Having come into prominence as a builder of major Manhattan real estate projects, Donald Trump wishes to be part of the real world give-and-take of politics at a level where large sums of money and power are at stake. According to the presidential candidate himself, he only wishes to make the US great again, which, unless the word great has undergone semantic pejoration and is now synonymous to bigotry and racial discrimination, is the polar opposite of what he is actually doing.
Donald Trump’s political interests are in a direct relationship with his personal motives as a business tycoon. His father, Fred Trump, too was a major New York City based real estate developer with deep ties to elected officials. Continuing from where his father left, Donald Trump began establishing personal ties with politicians as he sought tax breaks on midtown high-rise projects and battled unions, contractors, public agencies, social and environmental pressure groups, and property owners who refused to sell their land to him. Trump was preparing his latest run for president long before most people imagine.
Trump has previously floated the idea of running for president thrice — 1988, 2004 and 2012 — and for governor of New York in 2006 and 2014, but did not enter those races. According to a news poll conducted by The New York Times in November 1999, 70 percent of Americans had an unfavourable opinion of Trump.
Flash forward to 2015. Donald Trump is indeed running for president of the US and is the Republican presidential front-runner. Since midsummer of this year, Trump has polled at or near the top of most opinion polls for the GOP nomination. The ugly truth behind the unprecedented success of Donald Trump is his ability to successfully manipulate the inequality and insecurity of the American population.
Donald Trump is continuing, through his words, the shameful record of hurling racial abuse against non-whites, first African Americans, then Asians, then Arabs and now Mexican communities. Large portions of his speeches during his campaign include promises to build a wall on the southern border of the country at Mexico’s expense to stop Mexico, China and Japan from disrupting legalised trade activity in the US and to strictly arm more Americans to immediately retaliate against terror strikes.
National debate over immigration and Hispanics has been degenerated into thinly veiled bigotry. Bombastic statements and racial attacks are Trump’s calculated medium of campaign to boost his number of supporters by inciting in them xenophobic fears about a vulnerable population that has been, time and again, used as a scapegoat to serve as a dumping ground for all the rage and frustration of the American public.
Extending his xenophobic rhetoric about Mexicans to the Muslim community, Trump controversially demanded for a complete shutdown of Muslims entering the US following a mass shooting in San Bernardino involving two Pakistani Muslims. Trump went on to say that, if elected, he would consider requiring Muslims living in the US to register themselves with a government database or obligating that they carry special identification cards that display their faith. His recent claims with regard to the Muslim community mirror Hitler’s rise to power as Trump wants to mimic laws that the Nazis had imposed on Jews, including mandating them to wear a gold star of David on their clothes.
However, it is not his money nor his brash personality that have catapulted him to the top of opinion polls but the overwhelming support that he has, intentionally or unintentionally, received from the media. His relentless verbal assault on other candidates and marginalised communities receive hours of media coverage. Trump, always wanting to be the centre of all attention, has been playing the media and all his supporters. Like a multinational, the US media is selling a product while Trump keeps providing them with more fodder to sell with all parties mutually benefitting from the exchange except promoters of tolerance and common sense.
It is possible that a faction of voters who are activated by racist appeals exists in the US. Americans who hold strong anti-black views and respond favourably to racial prejudice exist throughout American politics and constitute a reasonably large voting group that Trump is primarily targeting. Trump has wisely or unwisely discovered that the racist vote is influential and crucial for his nomination and, therefore, with every bullet fired from the gun of a Muslim, the hatred multiplies and his followers multiply.
While Trump may continue to push his luck too far and increase the intensity with which he addresses Muslims all over the globe, the consequences of his bid remain unpredictable. Although Trump has received a dangerously positive response following his derogatory statements about Muslims, it could trigger a horrific reaction from radical Islamic groups or violent jihadists in the form of increased mass shootings and increased threats, eventually making Trump’s loss or victory irrelevant to the security of the American population.
The author is a freelance columnist