Attack against Megyn Kelly could hint at core of Donald Trump’s appeal

Donald Trump gets a degree of support from all parts of the GOP spectrum. That suggests that, to some extent, his pugnacious personality is central to his appeal.

|
John Minchillo/AP Photo/File
Photos of Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump, left, and Fox News Channel host and moderator Megyn Kelly are combined from images taken at the first Republican presidential debate in Cleveland on Aug. 6, 2015. Mr. Trump is welcoming Ms. Kelly back from a vacation with a broadside of criticism, tweeting that he liked her show better when she was away. Trump has been attacking Kelly since her tough questioning of him during the debate.

For a presidential candidate, Donald Trump takes personal feuds to an extreme. But is that belligerence the very core of his appeal?

That’s a question that arises out of the latest Trump imbroglio. He’s attacking Fox News anchor Megyn Kelly again, weeks after she questioned him sharply about his descriptions of women at the first Republican presidential debate.

Ms. Kelly returned from vacation to her Fox show “The Kelly File” Monday night, and Mr. Trump used that occasion to dish out vitriol. He tweeted that he liked her show better without her and that perhaps she should take more time off. He then retweeted a message from an admirer that called Kelly a “bimbo.”

Fox News chief Roger Ailes issued a response, calling Trump’s attack “as unacceptable as it is disturbing.” Mr. Ailes called on Trump to apologize. The Donald zinged back almost immediately.

“I do not think Megyn Kelly is a quality journalist,” he said.

Why is this happening now? Maybe the whole thing is a sham fight that will benefit both sides, leading up to an inevitable Trump appearance on her show. We doubt that, though, since the Fox News folks are rallying around Kelly, calling on Trump to back down. The whole thing has a Sharks versus Jets anger about it.

“Is this guy a seven-year-old?” tweeted Fox analyst Brit Hume, in apparent wonderment.

Trump did not have to engage in this dispute, after all. Kelly’s time off the air gave him plenty of room to let things cool. But he chose to reignite the flame on purpose. Perhaps that’s the core of Trump’s voter appeal: It’s centered on a desire for conflict.

There’s no obvious ideological or demographic component in his voter base, after all. He gets a degree of support from all parts of the GOP spectrum. That means that to some extent, it is Trump’s personality that is the core of his appeal. And that personality is nothing if not pugnacious.

That’s what Republican pollster Frank Luntz appeared to find, anyway. He assembled a group of avowed Trump supporters in his D.C.-area office for a focus group on Monday night. According to an account of the focus group in Time magazine, the Trumpians generally espoused a “we’re not going to take it anymore” anger.

“They believed Washington politicians and the Republican Party had repeatedly misled them, and that the country is going down the tubes. They looked for relief in Trump,” writes Time’s Sam Frizell.

Mr. Luntz showed the group clips of Trump’s unbridled attacks. For instance, they saw Trump describe comedian Rosie O’Donnell as having a “fat, ugly face.” But that did not give them pause, apparently.

“At the end of the session, the vast majority said they liked Trump more than when they walked in,” according to Mr. Frizell.

Perhaps they equate Trump’s eagerness for conflict with power. Specifically, he’s like a cartoon superhero, writes Dartmouth political scientist Brendan Nyhan. Trump promises to wipe away intractable problems with the application of nothing but willpower – an attitude that Professor Nyhan has dubbed the “Green Lantern theory of the presidency.”

Trump says he’ll increase the number of US jobs by getting them back from China and Mexico, for instance, via tougher personal negotiation. He’ll find a way to deport the 11 million undocumented workers in the United States via “management.”

Trump is doing well in part because he’s a famous celebrity. He attracts enormous media attention.

“But he has also exploited our vulnerability to pleasing fictions about presidential power,” writes Nyhan at "The Upshot" at The New York Times. “We like to pretend that presidents exert vast control over the country, commanding not only the direction of American politics but also the laws and policies of the country and even the state of the economy.”

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

QR Code to Attack against Megyn Kelly could hint at core of Donald Trump’s appeal
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Politics/Decoder/2015/0825/Attack-against-Megyn-Kelly-could-hint-at-core-of-Donald-Trump-s-appeal
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe