Trump campaign 2016. Brennan Linsley AP/Press Association Images. All rights reserved.In the aftermath of Donald Trump’s appalling ‘bus tape’, it is now clear that one central idea underpins both Trump’s personal and political behaviour: the solution to shame is to shame someone else.
Trump’s instinctive response to the tape was to claim that some other party (Bill Clinton, Hillary Clinton, or even terrorists) had done something much worse. In one of the more bizarre and uncomfortable non-sequiturs in modern political history, Trump declared in the second presidential debate, “yes, I’m very embarrassed by it. I hate it. But it’s locker-room talk, and it’s one of those things. I will knock the hell out of ISIS.”
More and more people seem to be realising that the hypocrisy denounced by Trump is actually something he embodies.
