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The Real Secret to Donald Trump’s Success
How does his popularity grow despite mounting criminal charges? I finally understood what it was all about.
Remember when it first happened? A celebrity real estate guy, a one-trick TV showman who fired people, was the insurgent outsider in the 2016 presidential race.
Maybe you want to forget about it; I wouldn’t blame you.
People alternately laughed him off, clutched their pearls in righteous indignation, or rationally explained why he could never be president.
I remember thinking, uh-oh.
Over the years, I’ve written thousands of words on Trump. I’ve had dozens of conversations, some of them arguments with his supporters. And for all that time and talk, I’ve been trying to get to the heart of something. To try to understand how Trump happened.
Globalization. Social media. Religion. Latent racism, homophobia, misogyny. Internet-fed conspiracy theories. Cult dynamics. Jill Stein. Russia. All those things matter, and factor in, but I never felt satisfied that I’d really clinched it, that I’d really understood the true source of the phenomenon.
One movie that illuminated a lot was “Get Me Roger Stone.” Watching that Netflix doc, I really came to see that…
