Trump phenomenon

I challenged myself to describe the Trump phenomenon in USA, on how and next what scenarios as succinctly as possible. All are my opinion after reading and watching reporting on the events surrounding the elections last year.

How

Trump nomination itself was a surprise to most of the conservatives. Everyone waited for him to quit right up until the very end. But as he has shown increasingly a penchant for, he survived many setbacks which would have floored any other politician. His approach was not to be apologetic but to accept and be brash about it or just outright deny and lie. This characterized him as a bold strong man to his supporters and not weak due to his indiscretions that he refused to apologize for, to his haters. The pundits missed a very important factor in his strength. There was and still is in my opinion about 20% of Americans who truly feel the same was he does where racism is concerned which was his most important  campaign agenda. Immigrants are all criminals and African Americans are better off as slaves. A part of that percentage (25%?) the Nazis advocate that view openly, the rest in private. This was his solid base. To this his campaign cleverly tagged on pro-gun, anti-abortion, pro-christian, anti-LGBTQ, pro-coal to attract conservatives for which this was important. I doubt he himself cared about any of these but was clever enough to dog whistle these issues to show he was for them. None of his conservative challengers could advocate all these as openly as he was doing which eroded their support letting him clinch the nomination. Next up the presidential elections. I feel he won this because of a perfect storm in American politics. Over confident Hillary, Russian hacking and interference, middle class white america feeling marginalized and ignored, 8 years of a black president who a lot of white conservative America hated, Hillary's email and Bengazi issues and a misogynistic streak in American which does not like strong and smart women. All favored Trump. Remove any one of the above, chances are he would have lost.

Next what

Trump will shortly complete a year as president. For most of this haters it has been a disaster. For his supporters he has delivered on all the bluster they wanted from him against things they hated or liked. The fact that there is nothing concrete that he has achieved wont matter to them. So, he is a success for the 20% and some 10 odd % hanging on because of their favorite issues. All indications are he will not complete another year given the pace of Robert Mueller investigation of this presidency. In all likely hood he will resign before he gets indicted and impeached and go back to making his brand more lucrative using the infamous publicity he generated. My prediction by the end of 2018.


To conclude, my pet theory  is Trump ran for presidency solely to increase his brand value and hence his net worth and most likely expected to lose the nomination after making noise in the campaign. I doubt he ever thought he had a good chance of winning the presidency itself. After surprisingly himself, I feel he is just looking for a way out before things get too hot and all this shady business deals come to light as has happened for Paul Manafort. Note that he is yet to release his promised Tax returns.

All said and done, Trump is nothing but a crooked (much more appropriate here) business man and the only thing he really truly cares about is Money!