DONALD Trump inhabits a world of shiny, gold-plated, nothing-really-matters nihilism, and he is betting that voters do, too. That is the best explanation for the show that the Republican nominee mounted on the morning of September 16th—with the full, helpless, beaten-cur connivance of the press, cable news and TV networks who covered it lavishly, at one point treating watching Americans to extended coverage of an empty podium inside Mr Trump’s new luxury hotel in Washington, DC, while the businessman’s motorcade nosed its way through the traffic. If the show proves popular with audiences outside the Beltway and opinion polls continue to narrow to a dead heat, the businessman-demagogue may yet win his bet.
Ostensibly, the bizarre event was staged to clarify, after years of equivocation and rumour-mongering, that Mr Trump believes that Barack Obama was born in America, and is thus a legitimate holder of his office. Ostensibly, that is a big concession from a man whose path to the top of national politics began with his enthusiastic embrace of the “birther” movement, an ugly, race-tinged conspiracy theory that Mr Obama is lying about his birth in Hawaii. Aides to Mr Trump...Continue reading
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