Trust what Trump says

Op-ed: Reports are circulating that Donald Trump has told the New York Times in private not to worry about his racist, xenophobic, anti-abortion, anti-gay statements. The word is that he is just responding to what his supporters want to hear.

Using his own logic then, he needs to be asked whether he might be impeached if elected when his supporters realize he used them.

That could bring some unnamed vice-president to power who would do what Trump has promised to do.

It is the same logic he uses every day of his campaign when he says Hillary Clinton might not be able to service because she will be indicted in her “email scandal.”

She has been under investigation for an entire year with no indictment.

Of course Trump has been under fire for three years for his “Trump University Scandal” and may be forced to testify about fraud allegations later this year.

TV networks, meanwhile, claim Trump is the choice of a majority of Republicans, based on what has been seen in primaries and caucuses.

Polling expert Nate Silver said today that “Trump has received only 34 per cent of the Republican vote, aggregated across all primaries and caucuses to have voted so far. He did not really improve on that figure on Super Tuesday; Trump had a combined 33 percent of the vote through the first four states (Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina, Nevada); he got 34 percent in Super Tuesday states themselves.”

Do Trump supporters represent what the majority of Americans believe. Polls are constantly being used to support this view.

But the same kinds of polls show that a majority of Americans support causes rejected by these people: gay and transgender rights, abortion rights, women’s rights, high minimum wages and more.

Trump supporters say this is merely the view of Hollywood.

In my experience art has often represented where a country is headed, both in the U.S. and in countries I covered as a journalist around the world.

South Africa was a classic example. I often watched plays and heard music that I knew was going to tear apartheid down. I wondered why the government allowed it.

I later felt that it wasn’t so much that they allowed, in some cases people were jailed and banned, but that they knew they couldn’t stop it. To try too hard would cause some of their best people to leave the country. They wanted more than just servants and swimming pools.

It was impossible for me to watch this year’s Oscars without seeing that the people who run the art world have decided to support human rights. This is not new. Give them an inch and they will take a mile.

These films, plays and music make money. That is the bottom line.

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