Donald Trump is no comic book hero, only a crude bully
Kevin Rafferty says in trying to paint China as a villain waging ‘economic war’ with America and stealing its jobs, the US presidential candidate reveals himself to be full of bombastic hot air
Donald Trump has a China fixation. Huffington Post noticed it some months ago and created a three-minute video starring him, which has just been noticed by mainstream America. The video, viewed 5.5 million times, consists of Trump repeatedly shouting “China”, 234 times in all, and nothing else except for occasional assertions that, “I love China”, and “People from China, they love me”.
It is stitched together out of different speeches and interviews. Put together, it is crude, repetitive in a bullying way, yet mesmerising and frightening at the same time, not least because it captures the Trump way of establishing his domination. This is the man who has bashed and bullied his way to the nomination of the Republican Party for November’s presidential election. When he started last year, Trump was the outsider among 17 candidates, some of them favoured sons, like Jeb Bush, others rising political stars such as Marco Rubio.
Brace yourselves for a Donald Trump presidency
Trump became the last man standing when Senator Ted Cruz made his bathetic withdrawal: “With a heavy heart but with boundless optimism for the long-term future of our nation, we are suspending our campaign.” The steadfast John Kasich followed suit.
Apart from the token Kasich, the contest was between Trump and Cruz, probably the most hated man in Congress. If Cruz were found dead on the floor of the Senate, no one would be prosecuted, declared a colleague. Former House speaker John Boehner called him “Lucifer”.
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So it was fitting that Cruz was the desperate standard-bearer to keep Trump out. Hours before conceding defeat, Cruz claimed that if Trump won, “America will plunge into the abyss”. He called Trump “utterly amoral”, “a serial philanderer”, a “pathological liar” and a “narcissist”. Trump returned the compliment by prefacing references to Cruz with “Lyin’ Ted”.