It directly plays into his campaign’s narrative that Washington is broken and so too are the stem to stern politicians; matters not the party or even what their highly political wives say, since many political wives and family are just part 'n' parcel of the fragmented, opportunistic and phony process that includes engineered photo ops to sell gullible, voters a damaged bill of goods.

AND Trump, once again, got the insanely stupid media that passes for journalism to give him oodles of free press, while running around with their hair on fire. The man is consistent.

Update: After seeing this epic Rickroll from Melania, I think that reader may be on to something with his “Trump is just trolling the media” theory:

This next reader suggests that Trump has credit-hogging problems of his own:

I guess Melania figured that if Donald can take credit for his ghostwriter’s words [a link to Jane Mayer’s new piece that Fallows highlighted here], then she might as well lift a few lines from Michelle’s speeches:

Trump, facing a crowd that had gathered in the lobby of Trump Tower, on Fifth Avenue, laid out his qualifications, saying, “We need a leader that wrote ‘The Art of the Deal.’ ” If that was so, Schwartz thought, then he, not Trump, should be running. Schwartz dashed off a tweet: “Many thanks Donald Trump for suggesting I run for President, based on the fact that I wrote ‘The Art of the Deal.’”

As an aside, it hurt my brain when Jane Meyer refers to the ghostwriter as “Trump's Boswell,” since the underlying analogy implies that Trump is Dr Johnson. Blasphemy.

Update from another reader, Andy, who has little sympathy for Melania:

Melania Trump went out of her way a few hours before her speech to tell Matt Lauer that she’d had minimal assistance in writing the speech.

She wanted credit for it, and I think she should have it.

Last night the folks on MSNBC very quickly settled on the notion that this fiasco is the fault of everyone concerned except Melania Trump, who was clearly the victim. Bullshit.

If anything, I think it’s more likely that she herself lifted those lines from Michelle Obama’s speech than it being done by a professional speechwriter. She’s been a professional model since 17 and dropped out of college after her first year. I can believe that she didn’t appreciate the problem with what she’d done.

That still wouldn’t excuse the campaign for not catching and correcting this, but it would at least help explain how such a ridiculous thing happened.

A quick skim of the news this morning indicates that the Trump campaign is still in full denial mode—Christie is claiming that that 93 percent of the speech was not plagiarized—so this story is likely to stick around for a while. Fine by me.

Update from reader Daniel C., who sends along new reporting that seems to confirm that theory—that Melania is the one responsible:

I believe Josh Marshall has determined why nobody’s been fired [based on this reporting from The New York Times]. If true, I would hope to see some measured, gentle, and forgiving remarks from a former First Lady, Hillary, about how we are all allowed to make mistakes.

But that the lack of structure within the organization of the Republican party this year means those mistakes go unchecked and snowball into chaos. I suspect the hope with Melania’s convention speech was to bring her into the fold of spokespeople who could make media appearances and raise money, and I’ll be curious to see if this cyclone-in-the-convention-coverage has any effect on that plan.

The Atlantic has done an excellent job in its coverage of ISIS, and my preferred theory is that the attacks resemble the flailing of a failing regime. I cannot remember the article, but it concluded the same and suggested these attacks would increase in frequency as ISIS lost more. Fast-forward to today and ISIS is being routed on almost every front, and their attacks are in-turn increasing.

As far as Trump is concerned, I think his support can be explained by the TED talk on “the golden circle,” and this study. [Here’s a clip of the TED talk if you can’t spare the full 18 minutes:

In essence, you can illustrate and factually show Trump’s faults, but he also has his own visceral appeal to a very specific demographic—a demographic that has been raised by certain beliefs and values. They don’t think about his message; they feel his message, or more accurately assign their preferred image to him. When you argue with that audience, you aren’t challenging their political opinions or intellectual arguments; you’re challenging their identity.

Personally, I’m a Democrat and I do not agree with the GOP, at all. I can say that being in the military has surrounded me with Republicans who generally vote with a red crayon. Having said that, many of the Republicans I’ve met within the service are planning to either sit out the election or vote for a third-party candidate, which may be a product of being stationed in Japan. The world tends to challenge one’s views by merely offering an entirely different set and culture. For the others, it has given me a perspective into how a Trump supporters thinks, or more accurately, how they feel.

I sincerely hope this man is never allowed near the title of POTUS, or given any power to wield our military.

For what it’s worth, I have four members of my immediate family who were career military—three of them veterans—and they’re all very repelled by Trump. (My former stepfather, while in the Army, was actually a close mentor to Michael Flynn—the retired general who spoke in Cleveland last night and who was vetted as a running mate—but I have no idea what he thinks of Trump.) If you’re a retired or active-duty servicemember who would prefer Donald Trump as your commander-in-chief to Hillary Clinton, we want to post your views—anonymously if you’re active duty, of course: hello@theatlantic.com.

Bonus-bonus: the most enthusiastic protest I saw was by a group calling themselves the National Small-Penis Association, who were doing an Onion-style rally “for” Trump.

Meanwhile, a view of what might be ahead in Cleveland. A reader suggests:

For the record: I want to note Trump’s penchant for grinding his heel in the faces of his defeated opponents, q.v. his treatment of Chris Christie.

Will he feel compelled to mention the absence of the Bushes? Romney? McCain? How can he not? How will he treat the NeverTrump delegates? (There won’t be a motion to make the nomination unanimous, at least before the call of the states is complete and perhaps not even then?)

You haven’t won until your opponent acknowledges you are better (more: amazing? fantastic?) than he. Even your supporters can’t get off without acknowledging you are better than they, can they? Else, your victory depended on them, no?

BTW: Have you heard the audio of Howard Stern asking Donald and Ivanka and one of the sons to multiply 17 by 6? The nation is in a LOT of trouble!

Yes, that math pop-quiz is worth watching, if you haven’t seen it.  

He’ll engage in that kind of disagreement with a hostile interviewer, like a network correspondent, because for whatever reason, he isn’t trying to curry favor with them and realizes that his real audience is not the correspondent, but the viewing audience. But in all other situations, he will never object to a “friendly” statement or question; his need for immediate acceptance is too great.

A raucous political rally is addictive enough for any “normal” politician; it gives them energy and it comes through in their performance. Like musicians, theater actors or athletes, a good politician will feed off the energy of a great crowd. For a narcissist like Trump, this is the emotional equivalent of mainlining heroin. He is savvy enough that he realizes, on an intellectual level, that the TV audience for his rallies dwarfs the in-person audience. But in that moment, on an emotional high, he can’t help himself but to pander to that in person audience and give them what they want and build that feedback loop. He’s making it up as he goes to fit the in-person audience of a particular rally

The irony is that he is falling into a trap that snared many a politician when the TV era started. In person, a lot of those fiery Southern politicians of yesteryear were amazingly effective political speakers (think Huey Long). They could play on emotions and make their constituents laugh and cry and leave the rally fired up, like they just left a great tent revival. But on TV, that same speech came across as grotesque, exaggerated and cartoonish. TV favors the subtle and the soundbite. Trump, despite all of his media savvy, is allowing himself to fall into this same trap.

***

The problem is capacity—and advisors. Another reader:

I’ve come to the conclusion that Trump just isn’t very smart—shrewd about some things—but not particularly smart.  And he is absolutely convinced he’s the smartest guy in the room at all times.  He has these rallies, his fans love the performance, and he believes that everyone giving him advice about shifting his style and tactics is wrong because he’s smarter than them, he’s been successful thus far and the fans love him….

After all, who are the folks he acknowledges as advisors?  His kids?  Among the three adult ones, there isn’t an iota of political experience or knowledge.  Ben Carson—seriously?  Is there a single, respected and experienced political operative in the inner circle?

***

Brexit is not an omen. One of many readers emphasizing that the Brexit vote in the UK was not (contrary to Trump’s assertions) an omen of his success four months from now:

Re Brexit, but its worth pointing out that the electorates of the US and the UK are very different. While the categories don't align, whites make up 92% of the population in the UK (and probably more like 94% of the voting population) but only 64% of the population in the US (and maybe 70% of the electorate)….

Somewhere like England, Trump could gin up a lot of white support without having to worry about also moving a lot of minorities to vote against him because there just aren't that many minorities to vote. In the US, the non-white electorate is nearly an order of magnitude larger, and as you point out, the comparison may not be terribly apt.

Another way to put it: In the US, the electorate is pretty evenly split between white women, white men and minorities (36-33-31, based on 2012 and given current trends). In the UK, it's 47-47-6. In Britain, a Trumpian UKIP candidate could write off minorities and only have to win 54% of the white vote to prevail. In the US he'd have to win 73%.

Now, let's assume a candidate in the UK looks to win by writing off minorities and only winning 50% of white women (there is no way that Trump comes close to winning 50% of women, by the way). In the UK, he'd only have to win 56% of the remaining white male vote. In the US, to build the same coalition, he'd have to win 98% of white males: basically every single one. This is simplified, but it's pretty close to the coalition Trump is setting himself up for. It's not a winning hand.

***

And more on the UK/US difference. Another reader:

If the UK had had some version of our electoral college, the Brexit would likely have failed. (Or at least Scotland and Northern Ireland would perhaps still be part of the EU.)

Trump's success should scare the living hell out of anyone with an understanding of world history, not to mention American history. (And the Constitution.) And one never truly knows how any election is going to go until it's over. But while Trump's support is unsettling—especially if one considers there might be some kind of Bradley effect in...uh, effect—our electoral college makes his changes extremely unlikely. It's awfully hard to look at the maps of Obama's wins and figure out which states Trump could flip, while it's not that hard to look at those maps and figure out which Clinton might be able to flip.

That Trump wasn't bounced in the first round is amazing and frightening. But our stupid, outdated, anti-democratic electoral college is, for once, acting like a bulwark against disaster.

A different hypothesis, from a reader in the aerospace industry:

Thanks for keeping such a “logbook” of Trump’s behavior! After watching him for months I’m coming to the same uneasy conclusion as a lot of people and I’m curious if you think it is nuts:

He doesn’t want to be President. This has all been personal brand-building and performance art. Indeed, he never even expected to win the nomination and now he’s actively finding ways to “throw” the election. Say it ain’t so, Shoeless Donald!

If you view his behavior in that context it starts to look deviously rational instead of unhinged. But I can’t decide if devious makes more sense than unhinged. What does Occam’s Razor say?

To take the second possibility first: it is elegant to think that this is one big The Producers-style farce that got out of hand, but to me that seems too elegantly rococo an interpretation. I think he’s just being himself, instant by instant and through the whole arc of his campaign.

That’s my main reaction to the first possibility too. The effect might be to shore up and rev up the already-convinced. But I don’t know whether that’s a conscious long-term strategy so much as an instinctive response by Trump in front of his crowds. And as a purely practical matter, it’s hard to see how it could be as effective in a general election as in a GOP primary. That’s because these performances by Trump seem likely to rev up as much of his opposition — among Latinos, blacks, women, young people, etc — as they do of his base. But we’ll see.

***

For early items in the “Trump Nation” thread, you can go here. For recent ones, go here.

In light of Mitt Romney's announcement that he will vote for neither Trump nor Clinton, I'm wondering if you need to make an addition to your "Resistance" or "Vichy" Republican categories. This is a man who aspired to the presidency, but now when the phone rings at 3 a.m., demanding a decision to deal with a crisis, he rolls over and goes back to sleep.

May I suggest "Pilate Republicans?" (Of course with the same type of disclaimer regarding Jesus as your disclaimer about Hitler.) By washing his hands and withholding his vote for Candidate A, Mitt is casting half  a vote for Candidate B.

Sure, I will give him partial credit but it's hard not to imagine that he clearly (if privately) would prefer a Trump loss to a Clinton loss. And yes, he, as an individual voter, does have the luxury of opting out since Hillary pretty much has a lock on Massachuesetts. But if he didn't want to be influential, he wouldn't be holding a press conference. And many of those he wants to influence are voters in swing states.

Actually, "Pilate" Republicans would really be a subset of "Resistance" Republicans. But a real resistance hero would take the political risk, and may even ameliorate it by announcing he was maximizing his vote to insure a Trump loss, without even mentioning Her.

I’m glad to have an archive of all of this. I look forward to a future where people would not believe this could have occurred except for such efforts.

For early items in the “Trump Nation” thread, you can go here. For recent ones, go here.

While I’m in the neighborhood:

I was struck by Trump’s statement today that his former opponents in the primaries should either endorse him or be “banned” from running for office. This reinforces something I’ve been thinking about regarding Trump.

Many of his supporters (and Trump himself) admire him for being willing to say what he’s thinking even if “politically incorrect.” I find nothing admirable in this trait, which I suspect is more about lack of impulse control than a principled decision to be blunt. As we become mature adults, we come to understand that there are times when you shouldn’t say what you’re thinking. Speaking out will be contrary to your own interest, or it will hurt others, or both. Remaining silent is often just good judgment.

In this case, Trump’s statement doesn’t do anything to help his campaign. Even if he were to successfully bully or shame Rubio, Cruz, Kasich or Bush into endorsing him, it’s not going to add votes to his column. In fact, his whining about not getting their endorsement makes him look weak or desperate. And, in possibly further alienating sitting Republican Senators and other Republican officials, he’s unnecessarily further damaging a relationship that, were he to be elected President, he will surely need at some point.

So, rather than exhibiting an admirable quality of bluntness, Trump once again shows that he is merely immature and lacking in judgment.

For previous items in the “Trump Nation” thread, you can go here.

2. From another reader, a shorter note about the role of “thinking” in politics:

As you recently noted, Trump is apparently always “thinking” very carefully about what will turn his audience on.

Bush and Rove were just the latest in a long list of politicians and operatives who have understood that there are times when a righteous war against a certifiable Bad Guy will make many people feel good or at least better in a way that nothing else will. So far Trump has had no trouble finding plenty of takers for his own, much more theatrical bellicosity - Mission (almost) Accomplished on steroids, as it were.

***

3. On levels of complexity in political discourse and motivation:

As a PhD candidate in cognitive psychology, I might add a little to the last writer who mentioned the distinction between "stupid" and "evil."  While most angles on the Trump constituency are focused around some amalgamation of low information voters and those who don't "think," recent cognitive neuroscience research tells the opposite story.

It's not that people who buy into seemingly absurd premises don't think enough, it's that they simultaneously have elaborately thought out and yet tortuously simplistic justifications for Trump's policy positions.  This is how one can take something as complex as fiscal policy or the global economy and reduce it down to base elements of race and gender delineating winners and losers.  

It takes a lot of "thinking" to contort something as odious as sexism or racism into a valid justification for limiting immigration or economic opportunity.  It's this same carefully crafted in-group/out-group distinction that allows people to similarly dismiss Trump calling women pigs and dogs as "rejecting political correctness" , assuredly something no one would accept if it were uttered about one's mother, sister, or daughter.


As a prime example, I note the case of John McGraw, the 78 year old North Carolina man who punched a Trump rally protester as he exited the building escorted by security.  When asked about the incident, McGraw mentioned a possible link to Al-Qaeda and that the next time "we might have to kill him."  

This is the mindset of an intricately constructed worldview in which political protesters could be sleeper cell terrorists.  It takes a large amount of mental effort to jump through the logical hoops necessary to assume that society can easily be made great again and yet be so precipitously close to falling over the cliff of peril.


This is a feature, not a bug, in the Trump campaign.

***

4. Finally, on the interlacing roles of expression, and reflection, in making up what we think of as intelligence:

In your recent conversations regarding Trump’s intelligence, I think most of it has to do with how he expresses himself. For example, his limited vocabulary, coining words that he should know better than to use – a famous word is “bigly” – and his very simple ways of expressing relatively complex ideas regarding commerce and conflict, impact our assessment of his intelligence. [JF note: As I understand it, there is a reasonable chance that Trump intended to say “big league” as opposed to “bigly.” Still...]

I know liberals who have thought GW Bush was stupid, largely because of how he expressed himself, as well as his failure to explore his errors. Bush’s failure to reflect concerned me more than any sense of his presumed intelligence.I am much more confident in President “I screwed up,” than I was with President “Mistakes were made.”

Reagan, too, was given to expressing his ideas in uncomplicated ways. Some would suggest that this indicated a talent for communication, not a deficiency in sense or judgement. No one spoke of Romney as unintelligent (nerdy, awkward, maybe, but these are not intellectual flaws). And I know many republicans who seem to believe that democrats are either stupid or naïve.

It does go both ways, and all you have to do is listen to the patronizing tone many republicans take on foreign policy pronouncements, “their” turf. Sarah Palin remarked last week on President Obama’s stupidity, but Obama’s intelligence and patriotism are often impugned.   

My assessment of intelligence is related to one’s willingness to learn. The Atlantic has covered the work of Carol Dweck in the past. Her research on growth vs fixed mindset is more related to efficacy, but I believed that it is also useful in understanding an individual’s willingness to learn new skills and information.

The ability to synthesize novel ideas or new skill sets says a great deal about individuals. One problem that many people who are employed in low-skilled occupations that later are outsourced or disappear, is that whether for lack of interest or lack of opportunity, they had not thought to acquire new skills. Does this mean they are unintelligent? No. It means that they were not interested or sufficiently foresighted to understand that tomorrow might require different information than today provided. Somehow, their plan was to win (or survive) and that didn’t work out. Lacking the interest in a Plan B, they were stuck.

The same is reflected in my understanding of Trump. He is not doing much differently now than he ever did. He speaks without much thought or reflection, because that has worked for him in the past. He is mostly skilled at expressing himself in terms of his personal interpretation of wealth and therefore, success. And it may work with some voters.

My concern with Trump is that he doesn’t seem to have information that a President ought to have at his or her disposal, or at least, he doesn’t express his knowledge base in public fora. He has not explained how his policies will work. He does not indicate that his understanding of the global economy is more than transactional, and his foreign policy interests appear to be limited. His vision is that America will win, win, win. He has not explained what he has learned so far, how he will achieve his vision, how he will work with others on a global scale. Maybe has a plan for doing this, but he has not shared any inkling of this plan with the voters, and some of us need that information.  

What has he learned, as an American, an adult, a man, a father, a business person, and how does this presumed growth translate into his potential leadership? The answer to that question is much more interesting and useful to me than how “intelligent” Trump may or may not be.  

What if he loses?

What can we expect after Trump loses the November election? Yes, I do believe that he will lose because I believe that there are enough voters with enough intelligence to sufficiently dread the consequences of a Trump win. I suspect that in the privacy of the voting booth not even the Senate Majority Leader or the Speaker of the House will vote for him despite what they are saying publicly.

So when he loses, what does his past behavior lead us to expect from him?

Of course, we should expect him to go to court, all the way to the Supreme Court. He will claim that the election was “rigged” against him, etc., etc. It will be as if one of the hypertrophied personae of professional wrestling were to try to rekindle the Bush-Gore court fight of 2000. The main difference this time will be that there won't be a gentleman Al Gore present to halt the match in order to save the union. One can imagine that Trump will try to summon the resources of the GOP to support his fight.

The story line of this court case will, naturally, feature the ethnicity of all the judges who rule on it. Will any of them be Mexican? Or Muslim? When this case lands in the Supreme Court, will it be paralyzed in a 4-to-4 tie? I like to imagine that the distinguished justices, ladies and gentlemen all, will also have the wisdom and decency to save the union.

On this last point, the Supreme Court was lastingly shamed by the results-oriented politicking of its Bush v. Gore decision. (You don’t have to believe me on this: turn to the dissent from the redoubtable Justice John Paul Stevens, who said: “Although we may never know with complete certainty the identity of the winner of this year's Presidential election, the identity of the loser is perfectly clear.  It is the Nation's confidence in the judge as an impartial guardian of the rule of law.”) If the reader’s scenario came to pass, I would like to imagine, with him, that the current Supreme Court, in its full eight-member majesty, would decide  it was time to re-assert its role as “impartial guardian of the rule of law.”  

The dissenting opinion in your “Does Trump Think?” column (part three) was misguided in a lot of ways but brought up an interesting point. There’s something that I think could inform how people who think Trump is truly dangerous (like myself) choose to engage with the situation.  

Liberals (in general—not you or your readers in particular) have a hard time reconciling why Trump supporters can’t see how truly vacuous and without substance he is. Obviously the primary responsibility for this lies with those supporters, but we could be playing a much bigger part in bringing them to the light if our credibility weren't somewhat shattered. And we made that bed.  

Republicans for about 25 years have thrown knee-jerk insults at Democrats that all relate to elitism and common sense. Liberals’ complement to this tendency is to insult the intelligence of conservatives. Ronald Reagan was stupid, George Bush was stupid, and Sarah Palin was stupid. George Bush made bad decisions and was not ridiculed as ineffective or poorly informed but as an absolute imbecile. (I read a somewhat silly study where someone had attempted to estimate presidential IQs by statements in the public record and Bush was on the low end of presidents with a 135—which is borderline genius level IQ.)

This is obviously a silly undertaking, but it illustrates the point that a person who we reflexively insult and call an absolute idiot is probably an incredibly intelligent and competent man who just didn't do his best work as president.)  Sarah Palin is another case of a clearly intelligent and savvy woman who was woefully unprepared but ridiculed as stupid. [JF note: as I wrote many times during his tenure, I thought that George W. Bush was not “stupid” in any normal sense. Rather I thought he had a combination of ignorance, in the sense of not being broadly informed; lack of curiosity, which limited his ability to correct the ignorance problem; and a desire to be, or at least seem, decisive, rather than risk seeming “hesitant” or “vacillating.” The combination was toxic in the rush toward war in Iraq.]

We have now cried wolf.  Someone has now come along who is so obviously completely without the mental equipment to do this job and our criticism falls on deaf ears.  We have taught his supporters that we can't be trusted to make that assessment objectively.

***

3. And finally, a reader on different standards for racism and sexism, and on the line between what is considered “stupid” and what is called “evil”:

Trump and his followers say they feel silenced. They’re not wrong. I mean, their First Amendment rights are clearly still intact, but apart from that, it’s certainly true that one of the most likely things you’ll encounter if you try to say something racist is the command to hush.

What happens when the command to hush fails? Well, apparently what happens is that polite society screws up its nose and then says, airily, “You don’t mean that.”

“You don’t mean that” is what you say to your toddler when he says he hates Uncle Bob. It’s what you say to your 15-year-old daughter when she tells you she’s moving out. In short, it’s what you say if you want to silence and patronise.

But the fascinating thing about this new form of attempted silencing is that it actually helps racist people rather than hindering them. Trump doesn’t have to dog-whistle; he can just whistle and then a bunch of well-meaning people will explain that he didn’t actually mean to whistle per se, he only wanted the attention.

So much dodging around the idea of racism! Trump doesn’t mean that; he’s just saying it to make people talk about him. His followers don’t really believe that of their own accord; they’re being led astray. It’s okay, none of these people actually think. I mean, wouldn’t it be dreadful if they could think, and they chose to think that?

It’s instructive to look at the differences between the way we treat racism, in this regard, and the way we treat sexism. It’s much rarer for sexism to be classified as something perpetrated only by stupid people.

That’s because we view racism through the lens of class. Racism is seen as being primarily perpetrated by poor people, whereas sexism implicates rich and poor alike. This happens, I think, because rich white people can avoid black people much more easily. [JF note: through spelling details and other touches, I think this note is not from an American. I think that people raised in the U.S. would know that the more precise phrasing would be, “rich white people can avoid poor black people more easily — and can avoid poor whites as well.”) Rich people can take advantage of a societal structure that pushes black people away for them. [JF: again, I would add “poor.”] They don’t have to put any effort in, and can thus absolve themselves of any responsibility.

If we truly believe ourselves to be thinkers, who judge the world after careful consideration rather than knee-jerk reactions, we should question this classism that drives the way we paper over racism.

Trump’s supporters are not just being blindly led. Like many capitalist Americans, they like the idea of a world in which there are “winners” and “losers.” They like that world even better if they, and people who look like them, are given an automatic leg up towards the “winner” category. That’s not exactly stupid. It’s just evil.