The Trump Fever Never Breaks - by Katy Tur

[DonViejo]

By KATY TURSEPT. 9, 2017

In the first year of his presidency, Donald Trump has achieved at least three things that few presidents ever have. His approval rating is in the 30s. His former aides — and reportedly the president himself — are under federal investigation. And members of Mr. Trump’s own party are running what has been described as a shadow campaign to replace him in 2020.

But when I hear people talk of Mr. Trump’s supposedly dismal future, I think of his not-so-dismal past. I was the first national television correspondent to cover Mr. Trump full-time, so I know what can happen when people ignore the unbridled enthusiasm of his crowds.

For more than 500 days, I watched as Mr. Trump’s campaign grew from an awkward rally around a backyard pool in June 2015 to a raucous, 10,000-person convention center event in November 2016. In that same time, I also watched as Mr. Trump’s candidacy survived a procession of death predictions.

Lately, it seems, those predictions are back. Last month, when asked whether the president will be the Republican nominee in 2020, the Republican senator from Maine, Susan Collins, told MSNBC, “It’s too difficult to say.”

Every week there’s a new last straw: Comey, Charlottesville, Arpaio. If all else fails, Robert Mueller, the special counsel, will surely take him down, right?

more
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/09/opinion/sunday/the-trump-fever-never-breaks.html

[procon]

1. I generally like Katy Tur, but after reading her bleak and hopeless op ed

I want to hide under the covers and curl up in the fetal position.

[Hortensis]

4. After listening to her knives-flying commentaries on Hillary Clinton,

my impulse is to catch them and throw them back.

Tur turned out to be yet another corrupt "journalist," eager to trade whatever principles she might have had (in question) for success. Not a surprise to those who knew continuation of her career soar after the campaign would require that. The day her invitations to A-list DC parties and job in front of the cameras require supporting Rump, she will "segue" competently to the approved position.

As for this article, it should be a reliable indicator of what the powers in and behind the Republican Party are planning, just without details. Preparing the populace.

[Nay]

2. Being a terribly cynical old lady, I believe this as well. There are A LOT of very

selfish and disturbed people out there and Trump is their guy. He enlivens some sort of fascistic nastiness in these people.

[Comatose Sphagetti]

9. "He enlivens some sort of fascistic nastiness in these people."

This.

[KPN]

3. How frightening the hard to imagine is.

[Girard442]

5. It's time to confront the ugly reality:

Trump Humpers are the enemy and they are a big chunk of voters. If we are to put this country back on the path to a liberal democracy, we're going to have to meet them head-on and defeat them.

[elleng]

11. Yes.

[BigmanPigman]

6. There are three things I would like to address,

1. His base has been called "a CULT of personality" for a reason. They do not care about issues and never will. Several articles have been posted here on DU identifying the psychological make up of his cult and why certain personalities are drawn and attach themselves to his personality especially the most loathsome aspects of it..
2. His base was tired of feeling frustrated by Congress not getting anything done and they didn't care about the cause of it...both the House and Senate obstructed Obama's policies without caring about how it would effect people/constituents. It was party over country and still is. They were 100% partisan and the Tea Party made it worse.
3. They LOVE drama (celebrity drama is even better due to reality TV) and 45 creates and thrives on chaos and drama, whether with "former" foreign allies, his own Congress, or with his own White House staff and aids.

This is why he will continue to hold onto his base. The only hope is that they will continue to get bored with him and the same old, same old like same did at his latest rally in AZ.

Congress won't impeach him until the public demands it. It will take the other 70% to resist the fake prez.

[dalton99a]

7. It's a freakin' cult - they'd buy his used napkins on eBay

[raven mad]

8. Tur sucks large orange sTrumpet.

Has since her "500 days".

[elleng]

10. 'Of all the times Donald Trump was done, it is his current status as a supposedly lame duck

first-term president that reminds me most of his final months on the trail. Back then, luminaries in his own party were condemning him, calling on him to drop out and researching a late-race change to the top of the ticket.

Much of the country was outraged. The polls were bleak. No politician had ever come back from what Mr. Trump was facing. But then, as now, the view from armchairs in Washington and newsrooms around the country missed something that it was impossible to miss out on the trail. Mr. Trump’s supporters were tired — of Washington, of the media, of waiting. And that fatigue allowed them to overlook a lot. They knew he was flawed but at least, they thought, he was on their side.

On one of Mr. Trump’s primary victory nights, in a ballroom at Mar-a-Lago, surrounded by people in diamonds and silk, I couldn’t help wondering what Mr. Trump’s rally crowds would think of all the money their candidate chose to celebrate with. “Why do people fighting for a raise relate to all of this?” I asked a man in a tuxedo. “Because deep down, they know he’s one of them,” he said.

“Trump sees us,” his supporters would tell me, everywhere we stopped. “You don’t.”

When they couldn’t exactly cheer for him, they found ways to excuse him. Five days after the “Access Hollywood” tape, for example, I asked an older woman in a flowery red dress what she thought of her candidate’s theory of sexual license — as a lone protester was playing the tape on a loop outside a rally venue in Lakeland, Fla.

She smiled. “What person hasn’t said it?” she said.

“I haven’t said it,” I said.

“Well, good for you,” she said.

“You’ve said you’re going to grab women by the … ?” I asked.

“No. Don’t be stupid,” she said, and walked away. . .

But I do know what political devotion looks like, and I do know what happens when you choose to discount it.'

[Martin Eden]

12. All bets are off, as far as I'm concerned

I never thought someone so obviously mentally and morally unfit could win a major party nomination let alone become President of the United States.

My confidence in the voting public was badly shaken when GW Bush got a 2nd term. Now it is completely shattered.

[czarjak]

13. Sorry Katy...

That's all moot in a "rigged election."