Time Magazine, in its publication of April 2011, wrote about 10 gambles where Mr. Donald Trump put his name behind and busted. Those are Trump Airlines, Trump Vodka, The Bankruptcies, The Hair, The Marriages, Trump Mortgage, Trump: The Game, The China Connection, Trump Casinos and The Middle East ‘Policy.’
The question is, how, with all those failures, Mr. Trump won the most powerful office of the world without any problem.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb, a scholar, statistician, former trader, and risk analyst, whose work focuses on problems of randomness, probability, and uncertainty, writes in his book “Fooled by Randomness” “it’s more random than we think, not it is all random. Chance favors preparedness, but it is not caused by preparedness.”
After the dismantling of Jim Crow laws, which gave power to states and local laws enforcing bodies, to enact racial segregation in the southern United States in 1950s and 1960s, but after the enactment of Civil Rights Bill of 1964, the discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, or national origin were outlawed.
The Civil Rights Bill also abolished the inequality introduced in applications of voter registration requirements for whites and blacks, and banned the racial segregation at schools, workplace and facilities that served the general public. That time, Richard Nixon and Barry Goldwater developed a strategy, based on the race, to woo white voters in American South – known as the “Southern Strategy” — which successfully contributed to the political realignment of white conservative voters to Republican Party.
Before that, the south predominantly voted Democrats. So the Republican Party plays to the grievances of angry white men and women when it found helpful to win the high offices. Dr. Lawrence Davidson, a retired professor of history from West Chester University, defined the “Trump Phenomenon” in August 2015 at the beginning of the election campaign.
“What we have witnessed so far is a demonstration of how a billionaire megalomaniac and narcissist has fun: having secured a national stage, he runs around and says whatever he pleases, even if it is blatantly obnoxious. If he gets positive feedback, he does it all the louder. If he gets negative feedback, he turns into a bully, which he also sees as fun.”
President George W. Bush used the same strategy of inciting fear to get re-elected in 2004, and now – in Dr. Davidson’s words — the “megalomaniac and narcissist billionaire” has won the elections and became the leader of the free world by using the same blueprint – one likes it or not! However, Mr. Trump also positively connected to the masses and to those who were suffering due to the globalization, which, his Republican and Democrat opponents neither could understand nor they made any attempt to please those who belong the “fly-over” America and are the victims of free trade agreements and worldwide integration.
The mainstream media ignored all that and stuck to “Election Coverage-101”, without realizing the pain of mid-America, even after the Michigan Primary results, where all the mainstream media poll gave Sec. Clinton 20 point edge over Sen. Senders but she lost. Also, media and the Clinton campaign had failed to register the motivation of 130,000 more Republican voters than Democrats who came out and voted for their candidates.
Although, it is a common perception that the mainstream media predominantly supports the Democrats, however, a study released in June 2016 by Harvard Kennedy School’s Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy, provided some interesting findings.
The study was based on an analysis of news from eight different main stream media outlets, FOX, CBS, the Los Angeles Times, NBC, the New York Times, USA Today, the Wall Street Journal, and the Washington Post. The report claims that Secretary Clinton had received far more negative coverage than any other candidate in the race.
According to the report, although 28% of Clinton’s coverage was about issues, however, 84% of those stories were negative in tone, while Mr. Trump’s issue based coverage was 12%, with 43% negative in tone. Sen. Cruz and Sen. Senders got 9% and 7% issue based coverage respectively while 32% and 17% were negative in tone. The report claims that the combined effect of the negative coverage against Hillary Clinton is equivalent of one “million dollars attack ads” against her. Such negative coverage affected her image significantly. Initially, she was almost 60% points higher than Sen. Senders, that gap shrunk to 25% only by the end of 2015.
The 33,000 emails by Clinton through the private email account during her time in office as chief American diplomat, got very negative coverage by the media and the Trump campaign exploited the issue very successfully in their advantage.
When the email issue surfaced, she was not really regretful, because it was a violation of an internal State Department policy directive, known as Foreign Affairs Manual – practiced by the Bush White House which used the private email server owned by the Republican National Committee.
Secretary Collin Powell also used a private email address for routine work. However, Clinton’s advisors urged her to apologize and express remorse and they assumed the public apology would lay the issue to rest. But, that did not happen and the email issue became the painful growing blister on the Clinton campaign. The mainstream media took the issue and consumed hours to discuss and gallons of ink to write about it, while totally ignoring — even more critical issue of – the “lost” emails from President Bush/Vice President Cheney’ office.
In September 2016, Newsweek published a story which claimed that George W. Bush White House lost 22 million emails during 2003 and 2009, which was a very critical time in US history, during which the US went to the controversial war against Iraq, which turned out to be the disastrous with incorrect and fabricated WMD stories.
In Newsweek’s words: “For 18 months, Republican strategists, political pundits, reporters and Americans who follow them have been pursuing Hillary Clinton’s personal email habits, and no evidence of a crime has been found. But now they at least have the skills and interest to focus on a much larger and deeper email conspiracy, one involving war, lies, a private server run by the Republican Party and contempt of Congress citations — all of it still unsolved and unpunished. Clinton’s email habits look positively transparent when compared with the subpoena-dodging, email-hiding, private-server-using George W. Bush administration.”
The Newsweek claims that the Boston Social media analytics firm, Crimson Hexagon, which ran a study for Newsweek, found that there were over 560,000 articles written from March 2015 to September 2016, which mentioned Sec. Clinton’s email controversy, while the media paid little or no attention to Pres. Bush’s White House email scam and subpoena-dodging.
In American culture, political incorrectness is sometimes attached to racism. Due to the painful history of racial discrimination and suppression based on race, a common American does not want to be called racist. A large number of Mr. Trump’s silent supporters were reluctant to tell about their choice in elections. Other than mainstream Americans, there were large number of Indian-Americans and Chinese-Americans, who also quietly supported and voted for Mr. Trump.
Before the election, Mr. Trump attended a reception by Republican Hindu Coalition Chairman Shalli Kumar where he equated India with Hindu religion, ignoring over 138 million Muslim, almost 25 million Christian, over 19 million Sikhs and 8 million Buddhist minorities.
According to Washington Post story published in October, 2016, although, before the elections, only 7% of Hindu-Americans said that they were likely to vote for Mr. Trump, however – the Post suggested – Mr. Trump’s effort to associate himself with Narendra Modi and his anti-Muslim rhetoric might win him Hindu’s support.
The Chinese-Americans, who predominantly are not too active in the elections, see the elections from the financial point of view. A lot of Chinese population in the US belong to rich class and are among the group who make more than $250,000 a year and would be the beneficiary of Mr. Trump’s tax cuts.
Before the elections large parts of both Chinese and Hindu populations were reluctant telling about their support for Mr. Trump. However, large section of Indian-Americans supported only because of anti-Muslim rhetoric emanated from Trump campaign. According to an Indian newspaper “The Hindu,” a large number of Hindu voters voted for Mr. Trump and one of the main reasons – to vote Mr. Trump — according to The Hindu – is Secretary Clinton’s close aid “Huma Abedin who happened to be a Muslim.”
The 2016 general election is not only different for the mainstream Americans but it is going to create new fault lines in the public.
Indians and Pakistanis, who are generally work closely even under tough situations on the Indo-Pak borders may feel some strain. The growing Hindu extremism, sponsored by the Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s close allies, in India is now affecting the Indian liberals in US as well.
According to The Hindu, Rattan Kumar, a doctor in Tampa, Florida, explained his reason for voting Mr. Trump.
“India and America face the same threat of terrorism from Islamic fundamentalism. And Huma Abedin, a Pakistani with links to Islamic countries in the Middle East, controls Hillary Clinton. Trump will take terrorists head on,” he said. The Hindu asked whether he knew that Ms. Abedin’s father was an Indian who studied at Aligarh Muslim University, Mr. Kumar said: “That doesn’t matte.”
It’s now clear amidst America’s longest war in Afghanistan that outright denials of the ground realities and framing countries like Pakistan and Afghanistan – that are fighting for their souls and have borne the brunt of terrorism – as instigators would not help. Any such suggestion would complicate Mr. Trump’s counterterrorism strategies. He will have to be clear-eyed not to give in to a simplistic prognosis that seeks to serve interests of one country at the cost of America’s longtime allies.
President-elect Trump now has a duty to discourage the statements which inflames acrimony among diverse communities of different races, nationalities and religions.
Elections are over and Mr. Trump won with clear majority and now he is a president of all America not only those who voted for him. The healing process must begin now and the president must not be manipulated by those characters who have hate-based agendas.
While Mr. Trump’s statements including his emphatic call on supporters to stop harassing minority communities are welcome, his selection of Steve Bannon as chief White House strategist, has raised many questions.
