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demographics. In a celebrity-obsessed country that over many years treated politics as a wrestling match or a game, Trump found his moment, fueling and benefiting from the collapse of cultural and political identities into one another as the country cleaved along the lines of whom you hate, or who hates you back.
Trump possess [sic] a unique base of support among young people, executives, middle-level white collar workers and minorities,” read the executive summary of the “Report to Donald Trump on Public Opinion in America,” delivered to him in October 1988 by the research firm Penn and Schoen Associates, Inc.
Yet for all the intrigue that is part of the Trump mythos—the talk of his unpredictability or descriptions of him as an agent of chaos—the irony, say those who have known him for years, is that he has had only a handful of moves throughout his entire adult life. There is the counterattack, there is the quick lie, there is the shift of blame, there is the distraction or misdirection, there is the outburst of rage, there is the performative anger, there is the designed-just-for-headlines action or claim, there is the indecisiveness masked by a compensatory lunge, there is the backbiting about
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A core tenet of the Trump political movement has been finding publicly acceptable targets to serve as receptacles for preexisting anger. That anger helped signal his supporters, who are bound to him more by common enemies—liberals, the media, tech companies, government regulators—than shared ideals.
It was as clear a guiding ethos for his life as Trump seemed to have: hate should be a civic good.
Trump seized the promotional opportunities that his new property provided him. When the director Chris Columbus was filming a sequel to Home Alone and wanted to use the Plaza’s lobby, Trump forced his way into the film. “The only way you can use the Plaza is if I’m in the movie,” he said. Columbus thought of cutting the cameo, but Trump’s appearance drew applause from the test audience.
Trump replied, “Whatever complicates the world more, I do.” When Singer asked him to elaborate, Trump explained, “It’s always good to do things nice and complicated so that nobody can figure it out.”
Yet she also helped Trump ingratiate himself into a new world of Black celebrities, such as the rap artist Sean Combs and the influential music producer Russell Simmons. Trump would later point to those associations as examples of why he couldn’t be a racist, because he knew Black people, and, more significantly they had engaged with him without taking issue.
(During the same period, Trump also sent four-figure donations to California attorney general Kamala Harris, a Democrat. Her office ultimately took no action against Trump University even as it went after other for-profit educational entities.)
Manafort had a grand demeanor that suggested that he saw himself as something of a peer to the candidate—a presentation that ensured that Trump would have to find a way to dominate him.
Trump knew that he was being told something he did not fully comprehend, and instead of acknowledging that, he shouted down the teachers.
For dessert, Trump made sure to receive one more scoop of ice cream than his guests were served.
(When officials wanted to redirect Trump from a tirade directed at them, they would mention the Justice Department; Trump would rant that he should get credit for nominating “the first mentally retarded attorney general” in history.)
Don Jr.’s girlfriend, Kim Guilfoyle, had been hired to work on fundraising. Some donors liked her but others were turned off by frequent banter, during remarks at events, about her private life with Don Jr. At one fundraiser, she offered a lap dance to whoever gave the most money, and at congressman Kevin McCarthy’s annual donor retreat in Wyoming, her boyfriend raised eyebrows when he joked about donors paying to get in a hot tub with her.)
Watching television, Trump told aides that perhaps Pence should be hanged.
Six months later, when Putin sent the Russian military to invade Ukraine, Trump initially praised him as “savvy” for recognizing the opportunity before him: a land grab in exchange for paying a fine in the form of international sanctions. “He’s taken over a country for two dollars’ worth of sanctions, I’d say that’s pretty smart,” he said during an appearance at Mar-a-Lago. “He’s taking over a country—a vast, vast location, a great piece of land with a lot of people—just walking right in.”
Trump loyalists quickly began trying to tear down Hutchinson’s credibility. Yet even as some contradicted specific elements in her testimony, she had painted a familiar portrait of Trump, one that dozens of people who worked for his company, political campaigns, and government tried masking over four decades: a narcissistic drama-seeker who covered a fragile ego with a bullying impulse and, this time, took American democracy to the brink.
