Canadians Could Soon See One Of The Most Dangerous Men Running One Of The World’s Most Powerful Countries – Right Across The Border From Us!

• If That Happens, Maybe We Should Build A Wall Along The Border And Make Donald Trump Pay For It

A Commentary by Doug Draper, Niagara At Large

December 8th, 2015

When billionaire real estate baron and realty show celebrity Donald Trump announced his candidacy for President of the United States last spring, many of that country’s political pundits wrote him off as a clown who would say or do something to blow his campaign up by the end of the summer.

The front page of the New York Daily News this past June, after Donald Trump announced he was running for U.S. president.

But the pundits turned out to be just as wrong about that as many of them were when a junior senator from Illinois named Barack Obama announced his candidacy for the nation’s top job in 2007 and their out-of-the gate prediction was that he, with his lack of political experience, his middle name ‘Hussein’ and his black skin, had little or no chance to win.

When Trump stood in his golden tower on New York City’s Fifth Avenue last June and announced his decision to run while Neil Young’s ‘Rockin’ In The Free World’ (appropriated for the occasion without the artist’s consent) was welling up in the background, he immediately drew fire from what liberals are left in the America by declaring that he was going to build a wall along the border his country shares with Mexico to keep what he described as all of the murderers, rapists and drug dealers out.

From there, he went on to call a female host of a cable news program a bimbo, make fun of the face of a female candidate running against him, dismiss most of the other Republican candidates running against, not to mention most of the politicians in Washington, including the president, as weak, stupid, incompetent and, when they tanked in the polls, as ‘major league losers.’

And of course, there is volley after volley of shots at all of the “lairs” (code for reporters that fail to give him faourable coverage) in the news media, including the recent tasteless mocking of a physical disability of a reporter at what he describes as the “failing, soon-to-go-bankrupt” New York Times who dared to question Trump’s assertion that thousands of Muslims were cheering along the shores of the Hudson River when the twin towers of the World Trade Centre collapsed in a terrorist attack 14 years ago.

Most of this seemed funny and entertaining enough to the American masses to buy Trump far more than his fair share of free time on cable news channels that realized huge jumps in their ratings every time they had him on, even after he insulted them on the air for asking ‘stupid questions’. As one female member of a cable news panel put it; “He’s like the verbally abuse boyfriend you can’t break up with.”

Indeed, Trump has often reminded news program hosts that their ratings spike every time they have him on. He once told CNN news host Don Lemon that he’d bury a show running against his on the Fox channel in the ratings war if he had him on every night. This was shortly after a televised candidates’ debate featuring Trump as the front-runner received the kind of ratings a football game would get and previously unheard of for a political event.

So it makes for quite the dilemma for American networks that depend on high ratings for their very existence. They may feel uncomfortable having Trump on spouting off, as he does with ever more zeal about making all Muslim Americans register their names in a government data bank, closing down Mosques and, most recently, placing a total ban on Muslims immigrating to the United States.

But if they don’t have him on their network, other others will to the benefit of their ratings and to the benefit of Trump, who just keeps shoring up his lead in the polls as he plays to the anger of many Americans who fear for their security and worry that the age old dream of bettering their lives is slipping away.

Editorial writers and even members of the Republic Party can say all they want – as many of them are these days – that he is a ‘fascist’, a ‘demagogue’ and a ‘bigot’ and ‘maniac’ who has become ‘unhinged’ all they want. This December 7^th, on an aircraft carrier docked in South Carolina, Trump attracted one of his largest audiences yet, cheering wildly as he promised he will sweep away or defeat those groups they believe are blocking the way to what he insists is his ‘obligation’ to “make America great again.”

Trump is now just two months away from the first primaries in Iowa and New Hampshire. And as veteran reporters of U.S. elections have said, if he wins those and goes on to win South Carolina, George and even Florida, where polls repeatedly show he is running ahead of candidates Jeb Bush and Marco Rubio in their own state, there may be nothing stopping him but the Democratic candidate, which is expected to be Hillary Clinton who could beat him but who ran a campaign for the presidency in 2008 that saw her early lead fizzle and die.

To be sure, there are also many Americans who are troubled by Trump’s candidacy. When I mention his name to some of my American friends, they respond with lines like; “It’s insane,” or; “God help us.”

God help them and God help the rest of us in Canada and other countries around the world if this 21^st Century equivalent of a snake oil salesman is sworn in as the 45^th President of the United States.

With that, I will leave the last words on this nightmarish circus to my favourite sage, the late great George Carlin, whose commentary on the human condition is even more relevant today than it was 10 or 30 or 40 years ago.

Visit Niagara At Large at www.niagaraatlarge.com for more news and commentary for and from the greater bi-national Niagara region.

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