How Trump Works

I think that the GOP would just as soon Donald Trump would have melted down by now but, to their surprise, he is going strong. We are headed into the second Republican debate and he will, once again, be in the center, leading the pack.

I want to note a few things that Trump seems to be all about. He, apparently, hates Hispanic people and seems to characterize all of them as Mexican nationals, no matter where they are from. And all Mexicans are murderers and rapists. This kind of rhetoric caused a lot of companies to decide to quit doing business with him, including the PGA tour, NBC and one of the Spanish-language television networks, Univision. Trump decided to sue Univision when they dropped coverage of his Miss Universe and Miss USA pageants.

Since Univision does have a large Hispanic viewing audience, their news division wanted to interview candidate Donald Trump about his statements concerning Mexicans living here in the United States and his apparent issues with them. Their polls show that Trump enjoys a 75% negative rating with Hispanics and the network believes that he cannot win any national Presidential election if he does not have a great deal of Hispanic support. I know what they do in news departments. They task someone with calling twice a day every day to ask for an interview. Someone from Univision has been calling the Trump organization every day for, at this writing, three months. The person making the call may not be a top reporter and certainly is not their national news anchorperson, but these calls are being made. Were anyone from the Trump organization to suggest that Donald Trump would be happy to take an interview request from Univision, the follow-up would be at a high level.

So, after Donald Trump has refused any question from Univision for three months now, evening news anchor Jorge Ramos decided to attend a press conference held by Donald Trump.

I happened to turn on the television at that time—not to listen to Donald Trump but, rather, to see what was happening and to rest from a trying day. And, in tuning around, I noted that CNN, MSNBC and Faux "news" were all carrying the news conference live. I found this fact, alone, interesting. They do not do this with any of the other candidates. And, I think that with Donald Trump, he says such outrageous things that there is some fascination.

I had flipped back to MSNBC when Jorge Ramos stood up. I heard Ramos' questions—CNN did not have good audio on Ramos' questions (I found that out later). Donald Trump saw the Univision anchorman stand up and immediately turned to the center and tried to call on another reporter. The reporter Trump called on did not ask a question and, instead, listened to the exchange between Jorge Ramos and Trump. Ramos was asking how the United States could afford to deport 11 million persons in the United States who had overstayed their visas or entered this country without proper paperwork. He also asked how Donald Trump was going to build a wall over the entire US-Mexico border (knowing that many of the undocumented aliens in this country come by air and other means) and how Donald Trump could claim that he would get the Hispanic vote when a vast majority of Hispanics have an unfavorable view of Donald Trump.

Each of these questions are fair questions, because all of this information is the kind of information Donald Trump shares with the press and the American people every time he gives a speech. But the situation was interesting. Jorge Ramos was conducting an "ambush interview." And attempting to ambush someone is also fair, as Donald Trump and his organization have refused to offer an interview with Univision for three months. Trump knows this, because he tells his people to ignore their requests.

Rolonda Watts

In an "ambush interview," often the goal is to simply show the response to the ambush of the person being interviewed. In 1990, I edited a number of "ambush interviews with Inside Edition and I became quite familiar with how they work. Ambush interviews are the staple of investigative reporting on television, where the interviewee often does not wish to be interviewed. In 1990, I edited the report by Rolonda Watts with Byron De La Beckwith, the man who murdered Medgar Evers. Apparently, De La Beckwith had kept the murder weapon in his home and it was discovered in 1990. Watts telephoned him from New York and asked for an interview. She told me that De La Beckwith told her over the phone that Inside Edition was not to send a "nigger, jap, Jew or a spick" to interview him. Rolonda, who is black, told him that she would personally do the interview so that he could tell his side of the story.

Inside Edition had two cameras rolling as De La Beckwith threw Ms. Watts off his property. I recall we had to "bleep" out considerable profanity from De La Beckwith. We aired the ambush pretty much as it happened.

A few of my friends have suggested to me that Jorge Ramos was being rude, that he was not recognized, that he spoke out of turn. Not true. Every single reporter in the room knew what was going on. And so did Donald Trump. Trump thought he could simply refuse to call on Ramos and that would settle the issue. But Ramos was all set to jump in as soon as Trump drew a breath and went looking for another "softball." And the rules of decorum change in an ambush. This is an ambush that Donald Trump set up as soon as he decided to ignore Univision for three months.

Jorge Ramos

For my readers who are not Hispanic, that is like throwing Lester Holt from NBC or David Muir from ABC or Scott Pelley from CBS out of a press conference. You don't do that. You take the question and you try to maintain some dignity if you think the news anchorperson is going to make things hot for you. Instead, Trump revealed his real feelings for Hispanic Americans. He glanced at his bodyguard, who all but shoved Ramos out of the room and as that was happening, Trump told Ramos to "go back to Univision."He couldn't say Mexico because he knew the rest of the reporters in the press conference would immediately all start asking questions about his latest insult to Hispanic-Americans. Once out in the hallway, Trump's bodyguard said "Get out of my country" to Ramos, who was naturalized as a US citizen in 2008. Ramos is a respected, award-winning journalist and deserves treatment as such. Donald Trump treated him like he would like the United States to treat everyone of foreign origin.

That treatment is the reaction that Ramos' questions created in Donald Trump and, just as in the case where Byron De La Beckwith threw Rolonda Watts off his lawn, demonstrating his extreme prejudice, Trump demonstrated exactly the same prejudice with Ramos.

I would say that the score is Univision 2, Trump 0.

Now, Trump, realizing what just happened, did invite Ramos back to ask his question, whereupon Trump wanted Ramos' question to be all about Trump's lawsuit, but this would serve to be more mistreatment. At one point, Trump announced that he "liked Ramos." But he also said he did not know Ramos—even though he had refused to take a question from him, had him ejected from a press conference and also told him to "go back to Univision." Trump does something outrageous and has a meltdown in front of live crowds (throwing red meat to the isolationist radical racists in the Republican party) and then acts like it's all in fun.

I am hopeful that these meltdowns become more frequent so that America can really see who the Republican front-runner is. This says a whole lot about the Republican Party in general that they would accept Donald Trump as a candidate. I don't think America wants to hire such a volatile person as President.

The Trump Card

So, The Donald has decided to actually run for the Republican nomination. And he was immediately dismissed by that party as "not a serious candidate." Then, to everyone's surprise, his candidacy took off. Polls show him—even after his little spat with Faux "news" personality Megyn Kelly—leading all other candidates.

At first, this was amusing. It was so amusing that Arianna Huffington decided that all coverage of the Donald would be in the Entertainment section in the Huffington Post. True to form, he launched an attack on the Huffington Post, Ms. Huffington and on all media coverage in general. More red meat for the masses.

But the dustup with Megyn Kelly seems to have been "important." One of the things that Donald Trump called her was "a lightweight." and he said "she was reading from her little script." And this points something out. We were not actually watching a Presidential debate. The men (and they were all men, because Carly Fiorina was relegated to the "Kiddie Table Debate") played a role and acted as if though Faux "news" actually does news and has real journalists. And the people from Faux "news" played the part of serious journalists, by carefully reading serious questions that were given to them and designed to actually challenge the candidates. This caught several of the candidates off-guard, especially Donald Trump, because they are all used to the softballs thrown at them by Faux "news" personalities.

Megyn Kelly is a "lightweight," just as all of the personalities on that network are. Despite the fact that she worked for ABC affiliate WJLA-TV, she is permanently blacklisted from ever working in any capacity as a real journalist again. Anyone accepts a job from Murdoch is permanently blacklisted. You will never see one of their personalities hired by CNN or any of the broadcast networks. This is because they do not make news, they do not report it, they do not hold to any of the standards of journalism, they have no ethics and they do not appear to know the difference between what they are doing and real news gathering and news reporting. Real news organizations do not exist to train people up—that is what you are supposed to have done in college.

What you saw on that network was a "reality show," or "reality-based television." where everyone is an unscripted actor (save, perhaps, the Faux "news" personalities reading from their scripts). And, since the ratings were nice and high, Roger Ailes "made nice" with Mr. Trump after having surprised him with the questions asked, because he knows that Donald Trump is the reason why the viewership of this reality show was so high. He wants more ratings like that.

So, now, let's get to the whole reason why Donald Trump is able to run on the Republican ticket.

Donald Trump knows that he needn't be specific as to what policies he would espouse as President. He need not be specific because the Republican candidates do not debate each other. Instead, they launch attacks on a President who is not running for office and try to attack the person they think the Democrats will nominate. And the reason why Republicans are so light on specifics is because the party's platform is specifically designed to harm the majority of the voters, so they would rather talk about their opponent than what they plan to do.

So he ran knowing he would never be asked what he would do if he were President. He can always side-step all of these questions very easily, because none of the other candidates will ever call him on this and because he can always attack the press. Attacking the press is not informational. Attacking Democrats or the President is not informational. When you go on the attack, you cease to state what you will do. Anyone who questions Donald Trump will face a personal ad hominum attack from Donald Trump. And this is exactly why Roger Ailes gave Megyn Kelly the script that called for her to ask about how women see Trump. He knew right away that her ratings would increase after the spat and Ailes is all about the money he can make by having a non-news network.

The paranoid Hillary

I am one of the few Americans who has all ready voted for Hillary Clinton. I voted for her to be a New York State Senator. Up until then she had not run for office and had not served in any administration. Subsequently, she ran for President against Barack Obama and I voted for Obama. I voted for him because he said he would do what I did not think Hillary could do: end the petty

partisanship in Washington. I believe that Republicans, who had been thrown out of power in both houses, wanted so badly to prevent President Obama from being able to keep that campaign promise, as well as any others, that they did everything they could to actually increase the petty partisanship.

Hillary is particularly qualified to be President of the United States. She served as First Lady, served admirably in the Senate and served as Secretary of State. There is no Republican who can say they have held both a seat in the Senate and also served as a Secretary of State.

But is was while she was Secretary of State that, I think Hillary's paranoia got the better of her. In 1998, Hillary, in defense of her husband, claimed that there was a "vast right-wing conspiracy" to try to take down the Presidency of her husband. Certainly, as a special prosecutor, Kenneth Starr did everything he could—Whitewater morphed into Filegate to Travelgate to allegations that Bill Clinton had an affair with Paula Jones prior to his presidency and finally to the Lewinsky affair. But this is Kenneth Starr, who ought not to have ever been granted the power granted to him by Janet Reno to do open-ended investigations.

Hillary needed control. As Secretary of State, she could not handle the possibility that someone would endlessly investigate her job in that position and, she was right. The Benghazi investigation in the House of Representatives concluded after two and a half years just before Thanksgiving, 2014, where the results (no findings of wrongdoing) could be buried in the other news of the day.

So she had an IT person build her a special server to handle her email in Chappaqua, NY and not one under the control of the Obama administration or the government. I have heard a lot of concerns about security with respect to this server but, if the IRS's computers could have been hacked, certainly the system used by the State Department could have been hacked. Her computer was probably as safe as any.

But it's the paranoia in having someone set that up that bothers me. I think that, as President, her paranoia will continue—if it doesn't get worse. I lived through a time when we had a President who was paranoid. And that did not work out well for us. I'm not sure why Richard Nixon was so paranoid—there was certainly no "vast left wing conspiracy" trying to remove him from office. The calls for him to step down came from both sides of the aisle.

Nixon was, certainly, the 20th Century's worse President though, in terms of policy, I think Reagan was worse. Nixon tried to create an imperial Presidency with more ceremony, more exultation of his person, more protocols and a clear way of thinking that strongly suggested that he thought that the President was above us all and above the laws of the United States.

And it is precisely that that bothers me about Hillary. While she was raised middle class and while I believe she does retain middle class values and aspirations, which I prefer any President to do, her paranoia may encourage her to take steps to hide from the record-keepers, take an adversarial stance towards the press (which has a right to know) and the public, which also has a right to know what is going on within her administration.

Today, we have Bernie Sanders with his straight talk and, possibly, Joe Biden as well as Hillary Clinton running for the Democratic nomination. I don't think Vice President Biden will run. And I am completely undecided. I don't want a paranoid President.