Aug 26^th

Trump is still busy burning bridges… while he’s standing on some of them. He has renewed his feud with Roger Aisles of Fox News because he continues to attack Roger’s favorite female anchor Megyn Kelly. This feud might help both of them because it will draw viewers, but if Trump wants the support of the conservative poohbahs this petulant continued attack on Megyn Kelly was not a smart move.

Look at his recent positions: He seems to be telling the Republican establishment that he isn’t one of them, and they’re responding exactly as you would expect them to. Consider taxes: The Republican position on this is clear, but Trump has recently said this about rich hedge fund managers and their tax burden, “I have hedge fund guys that are making lots of money that aren’t paying anything.” Then, “The hedge fund guys are getting away with murder… they don’t build anything they just shift paper around and get lucky.”   This is a Republican candidate for President saying this; it sounds like Bernie Sanders.

Then we have him cozying up to the Latino community (“I have lots of Latinos working for me, thousands of them; they love me.”) Last night he had his body guard remove Jose Ramos, an important Latino reporter, from his press conference. OK,  Ramos did speak out of turn and was belligerent, but the image will be of a near seven foot tall bouncer shoving a much smaller Jose Ramos out of the hall. That Ramos was invited back in won’t get as much play in the Latino community.

His exaggerated comments about Latino immigrants have irritated such conservative stalwarts as Mona Charen. Mona’s column today is titled, “Taking our country back: From whom?” She begins by agreeing that the United States is “very much in decline.” She then accuses the usual suspects, all liberals of course, but not illegal immigration. Then she spends about 80 percent of her column pointing out that most of Trump’s concerns about immigrants are not at all warranted. The number of illegal immigrants dropped from 1.6 million in 2000, to 400 thousand this past year. Mexico’s birth rate has dropped from 7.3 children per woman to 2.4 children per woman today. She claims that the birthrate gets below 2 children per woman immigration will stop. She also refutes Trump’s claims about the criminality of immigrants:  Among men, 18 to 39, who constitute the vast majority of the prison population, the native born 3.5 percent incarceration rate is five times the rate for foreign born. She finishes by describing Trump’s plans for a wall and for deportation of illegals claiming that, “A candidate for student council from a third rate high school could derive a more serious solution than those,” and claims that “Trump is on the ultimate ego trip.”

Trump is not completely without right wing support; Ann Coulter finds his views very attractive. She has said that if Trump can carry out his stop immigrants plan he can personally perform abortions in the White House for all she cares. I doubt that Ann Coulter represents many mainstream conservatives. As I said in an earlier post this year, for the first time in many years she wasn’t invited to speak at CPAC, the Conservative Political Action Committee.

What does it all mean? First, consider that Trump is no dummy and that he knows he is alienating an important Republican Party base…and he doesn’t care. I can think of only one reason that he doesn’t care; he plans eventually to run as an independent. Not yet of course, because he has more to gain by staying for the debates where he can continue to lacerate his Republican opponents. Eventually we’ll see if I’m right; meantime, doesn’t Trump remind you a bit of Il Duce, the early, posturing, Benito Mussolini?