No images? Click here Barely Gettin' By Television PresidentsThe only thing Donald Trump was ever really good at was television. The New York Times’ investigation into Trump’s tax records confirmed a lot of things we already knew, or at least suspected, about the President. He went out of his way to avoid paying tax, and he’s not a particularly good businessman. The only time he actually made any money was when he was the star of The Apprentice. Trump knows how to use the media, and television in particular. From the start, he was better placed than his opponents—first Republican, and then Democrat—to use television, and particularly televised debates, to his advantage. In 2016, we all scoffed during an early debate in the Republican nomination process when Trump assured his television audience that there was ‘no problem’ with the size of his hands. But that constant assertion of his hyper-masculinity; his strength, virility, and aggression, taken directly from his time on The Apprentice, has continually worked to his advantage. The debate stage makes it particularly easy for Trump to peddle and amplify his conspiracy theories. At around the same time he was talking about the size of his hands in 2016, Trump was also attacking his then opponent Ted Cruz with the accusation that Cruz’s father was somehow connected to Lee Harvey Oswald and the assassination of that other television president—John F. Kennedy. Trump has an odd relationship with that most beloved of American leaders. He is, without question, seeking to build his own New York family dynasty to rival the Kennedys'. When Melania Trump moved to Washington, Republican commentators fell over themselves anointing her as the new Jackie Kennedy. What went mostly—but not always—unspoken was the sheer relief on the part of Republicans and Trump supporters that a white family was back in the White House. First Lady Melania Trump walks along the Colonnade at the White House, 2019 Despite their best efforts, the Trumps have been mostly unsuccessful at installing themselves as heirs to the Kennedys. There was huge uproar over Melania Trump’s ‘remodeling’ of the Rose Garden, in which she had many of Jackie Kennedy’s trees removed, precisely because so many American liberals see the Trumps as desecrating the Kennedy legacy. It’s perhaps no coincidence that it is during the Trump era that the Kennedy flame, after burning so brightly for more than half a century, seems to be going out. Like it or not, though, Trump is, in a perverse way, an heir to Kennedy’s style. Kennedy’s short-lived presidency marked a new era of visibility for American politics. It was JFK’s campaign for the presidency in 1960 that saw the first televised presidential debates. His opponent, Vice President Richard Nixon (not yet the reviled figure we know him as today), failed utterly to understand the medium, and JFK became the first ‘television president’. Since then, television has had an outsized influence on American politics. Roughly 73.1 million Americans watched the first presidential debate on their television screens this week. And what they saw might well have been the clearest indication yet that American democracy is utterly, undeniably broken. John F. Kennedy and Richard Nixon in the first televised presidential debate, 1960 This week on the podcast, we’re talking about how Aaron Sorkin’s television drama The West Wing’s vision of American liberalism has set up American democracy to fail. This reminded us of another cringe-making moment in late 90s TV: Donald Trump’s cameo appearance in Season 2 of Sex and the City. ‘Samantha, a cosmopolitan and Donald Trump. You just don’t get more New York than that’ Carrie Bradshaw’s voiceover purrs, as Trump is seen getting up from a table and heard making a serious business proposition, which he wants on his desk at Trump Tower. It’s easy to forget that Donald Trump wasn’t always a joke, on the one hand, or an existential threat to American democracy, on the other. Back in the 90s, his name was a shorthand for capitalist wheeling and dealing and success, meeting even the approval of liberal New Yorkers like Carrie Bradshaw and her friends. That’s how Trump made himself into a credible politician; he used television to build his political brand, calling into popular morning television shows to peddle his birther conspiracy about President Barack Obama. It’s hard to know how much truth there is to it, but the rumour that Trump in fact embarked on his campaign for the presidency not to win it, but as a pre-publicity tour for his own new media company to rival Fox, is plausible enough. Silvio Berlusconi, 2010 Amongst world leaders, Trump has most often been compared to media tycoon and four-time Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi. Trump and Berlusconi have much in common: their backgrounds in TV and their ready exploitation of the media; the shameless cunning of their publicly buffoonery; their contempt for democratic and judicial processes; and the presence of credible accusations of sexual harassment and abuse in their pasts that they’ve not only ignored, but weaponised. In an alternate universe, Trump might have become even more of an American Silvio, heading his own TV empire. But in this universe, the one we are in, what they have in common is much more frightening. Like Trump, Berlusconi was often treated as a joke—the makeup, the awful hair, the bunga bunga parties. But hidden behind all that is something else: a deep admiration for fascism. It is often coded, spoken with a wink, but it is there. On Tuesday night US time, Trump used television to signal American fascists. But this time there was no code, and no wink. He told them to ‘stand back, stand by’. He told them to watch, to be ready. And that, in the end, is the only thing that matters. What We're ReadingWhen Trump told the Proud Boys to ‘stand by’, he was signalling yet again that the immediate post-election period may be a disaster for American democracy. This article in the Atlantic lays out in detail how it might play out. Trump isn’t the only heir to JFK—in fact, Joe Biden has styled himself as the true heir to the Kennedys since the start of his political career. This stunning piece by Fintan O’Toole explores Biden’s Irish Catholicism and the grief that underpins liberal politics in the United States. This week on the pod, we’re diving into the history of the Electoral College. This review by Eric Foner explains why abolishing the Electoral College has proved too hard a task for American politics. Follow usListen to all episodes of Barely Gettin' By |