Michael Moore claims, and I mostly agree with him, that Donald Trump never had any real intention to become president.  I have even contemplated (very seriously) the idea that he was deliberately being outrageous to throw the election.  I think he maybe just wanted a place in the history books, a name that people will remember through the ages (if fuzzily) like Eugene V. Debs or Adlai Stevenson.  Maybe he wanted to grow his brand or fuck some shit up, or maybe even just have some fun.  When I’m feeling more kindly disposed to Donald, I second guess this.  I have seen some old interviews on Youtube that indicated that he’d thought of running for president many ages ago and his political viewpoints were pretty consistent over the years.  Maybe he’s legit.  Couldn’t tell ya.

What I can tell you, I think, is the reason why he said some of the absolutely shocking and awful things that he said during the election.  I believe that Donald Trump if, he did in fact, want to become president (or, if he was just in this to fuck shit up) correctly identified people’s frustration with political correctness, the unholy alliance between the Blue Tribe and the media, and the utter failure of the Republican Party to answer it.

And he was the only one who did.  The rest of them tiptoed around and acted ashamed and apologetic for having seemingly unpopular opinions (not so unpopular as we’ve been led to believe, tho, are they), or gloated over a victory that they assumed was just a foregone conclusion.  They wrang their hands and scraped and groveled and begged people to clap for them like Jeb Bush, or pushed a rapping Lena Dunham (srlsly?) in our faces like Hillary Clinton. Both parties and the media demonstrated a fundamental inability to understand the depths of what a lot of regular everyday Americans of all races, classes, and genders were thinking and feeling.

I believe Donald Trump tailored those statements he made not out of a desire for divisiveness or inability to control his tongue, not out of a quest to tap into some secret underbelly of white hate or whatever spin the media is putting onto this to absolve themselves of the huge amount of culpability that they have for the outcome of this election.  Donald Trump made those statements as a calculated ploy to prove to the people that despite his wealth and fame, that he was a man of the people, and not one of THEM – not of the political establishment, and not a creation of the media.

By running his mouth and refusing to observe the niceties, he demonstrated that he was a self-made man, an individual with free will and not a puppet of the parties or the press.  That was what people wanted, at the core of it all.  That is what connected with voters.  His individuality, courage, and the concept that he was an independent thinker who doesn’t play by the rules.  He may be rich, he may be an utter bastard, but at least he wasn’t crapped out in exchange for political favors by one of the two parties both of which have utterly failed America.  He wasn’t fawned over by the media that’s been complicit in it.  And he wasn’t scared of them.  He proved it every time he opened his mouth.

If he did that on purpose, then the guy is a genius and all props to him.  If he did it on accident, then he’s the luckiest SOB ever.  Because it was pitch perfect for the way a lot of people are feeling.  It would have been super awesome if it could have come in a prettier package, but maybe that was too much to ask for.  Maybe to play the part of an iconoclast, you have to actually BE an iconoclast.

At times it felt to me like Donald Trump was trolling the media and the two parties.  It was a troll that we, the great unwashed, were in on.  It was a joke between Trump and half of America on the folks who have just run it into the ditch.  Republicans are so out of touch they don’t even know what trolling is, and Democrats don’t understand trolling, that’s why they think Pepe the Frog is a hate symbol.  The media fell for the troll hook, line, and sinker and reported all this stuff as fact because they thought it helped their side.

Peter Thiel, the co-founder of Pay Pal and Trump supporter, said that the Blue Tribe did not take Trump seriously but took him literally.  Whereas the rest of the voters (those who voted for him and those who simply refused to vote for Hillary and stayed home or voted Harambe) took him seriously, but did not take him literally.  I don’t think most Trump supporters believe much of anything he says, but they take him seriously.  If nothing else, as a ballsy individual that is in no one’s pocket.  He proved it by saying stuff that no establishment candidate ever could and surviving things that no establishment candidate could ever have survived.  His dishonesty actually came off weirdly honest, at least to me.

Did he lie, yeah, I don’t think anyone thinks otherwise.  But the media and Hillary were lying constantly and flagrantly and anyone who’s paid any attention over the last 25 years knows it.  Did he say stuff on the campaign trail he had no intention of doing?  Let’s hope so!!  Then again, every candidate does (Obama and 800,000 shovel ready jobs, I’m looking at you here.  Still waiting on those).  But in a battle between someone who’s lying outrageously to your face with a wink and a nod and a joke you’re both in on, and a battle between someone who’s lying to your face and refuses to admit they’re lying even as they’re positioning the knife they’re gonna stab into your back, who seems more honest?