Donald Trump’s Exploitation of Orlando | The New Yorker - David Remnick [View all]

[BootinUp]

Much as he has done throughout his primary campaign, Donald Trump responded with ugly, untrue comments to news of the attack at a gay night club in Orlando.

By David Remnick , June 12, 2016

In the rhetoric of Donald Trump, mendacity and cynicism compete for equal time. It is hard to say which prevailed today as the Republican Party standard-bearer, a man who pretends to the most powerful political office in the land, tweeted this at his followers: “Appreciate the congrats for being right on radical Islamic terrorism.”

This came in the wake of the most horrific mass shooting in the history of the United States—a slaughter of fifty men and women in an L.G.B.T. night club called Pulse, in Orlando, early Sunday morning. Trump allowed that he didn’t want “congrats” so much as he wanted “toughness & vigilance.” Just as profoundly, he announced, “We must be smart!”

Trump also told his followers—and hence the world—that President Obama should “immediately resign in disgrace” for failing to “mention the words radical Islam” in his remarks on the shooting. And, he suggested, Hillary Clinton might want to get out of the Presidential race for making the same sin of omission in her statement.

With every month, it has become clearer that Trump is a makeshift politician, whose rancid wit resides in his willingness to say whatever it takes to arouse the fears of a political base. He might have started his campaign with the idea of winning some votes and publicity, increasing his profile as a marketing whiz, and then dropping out. Good for business! But now that he has stunned the political world—and, likely, himself—he has shown little inclination (or, perhaps, capacity) to grow into his role, to modify his language, be it for the sake of the Republican establishment or of simple decency. He’ll have none of that. Whatever inflates his sense of self and prods the anxieties of the country—that’s what works for him.

Continued at The New Yorker