This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2016, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.
Earlier this year I was watching the television coverage of the Nevada caucuses, where Republicans had gathered in a large room with tables designating the various districts where participants were to congregate.
Donald Trump, the favorite to win the caucus and the eventual Republican presidential nominee, was being interviewed by an NBC correspondent, and the two were having a cordial conversation.
Trump was happy and confident and was gleefully answering the reporter's questions about going forward in the campaign and when he believed he would have the nomination sewed up.
Everything seemed normal until suddenly, a man wearing a Trump hat bolted into camera view and starting jabbing his finger into the reporter's chest while the interview continued.
The scene got a little bizarre when the reporter nonchalantly kept asking Trump questions, and Trump kept answering them, while this obviously angry man kept jabbing the interviewer and growling something at him that wasn't picked up by the microphone.
Someone then grabbed the man from behind and pulled him out of camera view. But a few seconds later, he was back in the picture, jabbing the reporter in the chest again before once more being pulled away.
The interview between Trump and the reporter continued as though nothing unusual had happened.
I've thought about that scene over the past few months as Trump continued winning primaries and subsequently accepted his party's nomination for president at the GOP convention in July.
That man and others shown by TV cameras at Trump rallies during the primary election process explain, at least to me, the Trump phenomenon and why this brash, name-calling bully who has shown complete ignorance of critical issues did so well in the primaries and now is a finalist for president.
There was the guy who sucker-punched a protester at a Trump rally in Fayetteville, N.C., in March and later, during a TV interview, said the protesters might need to be killed.
My colleague Robert Kirby wrote a column recently about an encounter he witnessed in a Montana motel where a woman wearing a Trump T-shirt was screaming at the Salvadoran maid, who the woman thought was Mexican, and accusing her of stealing something.
The woman was proven wrong about the alleged theft, but she still insisted the maid go back where she came from.
There have been instances at Trump rallies where his fans were heard shouting slogans like "Sieg heil" and brandishing Confederate flags and KKK banners.
All of these folks share one thing in common: unabashed stupidity.
They have always been there, but they have had to ply their bigotry and ignorance under the radar to avoid ridicule. Trump, with his boisterous accusations against various groups, has made prejudice and overt hatred acceptable.
The goofball who accosted the reporter at the Nevada caucus had permission to do so from Trump himself, who has constantly bashed the press, calling reporters the worst people in the world, and sleazy and dishonest.
Trump, of course, does that to avoid answering tough questions about issues he knows nothing about, but to followers like the finger jabber, that makes reporters fair game and finger jabber gets to feel important, as though he is defending Trump from evil.
The woman at the Montana motel and the guy who punched the protester feel justified because Trump has given them permission to hate people who don't look like them.
This newly empowered group of losers helped Trump to the nomination because of their excitement over the fact that finally, there is a presidential candidate who understands them. He has campaigned as an outsider, like them.
It was manifest at the Republican convention in Cleveland when the delegates and other Republican onlookers cheered loudly every time hate speech was bellowed from the stage. And like a bunch of trained monkeys, they followed the mantra of "lock her up" as though that somehow showed substance in the clown car.
Once that mentality was on display before a national television audience, it's no wonder Trump's poll numbers have since plummeted and establishment Republicans are beside themselves over what has happened to their party.
But that's the other part of this madness. The so-called mainstream Republicans created the Trump phenomenon by their tactics of demonizing President Barack Obama and everything he has tried to do.
With the rhetoric from the Republican majority in the House and the Senate and the right-wing talk-show circus, the Republican base was ready for someone with no policy substance who feeds the hatred and the "us against them" mentality that has emboldened all the crazy aunts and uncles in this country to come out of the upstairs closets where they previously were hidden because somebody running for president finally understands them. —