Republican primaries and caucuses.

During his visit with Republican National Committee members last week, Trump says he brought up Kasich, asking, “Why is a guy allowed to run, all he’s doing is he goes from place to place and loses and he keeps running.”

In case it’s not clear, it’s the word “allowed” that’s the troubling one. Trump certainly is well within his rights to question Kasich’s motives for continuing to run and/or to ask whether Kasich should continue to run, but “allowed”?

Trump sells himself as a dealmaker extraordinaire who’s also a quick learner and problem-solver, who hires only the best people. Yet he doesn’t seem to have mastered (or even learned much about) the process of amassing delegates to the RNC. He may not like the way it’s done, and you may not like the way it’s done, but the phenomenon is an integral part of the long haul towards winning a nomination.

If you aren’t sick of the topic and you want to read even more about Donald Trump’s campaign, go here. It’s actually a pretty interesting article, describing how (supposedly) his campaign is run and by whom it is run (mostly Trump, with the help of some people who haven’t done much campaign-running before, which may or may not be a good thing).

I thought that this passage (if true, which is a rather large caveat) could shed some light as to why Fox might have become so Trump-friendly in recent months:

During Lewis’s severance negotiations, Lewis hired Judd Burstein, a powerhouse litigator, and claimed he had “bombs” that would destroy Ailes and Fox News. That’s when Trump got involved.

“When Roger was having problems, he didn’t call 97 people, he called me,” Trump said. Burstein, it turned out, had worked for Trump briefly in the ’90s, and Ailes asked Trump to mediate. Trump ran the negotiations out of his office at Trump Tower. “Roger had lawyers, very expensive lawyers, and they couldn’t do anything. I solved the problem.” Fox paid Lewis millions to go away quietly, and Trump, I’m told, learned everything Lewis had planned to leak. If Ailes ever truly went to war against Trump, Trump would have the arsenal to launch a retaliatory strike.

The article is full of interesting tidbits like that, and a few of them may even be true. Who knows?

Being freed doesn’t end the suffering for the kidnapped girls of Boko Haram

The New Neo Posted on by

There are tragedies so deep, suffering so vast, that it’s hard to know what to say in the face of them. Certainly it’s hard to know what to do, even for those who try to help. Such is the case in the plight of the Nigerian girls kidnapped by Boko Haram, whose vale of tears does not end with their liberation.

These are young women and in many cases young girls who were initially subjected to the trauma of kidnapping.

Then they were raped over and over again, by many men or by men who called themselves their husbands.

Who were kept prisoner, harangued, indoctrinated, and often became pregnant and bore the children of their captors.

For them, even the process of being freed was devastating, violent and sometimes resulted in the death of some of the captives during the melee.

Now that they are free, they are further restricted—to special camps run by the Nigerian army—and ostracized from society.

Perhaps worst of all, their present treatment makes a certain amount of sense, because they had been brainwashed into Boko Haram’s ways at an early age and there is the possibility that a recent uptick in the number of female suicide bombers in Nigeria may be at the hands of some of the ex-Boko-Haram hostages. So the fear is that it’s very difficult to tell who among the ex-hostages would be the enemy and who would not.

It’s a terrible story of human suffering at the hands of a malignant force (Islamic terrorism of the Nigerian variety), and the efforts to alleviate the situation for the girls/women have been relatively futile:

Once a week, Halima and Hamsatu attend group therapy sessions in a tent that says “Safe Place for Women and Girls.”

There they are known as “the sisters” because of how close they’ve become. They gather in a circle on the floor with about a dozen other women. The counselor repeats a few lines during each meeting. Hamsatu and Halima wait quietly for them, wishing they were true.

“What has gone has gone.”

“You are safe now.”

“You are secure now.”

Maybe some day these girls/women will actually feel safe. I wouldn’t bet on it. Right now their stories seem even sadder than those of the three women kidnapped, tortured, raped, and psychologically abused by Ariel Castro, because for the most part they don’t have loving homes or society to return to and are considered to have been shamed by their rapes, as well as feared for their potential violence.

Why don’t they have loving homes to return to? All too often their families were murdered by Boko Haram, too.

[NOTE: As if that weren’t terrible enough, here’s another story about a group of children who were held by Boko Haram and by the time they were rescued they had forgotten their native tongue, their names, and their histories.]

My cartoon/schema dyslexia

The New Neo Posted on by

I’m not sure what to call it, but I’ve written about it before at some length: I have trouble understanding cartoons that are completely visual, particularly those that are told in more than one square. Here’s an excerpt from that post:

Cartoons were already my nemesis. I didn’t like them, although they were ubiquitous on TV. I didn’t like watching the creature being flattened and then springing back up again. I didn’t like the characters walking off cliffs and not realizing it for a moment, and then falling. I didn’t like the pummeling and the mayhem; I felt it as more real than I knew it should be perceived. And in some strange way I sometimes even had trouble following the plot.

Was that because I wasn’t interested? Or was it because I was repelled, or because I was particularly cartoon-challenged? Probably a combination of all three, because the phenomenon persisted into adulthood and involved even some cartoons whose content didn’t especially repel me. I used to like animated Disney movies, but have never liked Pixar, in part because the images seem “wrong” to me in some difficult-to-define way.

Sometimes there’s too much going on visually in cartoons, too; I get distracted. I sometimes fail to get the joke in non-animated cartoon squares (like the ones in a magazine) because I focus on the wrong detail or misinterpret details in odd ways.

There’s much much more at the link.

So yesterday I happened on this photo on the “sidelines” at American Digest. It isn’t a cartoon but rather a visual joke, with a caption, so I at least theoretically have a chance to get it right:

krispykreme

But it stumped me. Or rather, it took me a while to mull over, and then I came up with an alternate and utterly absurd interpretation that I knew wasn’t correct but was all I could think of to explain it.

I saw it as a single photo of a sort of bookcase-like, two-shelved arrangement that had five boxes on it, two on the top shelf and three on the bottom, with two boxes in the front of the bottom shelf opened up and the rest closed. The two top boxes were from Krispy Kreme, so I knew that meant doughnuts. The one in the back on the bottom was the same thing; a box of doughnuts, closed (or maybe an open one facing away from the viewer? Or a stack of two? This wasn’t clear, but it didn’t seem to matter, so I ignored it). The two in the front contained food, and the food wasn’t doughnuts. What was it? I could see celery sticks and cherry tomatoes, and dip. But the rest? Maybe salmon, as in sashimi or lox? And something green, like maybe a seaweed salad to go with the sashimi?

Yes, I know, I know. Kind of disconnected and weird. But as I said, I get bogged down in the details and get way too nitpicky. They didn’t look like carrot sticks. And I detest raw broccoli spears, so perhaps my mind rejected that interpretation on principle.

Then I tried to tie it all together with the caption. Workplace violence? Why? The combination of doughnuts, crudites, and sashimi? That oughtn’t to do it. Then I remembered the Twinkie Defense and I thought—maybe it’s the doughnuts, leading to workplace violence. But no, that didn’t seem right at all—why would anyone bother to put all that other stuff in the photo, if it was just about doughnuts?

And so it had to be explained to me what the cartoon meant.

I’m assuming none of my readers share my bizarre cartoon/schema dyslexia affliction. But just in case, I’ll say that the photo is supposed to represent before and after (before above, after below), and that some person had filled some Krispy Kreme boxes with the veggies and dip as a joke, and that’s the thing that (har de har har har) would lead to the workplace violence.

[NOTE: I’m not sure I’ve used the word “schema” correctly, but I couldn’t find a better one for what I’m talking about here, which doesn’t just involve cartoons but involves interpretations of visual cues. No doubt some of you will have some ideas on that.]

Trump makes a campaign promise to end all campaign promises

The New Neo Posted on by

I’d like to think that this was some sort of joke, but it doesn’t appear to be:

[Donald Trump] said Saturday morning that if he wins the presidency, all problems in the country will be fixed.

“Wisconsin has suffered a great loss of jobs and trade, but if I win, all of the bad things happening in the U.S. will be rapidly reversed!” he tweeted.

Not just some, but all.

Not just reversed, but rapidly reversed.

And it wasn’t April Fools Day anymore.

And note that this isn’t just something Trump said in a moment of excitement during a rally, pumped up by the crowd. He wrote this.

As I said, it doesn’t sound like a joke, although that would be the best possibility. His supporters might claim it’s hyperbole, some sort of New York style of bragging, but I know New York very well and even New Yorkers (and certainly Wisconsinites, to whom it’s addressed) don’t like that sort of thing in their politicians.

Trump out-Obamas Obama, who merely modestly promised a reversal of the ocean rise. Trump is either an even worse megalomaniac, or an even-more-exteme con man, or both. Trump may be thinking that after all, this is only what a lot of his supporters think he can do, so why not say it? The jury is out on whether he agrees with them or whether he is just playing to them. But the Tweet makes him sound unhinged to everyone else.

The Jayvee hard at work: ISIS and a dirty bomb

The New Neo Posted on by

ISIL (ISIS) is seeking nuclear material in order to use it against you-know-who:

Isil terrorists are planning to use drones to spray nuclear material over Western cities in a horrific “dirty bomb” attack, [British Prime Minister] David Cameron has warned.

World leaders are concerned that jihadists want to buy basic drones that are widely available online to transport radioactive material into the heart of major cities in a strike that could kill thousands.

The Prime Minister warned that the dangers of Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (Isil) getting hold of nuclear material was “only too real”.

Mr Cameron on Friday met world leaders, including the presidents of America, France and China, to plan how they would react to such an attack.

My reaction to the news was: are you really just planning a reaction now? Even before the rise of ISIS, this sort of possibility/probability was bandied about for at least a decade, probably longer, online and elsewhere. Do we really not have any game plan?

Not that I know what that game plan would be. An ounce of prevention might have been nice, but it’s too late for that.

Ditch and Switch to Trump—and then switch back?

The New Neo Posted on by

A couple of weeks ago Rush Limbaugh opined on Democratic support for Trump:

Now, what’s going on here? You think this is legit? Look at these three states: Pennsylvania, Ohio, Illinois…Rust Belt states, traditionally Democrat states other than Ohio, which is always up for grabs. Are we witnessing a massive Democrat-sponsored Operation Chaos, or is this for real?…

…Ditch and Switch is the name of this so-called organic movement of so-called…Democrats registering as Republicans. There’s a name for the movement. It’s called Ditch and Switch. And of course, I ask the question: “Is this real?”

Is this an honest? Is this a stealth Democrat Operation Chaos, or is it genuine?

I’ve wondered pretty much the very same thing myself for a long time. No one has a clue what the answer is. My guess is that it’s some of both, but I don’t know the percentage of each. However, the reason I think that it’s mainly a form of Operation Chaos and that those voters who represent a genuine switch are too small a group to help Trump in the general election is that it’s not reflected in polls of a head-to-head contest between Trump and either Clinton or Sanders. In such polls that bother to measure Democratic support for each Republican candidate, Trump gains essentially no more Democrats than someone like Cruz does, and sometimes fewer than Cruz does. You may discount such polls—but as I’ve said before, they’re all the hard evidence we have. The evidence of these Democrats switching registration to Republican for the sake of the primaries is only evidence that many Democrats want to vote for Trump in the primaries, but tells us nothing about the sincerity of their actual support for him and whether it would carry over into the general.

National polls indicate Trump continues to do poorly against Clinton in the general, and that has been one of the most consistent poll findings so far during this long campaign season. Unfortunately, not many of these national polls bother to break down that support (of Trump or anyone else) into Democrat vs. Republican, but the few that do have not indicated that Trump draws any more Democratic support in such a match-up than other GOP candidates. I’ve analyzed the subject in some depth here and here, and I’ve seen nothing since that contradicts the conclusions I came to in those posts: that Trump’s actual support from Democrats in a general election against Clinton would be small and would not lead to a Trump victory. Not to mention the fact that his support among Republicans is historically weak for a GOP candidate, too.

I think…

The New Neo Posted on by

…I’ll rest on my laurels for the remainder of today, after my magnum opus below.

The weather’s nice, it’s Friday, and politics will wait a while. Won’t it?

Trump makes a bold move to appeal to women

The New Neo Posted on by

It’s been reported for a while now that Donald Trump doesn’t do very well in polls of women—even Republican women. At a rally this morning in Beaver Dam, Wisconsin, he announced a startling move that represents an attempt to rectify that problem.

Speaking without prepared notes, as he often does, Trump had this to say:

You know, all this hype about how women don’t like me—it’s just garbage. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: “I cherish women. I want to help women. I’m going to be able to do things for women that no other candidate would be able to do, and it’s very important to me.”

I don’t know where anyone would get any other idea about me. But maybe I need to prove it in a very dramatic way, so you’ll know how much I mean it. I’m going to be the GOP nominee—you know I am, there’s no one who can beat me, no one is even close, they’re a bunch of losers. So I don’t think it’s too early to announce my pick for Vice-President.

At that point the crowd roared with excitement. Cries of “Sarah! Sarah!” rang out—a reference to early Trump-supporter, Sarah Palin, who was John McCain’s vice presidential running mate in 2008. Trump added:

No, although Sarah would make a great vice-president, just great, I love her, and I know there will be a place for her in my cabinet when I win.

But this time I want to choose a political outsider like me. I know that means a lot to you. Someone who has never held public office and isn’t a part of the establishment. Someone who is independently wealthy, like me, so she’s not beholden to donors or anybody else. Someone who knows how to act in front of a crowd, and who knows how to use Twitter with the best of them. And you know what? Even Hillary Clinton has said this woman is warm, personable, and inspirational, so you can’t argue with that.

So I’m so happy to introduce someone I know very well—and as I’ve said before she’s always been very nice to me—meet the next Vice President of the United States: Kim Kardashian!!

The crowd went wild at the sight of the two together. For the occasion, Kim was especially covered up in a black turtleneck sheath dress, her hair in a sedate bun:

After the stunning announcement, Trump let the press ask him a few questions. One of the first was from an AP reporter who referred to Trump’s 2013 appearance on the Howard Stern show, when he had claimed that Kardashian had a “fat ass.” “Mr. Trump do you still believe that,” he was asked, “and if so, don’t you think that disqualifies her from being your running mate?”

Trump responded that he’d made the “fat ass” comment long before he knew he was running for president. “Now I see things completely differently,” he added. “Now when I look at Kim, I don’t even see her body. I’m thinking only of her brain, and what she can do for the women of this country. And what’s more, she’s never worked for Goldman Sachs.”

With that, the GOP frontrunner unveiled a new campaign slogan and sign:

trumpkard (2)

On writing and thinking about Trump

The New Neo Posted on by

It’s pretty obvious that the blogosphere and the media in general have been saturated with Trump discussion ever since last summer, when Trump entered the race and picked up a lot of support almost from the start. It’s been hard to resist talking about him almost incessantly, despite vows to stop or the deep conviction that dominating the media is exactly what he wants, and that it works to the detriment of the other candidates.

But there is a reason for it, and the reason is not just sensationalism or doing Trump’s bidding by getting him publicity. Trump really is a fascinating phenomenon that is unique in my lifetime, both as a personality and as a force that has shaken up the political scene, particularly the GOP. And so the discussion continues…

Trump’s candidacy has been a sort of plaque discloser of revelation about pundits and politicians. He has made some very very surprising bedfellows—Falwell Jr. and Chris Christie, for example (Sarah Palin was unsurprising). He has had some surprising supporters in the media: Greta van Susteren would be one, but there are many others. Talk show hosts such as Rush Limbaugh have tried to straddle the line of a bogus (to me, anyway) “impartiality” that seeks to avoid offending a large percentage of their listeners on either side of the Trump divide, yet seems to have angered quite a few anyway. Others such as Mark Levin, who started out as tepid Trump supporter (despite having had the goods on Trump and excoriated him for it four years earlier) have ended up huge detractors—in my opinion, too little too late.

One thing we’ve had no lack of, however, is prognostications and analyses. I’ve noticed that a lot of mainstream pundits seem to me either to be saying things about Trump that are obvious or things that are stupid. He is a political black swan who has not only shaken people up, but he’s made a lot of people sound foggy in the head. I think Trump does that because he really is different compared to most past US politicians. People have trouble understanding him, and so they write to try to understand him, and it’s a work in progress.

Now, please don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying I’ve got the scoop, the One True Understanding of Trump. But still, I’ve been puzzled by the extent of some of their puzzlement.

For example, take a look at this from Rich Lowry:

Donald Trump never ceases to amaze, but his answer at a CNN town hall about the pledge he had taken to support the Republican Party’s nominee was still jaw-dropping.

Not only did Trump say that the pledge is null and void as far as he’s concerned, he also went further and told CNN’s Anderson Cooper that he doesn’t want the support of Ted Cruz…

Every rational calculation says that Trump should seek to preserve the pledge. At this point, he is more likely than anyone else to be the nominee and benefit from the support of his competitors. He should want to use every possible lever of unity at his disposal given the threats of an independent conservative candidacy should he win the nomination. And yet, he’s done the opposite.

Who can guess why? Stupid pride? A manliness contest, where he wants the likes of Ted Cruz eventually to have to offer his support even after he says he doesn’t want it? A disdain for every political convention, even one that might help him?

Whatever the reason, it is yet another sign that Trump is all about himself. In this sense, he is already what the RNC feared when it got him to sign the pledge””a third-party candidate. He’s running against the Republican Party from within the Republican Party. He cares nothing about its values or its interests. He favors it exactly to the extent it can be subordinated to him and no further.

What’s the mystery? I don’t see it as a mystery, if you start with the basic principle that Trump is a narcissist and attention-seeker above all, who is interested in personal domination and power. That statement applies more or less to a lot of politicians, of course, but for Trump it’s even more applicable. In addition, most politicians described that way also have some allegiance to a basic and standard political position (left or right, Democrat or Republican). Trump does not (except for the fact that I actually think—and I could be wrong even about this—that he does have positive regard for the US as a country, although he would choose himself over the country if need be).

Here are the ways in which I interpret what Trump did regarding the pledge:

(1) All pledges and promises are mutable and meaningless to Trump, made to be broken in a moment and then made again if Trump sees doing so as the best track for him to take at the time. In other words, his initial pledge was pragmatic, temporary, and meaningless, and I never took it seriously and am surprised that anyone else did.

(2) Trump’s opinion of himself and his powers has always been high, but has increased with this campaign and the obvious adulation of so many people. He thinks he can win without the support of the GOP and is only too happy to say a big FU to it (as are his supporters; in fact, that’s one of the biggest motivations many of them have for supporting him).

(3) If in fact Trump doesn’t win, that’s okay with him too. I know that many people would disagree with that statement of mine, because Trump loves to win and hates to lose. I agree with them on that—he loves to win and hates to lose—but I think in this case it depends how you define “win” and “lose.” If Trump loses the nomination he can tell himself that he has won because so many of his supporters will cleave to him and it will probably mean that the eventual GOP nominee will lose. So, if he can’t get the nomination, he will have wrecked the hopes and prospects of those (the GOP) who have kept him from it, and revenge is very much a kind of victory, too. If on the other hand Trump gets the nomination and loses the election, something similar would be operating: Trump will have gotten revenge on the GOP, and he will have built an extremely loyal following and demonstrated his enormous power over the media and his followers. Of course, none of this takes into account the very real possibility that Trump is actually okay with a Clinton victory or even has had it as his intent the whole time (I don’t think the latter, because I think his ego wouldn’t allow it, but I do concede that it’s certainly possible).

In summary, I would have been surprised had Trump not broken this pledge, and I will be surprised if he does support another nominee if he himself is not the choice of the GOP. That’s why I’ve always been puzzled by those who have said they think there will be a Trump/Cruz ticket; I’ve long thought that if Trump were to win the nomination he would choose someone willing to be subordinate to him, even abjectly subordinate, such as Christie or Carson or someone else who was not even a candidate for president this year.

And if he doesn’t get the nomination, would he run third-party? I’m not sure about that, but I tend to think probably not. I think he’s fueled by the idea of either getting the GOP nomination itself and sticking it to them that way, or destroying them in the process. If he’s already destroyed them whether he runs third-party or not (which I think he may have), no need to waste the energy in a third-party effort that would be very unlikely to end up with his being elected president.