11 Comments
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Frank Millikan's avatar

Perhaps your next column should be about the genius of Hitler.

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Jake Peterson's avatar

Think what you will about Trump, but he does play the political game well. As Brands has said previously, Trump is the first President since FDR to have such a stranglehold on his political party; Trump also seems to have a similar stranglehold on his followers. Brands describing Trump’s allure to his followers does not mean that he endorses it or is supportive of Trump himself. If you think that Brands supports Trump, then you obviously haven’t read anything else that he’s written

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Sukie Crandall's avatar

Yeah, but if we go back in heritage to the one acclaimed as the best fiddle player, it was Satan.

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DENNIS B MURPHY's avatar

I think you give Trump too much credit for intelligence with regards to his speechifying. Everything Trump is hyperbole and superlatives: Big. Beautiful. Powerful He literally lies incessantly.

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Chance Kelly's avatar

Thank you, sir, for not following any standardized narrative, but for seeing the truth as it lay before us all to behold.

Trump has grown on me. Particularly the very genius you outline here.

Thank you for laying it out the way few writers will or can.

Chance Kelly

🇺🇸

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DENNIS B MURPHY's avatar

If if- IF - he is a rhetorical genius- he's a sociopath wannabe authoritarian implementing the worst most cruel, damaging policies in decades if not a century. It's going to take years to recover from the damage he is inflicting economically and politically- the damage to our democratic system is literally in shambles right now.

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Tami's avatar

Yes, it's nice to hear a well-played tune, better yet when it's finely choreographed by riverdancers.

It sure beats the heck out of the sleepy, silent, predecessor.

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Christopher Wood's avatar

I agree to your premise of the 2015 Trump, today he has indiscriminate ideas flowing through his increasingly demented mind.

He has to be briefed about who is at a speech, with notes as to who the person is.

He can't finish a complete thought on the same topic, nor even finish a complete sentence.

His cult exists becuase he can easily remember his “greatest hits” of rhetoric against perceived enemies.

Darn'Old Drumpf, King of Dementia-Felonia, is slowly devolving into his self-made fantasy world of grifting, hating, and self-loathing that feeds his inner beast.

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William Basileios Chriss's avatar

Another masterful piece by HWB. Who else could coin “broken through the hypocrisy barrier to the open fields of blarney beyond?” Awesome and humbling. Keep it up!

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Lyle Smith's avatar

Yep, Trump is a hoot. America is better for it too. Let there be peace through diplomacy, strength,

and tariffs.

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gabyrnes's avatar

You hit the nail on the head. Spot on. I enjoy watching people like Judge Napolitano disagree with Trump at times, but I know they just don't get him in some ways. Washington is a world of lawyers and legal talk. To them, Trump is incomprehensible. Like trying to read a computer code, which is actually a poem. My late sparing partner, Frank Delaney, and I disagreed on a lot of things, but he wrote a book, Venetia Kelly's Travelling Show, which takes place during the 1932 political campaign in Ireland. One of the stars of the book is a ventriloquist's dummy named Blarney. Yes, politics as theater. Or in that case theater as politics.

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