THE MOB MASTER
More than three months before any ballots have been cast at the Republican convention, Roger Stone, Donald Trumpās on-again, off-again consigliere, has delivered the campaign equivalent of a severed horse head to delegates who might consider denying Trump the nomination. Trumpās supporters will find you in your sleep, he merrily informed them this week. He did not mean it metaphorically.
āWe will disclose the hotels and the room numbers of those delegates who are directly involved in the steal,ā Stone said Monday, on Freedomain Radio. āIf youāre from Pennsylvania, weāll tell you who the culprits are. We urge you to visit their hotel and find them. You have a right to discuss this, if you voted in the Pennsylvania primary, for example, and your votes are being disallowed,ā Stone said.
Over the years, Iāve covered elections in Iraq, Iran, and Burma. Stoneās taunt is every bit as threatening as anything I heard in those places, which have far less experience than America with democracy. Such is the moment we currently inhabit.
By now, we know most of the chapters in Trumpās political playbook: the epithets for ālow-energyā Jeb and Lyinā Ted and Little Marco, and the bombshell provocationsāabout, say, a nuclear strike in Europeāas a way to draw attention away from unfavorable news and missteps. And, throughout, of course, the mockery of women. But as we approach the growing prospect of a contested convention, in which delegates can make game-time choices about whom they will support, itās becoming clearer that Trump may seek to shape the outcome by using his most unwieldy weapon of all: the latent power of usually peaceful people.
Itās easy to mock Trump for his thin-skinned fixation on the size of his audiences, but that misses a deeper point: you canāt have a riot without a mob. Even before he was a candidate, Trump displayed a rare gift for cultivating the dark power of a crowd. In his role as the primary advocate of the ābirtherā fiction, he proved himself to be a maestro of the mob mentality, capable of conducting his fans through crescendos of rage and self-pity and suspicion. Speaking to the Times editorial board, in January, he said, āYou know, if it gets a little boring, if I see people starting to sort of, maybe, thinking about leaving, I can sort of tell the audience, I just say, āWe will build the wall!,ā and they go nuts.ā
More: Trumpās Convention Strategy: āThe Fix Is Inā - The New Yorker
So, this is how Trump and his mob of thugs plan to win (steal) the nomination. It's a dark time for American democracy. I hope there are enough Republican patriots working hard to stop this farce. RNC Chairman Reince Priebus should nip this in the bud.
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