CommonSpace columnist Ian Dunn suggests the two have more in common than baffling blonde things atop their heads
AS Donald Trump’s real estate empire expands to include every page of every newspaper and all the corners of the internet, it’s worth recalling his campaign to bring his brand of ‘luxury living’ to Scotland.
In an exceptionally grubby operation, detailed in the award-winning film ‘You’ve Been Trumped’, he was successful in overriding the profound concerns of locals and environmentalists to get planning permission to build a vast hotel and golf course in Aberdeenshire.
One of Trump’s chief champions then was the local MSP, and first minister, Alex Salmond. The two later fell out spectacularly, but for a while this “amazing man”, as the billionaire called him, was a loud and proud trumpet for Trump.
Trump is currently running a campaign to become US president which is so hate filled and over the top that Dick Cheney thinks he should be more respectful to Muslims.
Whatever his flaws, Alex Salmond is no one’s idea of a fool so the fact that Trump managed to win him over, even briefly, tells us more about the mogul’s substantial ability to convince and cajole than Salmond’s gullibility.
Trump is currently running a campaign to become US president which is so hate filled and over the top that Dick Cheney thinks he should be more respectful to Muslims.
As happened in Scotland, Trump’s relentlessly masturbatory egomania has fascinated, appalled and distracted as he proceeds to getting exactly what he wants. The key to Trump’s success has been to wrap his every hateful utterance in his bizarrely outsized personality.
Each demonization of the ‘other’ (usually Muslims or Mexicans), is accompanied by a bombastic proclamation of self praise sprinkled with something totally bizarre. Like saying he’d combat Daesh by saying they wore “dirty, filthy hats”.
Time and again he hits on exactly the right combination of hate, self love and lunacy that makes you want to know more even if you hate everything he proposes.
Time and again he hits on exactly the right combination of hate, self love and lunacy that makes you want to know more even if you hate everything he proposes.
Trump’s long years as a reality TV star have honed his ability to grab the attention to a razor’s edge. Of course, he is not the first curiously coiffed TV star, who excelled at grabbing the public’s attention and disguising his malignancy with a huge and strange personality.
Let me clear at this point, that unlike Jimmy Savile, there is absolutely no evidence at all that Donald Trump has ever abused a child. But there is a parallel in the way both used the media, and the media’s fascination with their bizarre natures, to advance their agendas.
Savile was the master of hiding in plain sight. Twenty million people watched Jim’ll Fix IT for 20 years. Even at the time it was clear there was something not quite right about Savile. Yet by playing up his own oddness he muddied the waters, made it less than clear what was going on.
He made strangeness a feature rather than a bug. With hindsight, it seems clear that part of his attraction was the slight sense of danger, that something was wrong here even if viewers couldn’t put their fingers on exactly what it was.
Unlike Savile, there is absolutely no evidence at all that Donald Trump has ever abused a child, but there is a parallel in the way both used the media, and the media’s fascination with their bizarre natures, to advance their agendas.
Trump pulls off a similar trick, as even those who loath everything he stands for are fascinated by him, are desperate to see just what he’ll do next. His audience is far greater than his support.
The key difference is that whereas Savile co-opted the establishment and institutions of his time, Trump is prepared to ignore his.
Savile cultivated friendships with politicians and the police and used authority to put himself outside it. Many in the newspaper industry tried to expose him only to be shut down by the most expensive lawyers money can buy.
Trump is different. And the world is different. When other politicians and the media attack him he just ignores them and doubles down on his lies. In the individualised culture of 2015, very few institutions have the power to shackle a billionaire with no shame.
All the experts say his campaign will burn itself out, that he’ll never be the Republican nominee, let alone president.
I profoundly hope they are right, because, like Savile, he is all too aware that evil’s best disguise is a buffoon’s mask.
Picture courtesy of Gage Skidmore