Reports are circulating that Donald Trump has told the New
York Times in private not to worry about his racist, xenophobic, anti-abortion,
anti-gay statements. The word is that he is just responding to what his
supporters want to hear.
Using his own logic then, he needs to be asked whether he
might be impeached if elected when his supporters realize he used them.
That could bring some unnamed vice president to power who
would do what Trump has promised to do.
It is the same logic he uses every day of his campaign when
he says Hillary Clinton might not be able to serve because she will be
indicted in her “email scandal.”
She has been under investigation for an entire year with no
indictment.
Of course Trump has been under fire for three years for his
“Trump University Scandal” and may be forced to testify about fraud allegations
later this year.
TV networks, meanwhile, claim Trump is the choice of a
majority of Republicans, based on what has been seen in primaries and caucuses.
Polling expert Nate Silver said today that “Trump has received only 34 per cent of the
Republican vote, aggregated across all primaries and caucuses to have voted so
far. He did not really improve on that figure on Super Tuesday; Trump had a
combined 33 percent of the vote through the first four states (Iowa, New
Hampshire, South Carolina, Nevada); he got 34 percent in Super Tuesday states
themselves.”
Do Trump supporters represent
what the majority of Americans believe. Polls are constantly being used to
support this view.
But the same kinds of polls show
that a majority of Americans support causes rejected by these people: gay and
transgender rights, abortion rights, women’s rights, high minimum wages and
more.
Trump supporters say this is
merely the view of Hollywood.
In my experience art has
often represented where a country is headed, both in the U.S. and in countries
I covered as a journalist around the world.
South Africa was a classic example. I often watched
plays and heard music that I knew was going to tear apartheid down. I wondered
why the government allowed it.
I later felt that it wasn’t
so much that they allowed, in some cases people were jailed and banned, but
that they knew they couldn’t stop it. To try to hard would cause some of their
best people to leave the country. They wanted more than just servants and
swimming pools.
It was impossible for me to
watch this year’s Oscars without seeing that the people who run the art world
have decided to support human rights. This is not new. Give them an inch and
they will take a mile.
These films, plays and music make money. That is the bottom
line.
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