War of words: Trump, visionary or madman?

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Trump, visionary or madman?

By Tim Stanley

Columnist, The Telegraph

Donald Trump is a visionary. Why? Because he’s been saying the same things for twenty years about issues that a lot of us thought no one could ever win the presidency on. War. Trade. Immigration. Crime. Where other Republicans feared to tread, he went there. His victory in 2016 was, at the time, a huge surprise. In retrospect, it makes perfect sense.

Now, just because a man has great political instincts doesn’t make him a good person. Trump is crude, corrupt and a real challenge to the US constitution. In a sense, he’s not even very conservative. Most conservatives want to reduce government. He wants to put it on the side of his supporters.

But he won in 2016 because he felt and articulated the pain of many voters better than anyone else. And his administration's policies on tax, energy, defence and foreign policy make him perhaps the most radical president since Reagan. Dangerous? Perhaps. But the press, the courts and even his own party are doing their best to curtail him. His opponents have grounds to hate and fear him. But they’ll only beat him if they first acknowledge what he’s got right.

By Janet Daley

Columnist, The Sunday Telegraph

What is most alarming about Donald Trump is not his childish behaviour or his uninformed capriciousness. Even his thuggish, mafia-boss language could be excused as a kind of idiosyncratic style. They are seen by his supporters as unimportant.

If anything, they seem to reflect his kinship with the “ordinary guy” who is angry and frustrated by the country’s failure to provide the prosperity and opportunity that the American dream once promised. And that is the key to the most deeply disturbing aspect of his presidency.

His core message is that of the classic demagogue: I am your only defender. Everyone else who has – or wants – power in this country is lying to you. The politicians in Washington are corrupt con-men who are simply out for personal gain at your expense. They are the ones who have “given away your jobs” to foreign countries.

The media invents fake news to prevent you from discovering the truth. You can trust no one except me to deliver you from this evil conspiracy against the “forgotten man”.

Most perniciously, he suggests that there are actually simple solutions to the problems the “lying” Washington establishment pretends are complicated. He personally will revive the industrial wastelands, restoring all those lost jobs to American workers.

In fact, of course, there are no easy solutions to the decline of the old industries and the communities that depended on them. Meanwhile, in pursuit of his personality cult, Trump traduces the Constitution and the democratic institutions which are America’s greatest strength.