What is Donald Trump up to!

September 26, 2015

By Saeed Qureshi

Donald Trump is a billionaire realty kingpin and one of the Republican candidates for the highest and the most prestigious office of the president of the United States of America. He fumes, frets and hops on the Republican Party turf as well the American soil by hurling funny and rather disparaging remarks, dainty anecdotes and perplexing tidbits like a versatile conjurer.

He outlines his provocative policy statements from his armory of arguments against the rival politicians. His level of tolerance with the press and news channels is meager as can be seen from his distraught behavior and annoyance with FOX, NBC and Univision news and TV channels.

 His style of gesticulating and making different contours of face is interesting but perhaps he is made that way.  It might turn out to be an asset for him as he hits his targets with a straight shot and with a tinge of ridicule or curt rebuke that is certainly a new trend in the political debates that we have been watching all these years. He is unabashed and undaunted in hurling his punches and salvos of comments making the rivals defenseless and fazed for a while.

Occasionally or invariably he lacks decorum and decency or kind of parliamentarian touch in bludgeoning his Republican contenders by making demeaning personal remarks. Look at the comments that he hurled at rival Republican presidential candidate Carly Fiorina by disdainfully pointing towards her face or looks that might be amusing but distasteful at the same time. 

He remarked "Look at that face! Would anyone vote for that?" Trump said to Solotaroff. "Can you imagine that, the face of our next president?”  Later he retracted from his previous stance by feigning that he was talking about her persona and not face.

He might not be interested in Mexican votes. Otherwise how could pronounce that all the Mexicans were “rapists”. This unwarranted and mindless judgment might deprive him off some sizable number of votes in case he wins the Republican debate. Latinos and Mexicans are around 15 per cent of the total population of the United States.

He says that native children of immigrants were “anchor babies”. It means that the illegal immigrants can claim legal stay on the basis of the children born here. This is true but that is what the constitution of the United States permits.

His immigration plan aims at deporting country’s 11 million undocumented immigrants and ending birthright citizenship, a “guarantee in the Constitution’s 14th Amendment that any child born on U.S. soil is automatically granted U.S. citizenship, including children of foreign-born parents”.

Now United States is not the only country granting such a right. It is one of the 33 countries that grant right of soil or the automatic citizenship to anyone born in a territory or country, including children of undocumented immigrants.Interestingly Trump’s mother was a Scottish immigrant to United States. His paternal grandparents were German immigrants.

With Americans Muslims he is most annoyed although all the immigrants including Muslims are law-abiding and part of the magnificent American society that guarantees fundamental rights and liberty within the framework of the constitution.

He still doubts Obama was not an American born citizen. Recently in an elections rally he supported the question of a person when he asked “We have a problem in this country. It’s called Muslims. We know our current President is one. You know he’s not even an American. When can we get rid of all the Muslims in America?  To that racial question a smiling Trump responded “We need this question.”

Expressing his intense dislike for the women she dubs them “fat pigs, dogs, slobs and disgusting animals”. Later talking to CNN's Don Lemon, he lashed out in retaliation, at Fox News debate moderator Megyn Kelly with a sleazy rebuke because of her question as to why he was so disrespectful to the women by portraying them as pigs and dogs etc. He said to CNN, “You could see there was blood coming out of her( Kelly) eyes, blood coming out of her wherever”.

But all said and done, it is fundamentally, the public opinion and popular judgment that is going to be a decisive factor and to make the difference. There might be a method in Trumps’ recklessness as astonishingly he is leading other Republican contenders in public opinion polls. Thus far with a 33 % approval rating he is on top among a list of 15 candidates.

But per say, despite his unusual plans and promises if he is still appealing to the people and draws large crowds at his public rallies, then it demonstrates his popularity. His indecency and rather occasional vulgarity might be a new interesting and piquant dimension for his audience. Otherwise how could he stay on top with all the provocative and rather weird ranting?

But supposedly if he beats all other Republican presidential candidates and goes straight on top to face the Democratic rival, then notwithstanding his visibly outlandish behavior, he would achieve a milestone.

It appears that there is a lobby in the United States that might be happy with his agenda and manifesto incorporating such plans as withdrawal or denial of citizenship to the babies of the immigrants born in America. It is rather also mind-boggling that despite his humiliating and highly indecent comments about fair sex, one can still see a sizable presence of women of all ages in his election rallies.

Even if all the Mexicans and Latinos (15 % of the total population) don’t vote from him and even the African American (also 15 %) might be divided on voting for him, he might still win the elections. It is yet to be seen how the situation emerges as there a whole year for the presidential election to take place. It is also to be seen which candidate from the Democratic Party wins the final round.

With a probability of Hillary Clinton from the Democratic Party and Donald Trump from the Republican winning their respective top positions, the competition might get tough, terse and rather overly interesting. 

But there could be another guess that Bel Carson (now second), Carly Fiorina (third position) or Jeb Bush (fourth position) might win the final round in the debate now apace within the Republican Party for the final victor to come forward and face the Democratic rival.