I Need to Interview Donald Trump

There is no candidate for U.S. President that I have felt a more urgent need to meet. That is not going to happen, but I say it because I agree with many of his positions, at least as broadly stated.

Donald J. Trump is becoming significant. He is racking up a roster of delegates to the Republican nominating convention that leaves friends and foe convinced—with glee or gibbering fear, respectively—that he might “lock up” the convention. Then, we would be deciding whether to vote for Mr. Trump versus Hillary Clinton or Bernard Sanders.

He is significant because he has defied a hostile, now nigh hysterical, media and prevailed—as Barry Goldwater, for example, could not—and, in fact, garnered an estimated 1.6 billion dollars in free publicity. Critics groan that the intensive media assault has been a big gift to Mr. Trump, whose campaign so far has had to spend almost zilch on advertising. Mr. Trump, as few Republican candidates before him, has reached—shouted—over the heads of the media army to speak to “the people.”

There is no candidate for U.S. President that I have felt a more urgent need to meet. That is not going to happen, but I say it because I agree with many of his positions, at least as broadly stated; can understand his abrasive politically incorrect defiance; but believe everything most important about him lies in his “true” motivations. I believe that half-an-hour with the man could clarify what an eon of quotations and campaign-stop performances cannot.

But first, let me briefly and without comment list some positions he has taken in this campaign or in the past that I find appealing. For this, I rely on a useful site called “On the Issues.org.”

1. Cut the entire Environmental Protection Agency and Department of Education.
2. Black lives matter, but we need a strong police presence; police are the most mistreated people in America.
3. Climate change is a hoax.
4. Oil is this country’s lifeblood.
5. When you love America, you protect it with no apologies.
6. Better to have Middle East strongmen than Middle East chaos.
7. Get rid of the regulations that are just destroying us.
8. Replace ObamaCare with health savings accounts.
9. ObamaCare is a catastrophe that must be repealed and replaced.
10. Kill ObamaCare before it becomes a trillion-ton weight.
11. Don’t raise the minimum wage, it makes us non-competitive.
12. Full and equivocal support for the Second Amendment—I don’t agree, but many readers will. This is one of Trump’s most consistent positions.

And now, my conversation with Mr. Trump.

In December, 1999, you stated unequivocally that you supported a woman’s right to choose an abortion, perhaps with certain limitations. In 2011, when you became seriously engaged in Presidential politics, you said: “I am now pro-life, after years of being pro-choice.”

Mr. Trump—may I call you, “Donald?” In December, 1999, you stated unequivocally that you supported a woman’s right to choose an abortion, perhaps with certain limitations. In 2011, when you became seriously engaged in Presidential politics, you said: “I am now pro-life, after years of being pro-choice.”

On the campaign trail, today, you say “abortions must stop.” You compare yourself in making this journey with Ronald Reagan. To me, your complete reversal might be plausible for a man in his thirties, coming to terms with life, but in a man almost 70, married three times, long in the slugfest of many political campaigns, and easy with the life of the casino, this pro-life awakening just when you entered politics is troubling.

Donald, lean forward, now, so I can ask you this in utter confidence.  You were a declared Democrat in 2004, making large contributions to Hillary Clinton’s campaign, and supporting a woman’s right to choose an abortion. In 2016, you are a Republican, stating that you are pro-life. I am well aware that no individual seeking the Republican nomination has any chance to succeed as a supporter of a woman’s right to choose an abortion; the dominance of the evangelicals at the nomination stage, is decisive.

And so, I would like to know—lean closer—have you become pro-life as the unavoidable cost of the Republican nomination? And do you intend, in office, once again to emulate Ronald Reagan, who as president did nothing to limit a woman’s choice?

Thank you, Donald, I will keep your reply strictly confidential.

Next, Donald, about the Mexican thieves, rapists, and drug dealers pouring across the border into the United States. You mentioned them in your speech in June 2015 at Trump Tower in New York City announcing your candidacy for the nomination. Given the importance of that speech, and ample time to prepare, your remarks do not get a pass as “just Donald sayin’ what he really believes, straight from him to you.”

No one as politically astute as you, and as aware of the forces of political correctness, could have failed to know that you would be launching your campaign right into a Force Ten storm of criticism. You seemed to be declaring yourself, from the start, as the “anti-immigration president”—not to mention the bigoted President. And arguably, this has been the bedrock of your “populist popularity.”

But, as the storm reached full force, you did offer an explanation—and an excuse. You said you were referring only to that group of illegal immigrants dumped on our side of the border by the Mexican government in seeking to rid itself of criminals—not to illegal Mexican immigrants in general.

I find it interesting that a reading of your remarks actually supports the possibility of that interpretation. You said:  “When Mexico sends its people, they’re not sending their best… They’re sending people that have lots of problems, and they’re bringing those problems with [them]. They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists. And some, I assume, are good people.”

It is an odd formulation to say, if referring to the entire diverse horde of illegal immigrants coming across the border day and night, that “Mexico sends…” these people. So perhaps, after all, you were referring to the Mexican government; but you did not specify how the Mexican government might effect this transfer of criminals.

At the same time, you proposed what is being criticized as kind of Berlin Wall, or Great Wall of America, to seal our border with Mexico. Today, there already is a border fence 580 miles long on a U.S.-Mexico continental land border that is 1,954 miles. That means that roughly 25 percent of the wall you propose has been built, much of it during the Obama administration.

In other words, the heart of your proposal for dealing with illegal immigration—the wall—could be presented quite conservatively. Complete the remaining 70 percent of the wall, which, as we speak, is still being done in Texas. Complete it because every nation must control its border, and every nation does exert such control. More than 200,000 Mexicans a year cross the border illegally; 85,000 actually succeed in illegally entering our country. So do a flood of drugs from Latin and South America and the gangsters who run them.

Donald, all I am saying here is that you did not need to make this among the most inflammatory issues on the campaign trail, today. You did not need to do so. You chose to do so.

Tell me why I should not conclude that you decided deliberately to arouse populist anger, fear, and hatred toward immigrants, illegal and legal, because this has fueled your campaign.

I see. Well, thank you for that attempt at a clarification, Donald.

Have you read about the rise of violence as the chief political tactic in the German Weimar Republic as the insurgent Nazis, Communists, and others created cadres to beat up protestors and, eventually, to conduct full-scale clashes against each other in the streets? I don’t see you in that context, but you are rapidly handing evidence to your critics that along with deliberately incendiary rhetoric, and choice of issues that turn groups against each other, you are using that anger you have evoked to silence opposition without the need to persuade.

Next, Donald, about making America great again, growing the U.S. economy at six percent a year, making the economy dynamic, and bringing jobs back from Japan, China, and Mexico.

How will you do that? In 2016, as far as I can see, you put forward a single specific proposal: keep corporations from moving parts of their operations abroad and “bring corporations home” along with money they have abroad. As a corollary, “bring jobs home” from lower-cost manufacturing countries like China and Mexico. Both of these trends that you would reverse have been underway and strengthening for decades. You do not say how you would change things.

That is different from 2011, when you did make a powerful, dramatic proposal to eliminate the corporate income tax. You said, then, it was about the highest in the world and asked how we expected corporations to remain in America, or return, if we taxed them at 39 percent of profits. I see nowhere that you have repeated that proposal in the current campaign.

You see, Donald, you propose to transform the U.S. economy toward huge economic growth, effective manufacturing competition with China, and revival of jobs America has been losing for years. Could you just tell me, confidentially, how?

You referred once, I think, to eliminating regulations that “are killing us.” You referred once to limiting government’s role to public works, public safety, and little else. You proposed, once, to eliminate the Environmental Protection Agency. You said fight crony capitalism with a level playing field. Each of these proposals, in principle, if carried out, might have the potential for truly reviving American enterprise. All now lie in the past, unmentioned in this campaign.

Well, that uses up my half hour, Donald. I think that at our next meeting I would like to explore how you feel about violence as a political tactic. I realize that the media’s focus on this aspect of your campaign, as on many others, represents at least in part a frantic search for means to discredit you. I mean where were their moans about introducing violence into the political equation when protestors went on a rampage over “police killings”? And I have no doubt there is pushing, shoving, poster tearing, and other intimidation at the rallies of other candidates.

Problem is, Donald, that you stand up there behind the security cordon and say, “Go for’em,” “Give’em one for me,” and then explain that these are expressions of “love for America.” Then, you seem to crow that all the protestors have been scared away.

Have you read about the rise of violence as the chief political tactic in the German Weimar Republic as the insurgent Nazis, Communists, and others created cadres to beat up protestors and, eventually, to conduct full-scale clashes against each other in the streets?

I don’t see you in that context, at all, but you are rapidly handing evidence to your critics that along with deliberately incendiary rhetoric, and choice of issues that turn groups against each other, you are using that anger you have evoked to silence opposition without the need to persuade.

Believe me, Donald, I am old enough to recall how the media portrayed the 1964 Republican nominee, Barry Goldwater, whose laissez faire capitalist views and case for limited government had been stated in the U.S. Senate for years, and eloquently and often in print, as a fascist. When I read such attacks on you, my first inclination is to dismiss them as mud-slinging.

But I will be watching you.

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About the Author: Walter Donway

Walter Donway contributes to Savvy Street on political economy, science, and trends in fiction, film, and culture. Walter Donway’s most recent book is Donald Trump and His Enemies: How the Media Put Trump in Office (Romantic Revolution Books: New York, September 2017). His Amazon profile can be found here