"What happens if it's a 'Flight 93 Election' and your side is corkscrewing down into the earth?"

That's the prospect facing once and possibly future Trumpists. It's undeniable at this point: Trump's falling behind and flailing. He's alienating white voters, and not gaining enough of any other kind.... If Trump loses, and in the process Democrats retain the Senate and win back the House [sic], they will have the chance to do big things. On many issues, they’re split — but one big thing they’ll be able to agree on is passing a giant Gang-of-8 style amnesty bill.... They see a mass influx of immigrants (not irrationally) as the guarantor of a more liberal electorate on into the future. And it will be irreversible, Once you amnesty you can't go back.....  [W]e'll be a nation open to the planet's free moving labor.... Second and Third Worlders stands ready to flood the market anytime wages increase (or even when they don’t).... [That]'s why the fantasizing about Trump abandoning his attempt at reelection should probably be taken seriously and even egged on... Trump himself is clearly thinking a lot about losing these days, as when he mused, absurdly, that President Joe Biden would have to finish his border wall. 'And he’s going to be your President because some people don’t love me maybe.'... The Democrats’ nominee is so weak that Republicans... might still have a chance at retaining the White House...."

Writes Mickey Kaus in "A Time to Bail... Trumpism is more important than Trump."

Pence is the most obvious choice if Trump withdraws, but Kaus also names, Mitt Romney, Tom Cotton, Josh Hawley, Nikki Haley, and Mitch Daniels.

"Bret, you’re the perfect Biden pitchman. Really, you deserve a statue."

Said Gail Collins to Bret Stephens in "Is Statue-Toppling a Monumental Error?/Where you place yourself along the vanguard-to-vandals spectrum says a lot about how you see the past — and the future" (NYT).

Here's Stephens's perfect pitch:

If Bernie Sanders had been the nominee, I’d be writing in someone’s name.... But the idea that a Biden presidency would be a threat to the Republic is laughable: It would be a return to politics as we used to know it before the proverbial sacking of Rome.

My pitch to the Romneys and Boltons of the world is simple: In order for their vision of sane conservatism to win, Trump’s insane vision must lose so decisively that it will be politically destroyed and morally repudiated by the broad majority of Republicans themselves. The bigger Biden’s margin of victory in November, the better it will be for normal conservatives in future Novembers. A vote for Biden now is a vote for a G.O.P. that has a future — in a country that has a future.

Illustration of the Trump presidency, from the mind of Bret Stephens:



I know you can't unscramble an omelette, but can you unsack a Rome?

ADDED: The painting is "Genseric sacking Rome," by Karl Briullov, found at the Wikipedia page "Sack of Rome (455)." It's a 19th century painting and the artist was a Russian, so view the racial characterizations in that context. The Vandals were Germanic people who came from the area that is now Poland.

"When you strike at a king, you must kill him," said Ralph Waldo Emerson, famously.

I think Emerson was talking to Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr., and Holmes was attacking Plato, hence the riposte. The physical attack was metaphorical. Holmes and Emerson were jousting in the world of words, and Emerson got off a bon mot for the ages.

I'm talking about that this morning because James Woods got kicked off Twitter:

James Woods, one of the few conservative stars in Hollywood, has been locked out of his Twitter account for over a week now for “abusive behavior,” once again demonstrating the double standard the tech giant holds when it comes to enforcing rules.

Twitter suspended Woods for a tweet that read, “‘If you try to kill the King, you best not miss’ #HangThemAll,” according to his girlfriend Sara Miller....

The tweet was apparently in reference to the Mueller report, which found no conspiracy between the Trump campaign and Russia. The quote is from Ralph Waldo Emerson and has been used in various forms in movies and TV shows like The Wire....

"You best not miss" is the form of words used on "The Wire" (video here), and on "The Wire" the physical attack is not metaphorical, but with a real gun with bullets. But Woods was using the physical attack metaphorically. The idea — which deserves to be expressed — is — I think — that there was a coup attempt on Trump and it didn't work, therefore those who attempted it are in desperate trouble.

This isn't a true threat, just rough political discourse. It's not much like Emerson, because Emerson was speaking in a context where it was clear that only ideas were at stake. Holmes couldn't physically threaten the long-dead Plato. I think it's also clear that Woods was talking about political power and legal troubles, though the legal troubles are bad enough that they could lead to a physical impact on a human being — that is, a prison term. But there is a problem with Twitter's clipped language and vast dissemination. Among the thousands or millions of readers of a post like "If you try to kill the King, you best not miss’ #HangThemAll" are confused, paranoid, angry people who might hear a message to go out and kill somebody.

I'm checking the #HangThemAll at Twitter, and I see this:

James woods was banned for saying #HangThemAll about treasonous leaders on the left and was banned from Twitter, but @kathygriffin isn't banned for this: pic.twitter.com/tT1x4eeVnJ

— The JP McGlone (@JPMcGlone) May 4, 2019

Yes, and that's the problem. Twitter needs to apply its standard from a neutral viewpoint.

"A must read, Andy McCarthy’s column today, 'Dirty dealings of dirt devils who concocted Trump-Russia probe.' The greatest Scam in political history."

"If the Mainstream Media were honest, which they are not, this story would be bigger and more important than Watergate. Someday!"

Tweets Trump this morning.

He doesn't give a link, and googling "Dirty dealings of dirt devils who concocted Trump-Russia probe" only gets me back to Trump. It is a screwy headline. Dirt devils?!

I think the article in question — the column by McCarthy that went up last night in the NY Post — is "Behind the Obama administration’s shady plan to spy on the Trump campaign." A more dignified headline, no?!

There is no doubt that the Obama administration spied on the Trump campaign. As Barr made clear, the real question is: What predicated the spying? Was there a valid reason for it, strong enough to overcome our norm against political spying? Or was it done rashly? Was a politically motivated decision made to use highly intrusive investigative tactics when a more measured response would have sufficed, such as a “defensive briefing” that would have warned the Trump campaign of possible Russian infiltration?...

A defensive briefing! Yes. Why didn't the Obama administration help the Trump campaign guard against infiltration?

Much more at the link. I gave up trying to choose excerpts. Read the whole thing.

The history of the effort to take down President Trump.

Entertainingly told by Victor Davis Hanson.

It's entertaining because it didn't work and because there are so many steps in this long-term effort, some of which I had forgotten. Like, do you remember Dr. Bandy X. Lee?

I was not a Trump supporter at the time of the election. (I wasn't a Hillary supporter either.) But the effort to take his victory away is something I have always opposed very strongly. America voted, and that was that as I see it. So I greatly enjoyed VDH's retelling of the grand story of Trump's survival.

VDH has 11 paragraphs that begin with the phrase "When that did not work...". And that's why it's funny, and not a horror story.

The NYT's Charles M. Blow thinks it's "a mistake to believe that Trump’s supporters don’t see his lying or corruption. They do. But, to them, it is all part of the show and the lore."

Blow writes:

[W]hen you survey the constellation of folk heroes, you see that many have been criminals. Bonnie and Clyde. John Dillinger. The Sundance Kid....

Perhaps one of the most popular folk heroes in the world is mythological: Chinese folklore’s Monkey King.

Please note that Blow is black and Trump is white. If the races were reversed, Blow's career would be over. Ask Roseanne Barr.

The British Council wrote of [the Monkey King] legend: “Despite his superpowers, at the heart of the Monkey King’s appeal is his human fallibility — he is greedy, selfish, and prone to sudden changes of mood and outbursts of exceptional violence. He defies divine authority, laughs at attempts to be controlled, and leaves chaos in his wake. But we know that there is fundamental good within him. He is the misbehaving child who only needs a firm hand and a sense of purpose to come good.”

This is an insight that's been easily available to Trump haters since at least 2015.* But I guess it feels like a revelation to those who refuse to look at Trump from any angle that could be at all flattering.

And Blow's column ends with no solution for Trump antagonists (and of course there's no reconsideration of whether Trump is the enemy):

Anti-Trump forces must stop operating as if they are doing battle with a liar; they are doing battle with what his supporters have fashioned into a legend. How does one fight a fiction, a fantasy? That’s the question. Its answer is the path to America’s salvation.

_______________________

* To try to find early instances of the recognition that the Trump story is a hero narrative, I did a search of my blog archive for "Trump" and "hero." One thing that came up, from last October, was this fascinating rant from Kanye West:

"You know, they tried to scare me to not wear this hat—my own friends. But it’s hot! It gives me, it gives me power in a way. You know, my dad and my mom separated, so I didn’t have a lot of male energy in my home. And also, I’m married to a family that, you know, not a lot of male energy going on. It’s beautiful though! But there’s times where, you know, it’s something about—I love Hillary. I love everyone, right? But the campaign, 'I’m With Her,' just didn’t make me feel, as a guy that didn’t get to see my dad all the time, like a guy that could play catch with his son. There was something about, when I put this hat on, it made me feel like Superman. You made a Superman—that’s my favorite super hero. You made a Superman cape for me, also, as a guy who looks up to you … looks up to American industry guys, nonpolitical, no bullshit.…"

Maybe Blow could analyze that. By the way, Blow's column begins with a discussion of his mother (who, he says, was "austere" and full of "moral rectitude" but nevertheless loved the Democratic Party scoundrel Edwin Edwards), but he says nothing about a father.  Blow did write a column about that Kanye incident at the time, but he dismissed Kanye as a "troubled... rambling, incoherent" and concluded:

The spectacle wasn’t really Kanye. The spectacle was watching Trump pretend to care about remedying a problem that he is consciously continuing to not only cheer but worsen. Kanye was just being used.

I'd like to see Blow extend his folk-hero analysis of Trump to Kanye's rant about making him feel like a super-hero. Blow wrote about how women might embrace a rogue, but what about how a man might see himself in the hero?

"Rosenstein Suggested He Secretly Record Trump and Discussed 25th Amendment."

NYT headline.

The deputy attorney general, Rod J. Rosenstein, suggested last year that he secretly record President Trump in the White House to expose the chaos consuming the administration, and he discussed recruiting cabinet members to invoke the 25th Amendment to remove Mr. Trump from office for being unfit....

Mr. Rosenstein was just two weeks into his job. He had begun overseeing the Russia investigation and played a key role in the president’s dismissal of Mr. Comey by writing a memo critical of his handling of the Hillary Clinton email investigation. But Mr. Rosenstein was caught off guard when Mr. Trump cited the memo in the firing, and he began telling people that he feared he had been used.

Mr. Rosenstein made the remarks about secretly recording Mr. Trump and about the 25th Amendment in meetings and conversations with other Justice Department and F.B.I. officials. Several people described the episodes, insisting on anonymity to discuss internal deliberations....

Thanks to commenter readering for saying — on my post about the "Battle of Brett" Drudge graphic — "Much better Drudge headline now."



Drudge rarely uses the siren in recent years, so it has a big impact now.

If I didn't maintain rudimentary trust in the basic integrity of The New York Times...

... I would think that there is no real person behind the famous anonymous op-ed. I'd think it was a concocted composite based on the Woodward book and motivated by the Woodward book. Look how that little thrown together collection of paragraphs is now drawing more attention than the book Woodward labored over, which dominated headlines on Tuesday. Wednesday, this column comes out. What is in the column that couldn't have been extracted from the book and worked up into an op-ed purporting to be from a senior official in the White House?

That's just a conspiracy theory. I couldn't help thinking it, but I don't believe it's true, because I think the NYT has too much of a stake in at least the appearance of journalistic integrity. I do think that the real senior official who wrote the op-ed felt stimulated by the Woodward book, maybe thinks it's a good idea to add momentum to the various stop-Trump efforts, and is perhaps close to resigning and hoping to depart into the open arms of the Trump-hating elite.

The part of the famous anonymous NYT op-ed that's about civility and John McCain.

I'm rereading "I Am Part of the Resistance Inside the Trump Administration/I work for the president but like-minded colleagues and I have vowed to thwart parts of his agenda and his worst inclinations." And I'm struck by how much of it is boilerplate that has nothing to do with what this individual purports to know about weird happenings within the White House.

Here are the last 3 paragraphs before the final paragraph:

The bigger concern is not what Mr. Trump has done to the presidency but rather what we as a nation have allowed him to do to us. We have sunk low with him and allowed our discourse to be stripped of civility.

Civility! I never believe it when they say "civility."

Senator John McCain put it best in his farewell letter. All Americans should heed his words and break free of the tribalism trap...

I spent yesterday watching the Kavanaugh hearings, and I can tell you that the Democratic Senators and the shouting protesters they brought into the hearing room blithely do their own incivility whenever it suits their political interests. It's not a special Trump thing. Trump is just more straightforward about speaking his mind or lying to us or whatever's going on with him.

... with the high aim of uniting through our shared values and love of this great nation.

Sorry, I don't need another funeral oration. That sort of thing is okay within a death-ritual context, but in ordinary political discourse it's fusty, gassy blather. And I'm not buying the repackaging of McCain the Dead Man as the Anti-Trump. McCain was the feisty maverick who didn't lean in hard enough to get elected. Trump is the man who got elected President of the United States. That's a fact, no matter how hard it is to swallow.

We may no longer have Senator McCain. But we will always have his example — a lodestar for restoring honor to public life and our national dialogue. Mr. Trump may fear such honorable men, but we should revere them.

McCain was a real person. He was not a paragon.



Back then McCain was too crazy to be President, but now that he's dead, he's a symbol of the virtue everyone wants for the other guy: civility.

The NYT versus Trump.

Here's a link to the NYT front page in case you want to click on any of these links:



From the anonymous op-ed, "I Am Part of the Resistance Inside the Trump Administration/I work for the president but like-minded colleagues and I have vowed to thwart parts of his agenda and his worst inclinations.":

Meetings with him veer off topic and off the rails, he engages in repetitive rants, and his impulsiveness results in half-baked, ill-informed and occasionally reckless decisions that have to be walked back....

The erratic behavior would be more concerning if it weren’t for unsung heroes in and around the White House.... It may be cold comfort in this chaotic era, but Americans should know that there are adults in the room. We fully recognize what is happening. And we are trying to do what’s right even when Donald Trump won’t....

Unsung heroes? This person is singing about his own heroism. We just don't know his/her name, because he/she has got to stay hidden to continue sabotaging the work of the President the deplorables elected.

The Washington Post is going big on the Don Jr. story.

At the top of the website front page right now:



It's not a completely over-the-top get-Trump effort. Notice that last headline: "Trump Jr. could be in legal jeopardy, but analysts say more would be required for a criminal case."

Further down on the page, there's "This is the mother of all tipping points" and "This is no ‘rookie mistake.’ The Trump team shouldn’t even be on the field," but also "President says Donald Trump Jr. is ‘open, transparent and innocent’" and "Is Donald Trump Jr.’s ‘I love it’ email a smoking gun or a distraction?"

And there are still plenty of other stories making it onto the website's front page, including the one I personally find most interesting: "A Chinese umbrella-sharing start-up just lost nearly all of its 300,000 umbrellas." I also like "Three Americans who thwarted 2015 Paris train attack to play selves in Clint Eastwood movie."

Anyway, I wonder what scheming is going on behind the scenes at The Washington Post. I'm imagining that they are thinking This is it, we have him now. But how to play the hand? Over-eagerness could backfire, but if this thing is going to work, this is the moment, we must go all-in. And yet if we show that's what we are doing, it may put off some people whose support we need. We may look bloodthirsty and weird to them. How far, exactly, do we go? And what, exactly, do we want?

AND: On that last question — what, exactly, do we want? — I don't think it should be clear to a Trump-hater that the goal should be impeachment/resignation. Look at Mike Pence. He's ready to go, clean and untouched by these Trump troubles. Why give the Republicans a fresh start? I suspect that the goal is to immobilize Trump. Keep him, but freeze him. But how can we get by with an incapacitated President?

Valerie Jarrett is said to have moved in with the Obamas... and it's all political.

I always think SEX first, but according to The Daily Mail:

Barack Obama is turning his new home in the posh Kalorama section of the nation's capital - just two miles away from the White House - into the nerve center of the mounting insurgency against his successor, President Donald J. Trump.

Obama's goal, according to a close family friend, is to oust Trump from the presidency either by forcing his resignation or through his impeachment.

And Obama is being aided in his political crusade by his longtime consigliere, Valerie Jarrett, who has moved into the 8,200-square-foot, $5.3-million Kaloroma mansion with the former president and Michelle Obama, long time best friend...

Do Democrats really benefit from Obama's help? Looking at the last 8 years, I'd think they be screaming Stop helping us. Maybe he's not even trying to help the party that fell to pieces and shrunk to next to nothing during his leadership. If he wanted to help, he should withdraw from the scene, in classic ex-President style, and give other stars in his party a chance to rise.

As the "close family friend" reportedly said, the idea is not to rebuild the Democratic Party at all, but to undermine the current President. I can't believe a former President thinks that's a dignified role for himself.

It's interesting to hear this so soon after Trump's well-received address to Congress. Trump turned to the light (from the "dark" inaugural speech). Who can forget the old Obama credo "When they go low, we go high"? If Trump has finally gotten people other than his core supporters to see him as going high, are the Obamas now going to go low and seek to undercut him at every turn?

The effort to associate Trump with disorder — craziness and abnormality — is failing. I don't think it will work out well for Democratic Party to shift from fretting and scaring us about disorder to working to increase disorder by disrupting a presidency that people see as a force for order.

"Trump grabbed an unsuspecting GOP by its pussy. GOP just let him do it."

"Except for the #NeverTrump-ers, who had too much self respect along with the fact that they had no pussies for Trump to grab.... I shouldn't say the #NeverTrumpers had NO pussies for Trump to grab. In the end he grabbed Ted Cruz's pussy. Even made it purr. Poor Ted."

Said Meade, in the comments.

Let's assume that Trump is actually flexible enough to get out of the race while the getting is good.

He got out of Atlantic City at the right time, didn't he? He likes to win, and winning can be defined as getting out at a high point and not being there for the big loss. And — as the post title jogs you to think — Trump likes to be flexible. He believes in surprises.

So I'd like to assume that he'd consider the ploy of dropping out and letting someone else take the race to the finish line. The question I want to focus on is: Where is the high point? It's not right now, obviously. He shouldn't be bullied and humiliated out of the race. So where, down the road, can we see a high?

He should think about how to do the most damage to Hillary and then jumping out and making it irrelevant that he was the one who did the damage. Someone else — somebody clean — will be slotted in, and then how can Hillary fight back? She'll have to redo everything and deal with this new person, this Mr. Clean — maybe Pence, but how about Scott Walker? Pick someone hard to attack, someone who'll look just completely normal. That would flummox her after she'd premised so much of her campaign on the idea that she's normal compared to Trump and normal is what we want. If not Trump was so desirable in August, then not Hillary (and not Trump) could be the relief we're all dying for by October.

I'd say he should stay in through at least the first debate. Only he will know that he's planning or considering dropping out. She will waste effort attacking him, her ultimate non-opponent. And he can be as cruel as he thinks could be effective — and as showy and outrageous as will serve his interest going forward in his media career. He's been attacking the media, but he is media, and he will be media in the future (unless he's stuck being President, slogging away in that humble abode, the White House, and getting brutalized by absolutely everyone for 4 years).

What freedom he has right now! What power! 

"Attempts to unbind GOP delegates crushed, effectively ending ‘Never Trump’ movement."

"Paul Manafort, the chairman of the Trump campaign, heralded the win, tweeting that an insurrection was 'crushed.'"

Mitt Romney reveals — just yesterday! — that he's decided not to run for President.

"I got an email from one of my sons yesterday that said, 'You’ve got to get in, dad. You’ve got to get in.'"

The former Massachusetts governor and 2012 Republican Party nominee said the push came “late in the process” because his family members were “concerned about the direction of the nominating process in our party.”...

This end-stage Stop-Trump business is gruesome. 

After the assassination attempt on Trump, shouldn't the media tone down the Trump hate?

AP reports:

A British man arrested at a weekend Donald Trump rally in Las Vegas tried to grab a police officer's gun so he could kill the presidential candidate after planning an assassination for about a year, according to authorities."

After the assassination attempt on Trump, shouldn't the media tone down the Trump hate?

Calls for civility are politically motivated, so this suggestion is just an effort to help Trump.

The media should be tough on Trump, but not at the he's-Hitler level, which may provoke violence.

This is a wake-up call to the media. They need to reset into a more sober, neutral mode.

Trump deserves all this hostility, from the press and from the people.

 

pollcode.com free polls

"DO: Figure out what attracts people to [the Alt-Right] and what you can do to attract them away."

"DON'T: Make it all about your own moral superiority. Basically, look at what the #NeverTrump movement did, and do something else...."

"On Thursday night, Emmett Rensin, the deputy editor of Vox’s first person section, sent a series of tweets that, among other things, urged people to riot if Donald Trump comes to their town."

"We at Vox do not take institutional positions on most questions, and we encourage our writers to debate and disagree. But direct encouragement of riots crosses a line between expressing a contrary opinion and directly encouraging dangerous, illegal activity...."

Vox has "suspended" Rensin.

I had to go elsewhere to find the text of the over-the-line tweets. Here, at Mediaite: "Advice: If Trump comes to your town, start a riot." "Listen, if Trump is Hitler then you've got no business condemning rioters. If he isn't, you've got no business pretending normal is better." "Let's be clear: It's never a shame to storm the barricades set up around a fascist."

Here's Rensin's Twitter feed. Those posts that got him suspended are still up, and there's a lot more since then, such as: "You spent a year saying Trump was a fascist, and particularly an anti-Hispanic bigot. Hispanics take that seriously, and you're Shocked." "If you too believe he's a fascist, then ask yourself what it means to concern troll poor, Latino folks who take that belief seriously."  "It remains unclear to me what people believe the appropriate response to fascism is. Say 'fascist, fascist, fascist', people will freak." "If Trump *isn't* a fascist or an existential threat to democracy, fine. But then let's stop saying that he is."

Anti-Trump protesters surround one woman and throw eggs at her head and watermelon straight into her face.

Yells of "Fuck you!" are heard, along with vuvuzelas and chants of "Trump go home!"



And there's more video and other reports in the Twitter feed of ABC's Tom Llamas (who's the reporter Trump called a "sleaze"). Two that have video: "Outside Trump rally protestors chased down this kid and tackled him" and "Our video of Trump supporter who says he was beaten up coming out of @realDonaldTrump rally." And, from another ABC reporter: "One more-- the moment lone Trump supporter tried to stand her ground. Had her sign ripped up, glasses snatched."

No matter how hostile the press may be to Trump, violence like this is going to get photographed and will become viral. What idiots these protesters are (and how unfair they are to nonviolent Trump opponents).

Here's the NBC report: "Donald Trump supporters were mobbed and assaulted by protesters on Thursday night after the candidate's campaign rally in California."

Some Trump supporters were punched. One woman wearing a "Trump" jersey was cornered, spit at, and pelted with eggs and water bottles. Police held back at first but eventually moved in....

Lan Hoang said anti-Trump protesters stole his "Make America Great Again" hat off of his head and set it on fire as he was leaving the rally. The 24-year-old said he saw "a lot" of Trump supporters get attacked on the walk back to his car after the rally.

Protesters also smashed cars in a nearby parking structure and surrounded and taunted an elderly couple, according to Steve Tong. "It was unbelievable," he told NBC Bay Area. "I've never seen anything like that in America before."

From the Buzzfeed report (which has more video, including the burning of an American flag):

In at least two instances Trump supporters engaged with protesters, chanting “Donald Trump” and walking directly into the thickest, most angry portions of the protests. But things quickly spiraled, and rallygoers simply trying to get back to their cars were chased down and beaten — often at the feet of San Jose Police, who stood by motionless....

A police source told BuzzFeed News that officers were under orders to not break ranks, and that while “nobody wants to see somebody beaten… we had a global plan.” The source added that the department did not want officers to step in for several reasons, notably out of fear for individual officers’ safety, as well as concerns that breaking up a fight may end up escalating the violence....

San Jose Mayor Sam Liccardo, a Clinton supporter, praised the police... “At some point Donald Trump needs to take responsibility for the irresponsible behavior of his campaign”....

Incredible. Liccardo isn't some small-town naif. This is San Jose, and Liccardo is a graduate of Harvard Law School and Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of Government.

ADDED: I'm having flashbacks to the Wisconsin protests of 2011, which were big and rowdy but did not have this kind of violence. You felt a threatening atmosphere, because there were so many people, so angry, and so seemingly irrational with all the drum-beating and chanting. It's amazing really, that they were able to create such a big drama, with the feeling of a revolutionary uprising, without cracking up into violence.

In any case, those protests looked unruly and anti-democratic from the outside, and the Wisconsin protesters did not have good awareness of the effect they were having on the mind of the electorate in general. Their target, Governor Scott Walker, survived a recall election and then got reelected.

Now, these anti-Trump protesters are much worse than the Wisconsin protesters. They have devolved into outright violence, including mob attacks on lone individuals. We shall see what effect they have. I'd say they undercut the argument that Trump is a horrible brute, and by intensifying the desire for order, they strengthen support for the strongman that Trump seems to be.