Men like Trump: How the US president gets away with shooting from the hip, doing unimaginable somersaults

Editor’s note: Men like Trump is a series of dispatches that tell of how a reckless president is steering the White House, and the manner in which his actions are fundamentally altering the office he holds. The writer, being a woman political journalist from India, now transplanted to the US, is in a unique position to observe the three aspects that are critical to defining this presidency: chauvinism, gunslinger politics, and immigration. US President Donald Trump is a political journalist’s dream come true. For me, a political journalist from India who is a new migrant into the US, the fact that he is able to speak the way he does, in a shooting-from-the-hip sort of way and still get away with it as a politician, is amazing as well as intriguing. I’ve seen all kinds of politicians in India, from the old fashioned, dhoti-clad behind-the-scenes machinators to the modern, yuppie iPad MPs that the country has currently elected. I’ve seen the corporator who makes shifty deals with local cops and contractors and the minister in the 1990s who got elected on Gandhian ideals, with no money-spend whatsoever. I have witnessed changing political scenarios and changing election methods. I have watched with awe the impact of social media on electioneering and share the general fears of group fake messaging. Trump is, indeed, a new experience! In the space of the last fraught-with-tension nine days, the man did not two, but three somersaults on his position over the Brett Kavanaugh-Christine Blasey Ford scandal that occupied all American public space over the last three weeks. Two days before Dr Ford gave her nationally televised testimony before the US Senate’s Judiciary Committee on 28 September, Trump tweeted from his personal handle: “The Democrats are playing a high level CON GAME in their vicious effort to destroy a fine person. It is called the politics of destruction. Behind the scene the Dems are laughing. Pray for Brett Kavanaugh and his family!” [caption id=“attachment_5331481” align=“alignleft” width=“380”] Donald Trump, in many ways, is a political journalist’s dream come true. Illustration: Satwick Gade[/caption] After Dr Ford gave an emotional, controlled and disturbing testimony, complete with memory lapses, which even Republican senators on the Judiciary committee called credible, Trump tweeted his support for Kavanaugh’s strong response: “Judge Kavanaugh showed America exactly why I nominated him. His testimony was powerful, honest, and riveting. Democrats’ search and destroy strategy is disgraceful and this process has been a total sham and effort to delay, obstruct, and resist. The Senate must vote!” But the very next day, the US saw a different Trump. He told a media briefing: “I thought her (Dr Ford’s) testimony was very compelling. She looks like a very fine woman to me…. But certainly, she was a very credible witness. She was very good in many respects.” He did, however, state that he was not doing a rethink on his nominee, Kavanaugh, despite the allegations and the “compelling testimony.” This fine line between backing his words, sticking to his and his party’s stand and the nod to his compatibility with public sentiment following Ford’s testimony is a political device that is new to me and perhaps something that politicians in India have to master. It changed the perception of the man as this staunch supporter of a political ideology, to someone who has doubts, who is flawed enough to see and accept other points of view. It made him more likeable in a situation very fraught for his women voters. Then, Trump did his third somersault at a Republican election rally (there are midterm elections for some Senatorial posts in November) at Southaven, Mississippi. He said to cheers and laughter from men and women in the audience: “What’s happening now is a gang-rape… Guilty until proven innocent is very dangerous for the country. It happened to me, let it happen to me, it’s part of the job description. (It) shouldn’t happen to him. Thirty-six years ago, this happened. (quotes and mocks parts of Dr Ford’s testimony without referring to her or giving the actual sequence) ‘I had one beer.’ ’How did you get home?’ ’I don’t remember.’ ‘How did you get there?’ ‘I don’t remember.’ ‘Where is the place?’ ‘I don’t remember.’ ‘How many years ago was this?’ ‘I don’t know…’ ‘What neighbourhood was this? Upstairs, downstairs’ ‘I don’t know.’ ‘But I remember I had one beer.’ And a man’s life is shattered.” Trump’s capacity for drama and the ability to speak like the man next door makes him a popular figure. He has managed to humanise the Republican and bring him down to the common man, while the Democrats still look like educated elite, a superior class. He has strong supporters, strong detractors in a country that is split along a single vertical line that doesn’t accommodate India-like nuances. He is on the verge of completing two years of his four-year term under the constant shadow of a Russia investigation and allegations of tax fraud that could, technically, impeach him. He makes for “compelling” copy and I will share with you all, at regular intervals, the ring-side view of the world’s more powerful presidency from the point of view of an Indian political reporter in an American milieu.