When Donald Trump hit the scene with promises of making America great again, it was reminiscent of President Obama’s empty promises of “hope and change” and healing the planet.
Watching Trump fans pour into arenas and whoop it up with every vapid proclamation, how could one not recall candidate Obama’s stadium tours and fainting idol-worshippers? Trump has even started sounding like Obama as he pronounces “we are … days away from the change you’ve been waiting for.”
Even so, Trump is not Obama. The more appropriate point of comparison for Trump is Al Sharpton.
Trump and Sharpton are both snake oil salesmen who sell lies to a populous desperately in search of a savior. They feed on the misfortunes of swaths of Americans, preaching what their audiences want to hear in order to win elections, maintain their iconic images and rake in the dough. And both Trump and Sharpton put Obama’s divisiveness to shame.
Both men enjoy using hate speech to incite crowds. Sharpton riles up his supporters by calling white people “crackers” and gay men “homos,” while Trump claims that Mexican illegal immigrants are rapists and drug dealers. Sharpton fanned the flames of hate and violence that led to the Crown Heights riots by preaching to the angry black mobs that “diamond merchants” had the “blood of innocent babies” on their hands. In an offensive speech at a Republican Jewish Coalition event, Trump claimed the attendees were all “negotiators” who would not support him because they could not buy him.
Both Sharpton and Trump are con artists. Sharpton’s list of criminal charges includes tax evasion, in addition to stealing from his own charities and 2004 presidential campaign. Trump is mired in litigation for fraud related to Trump University, is being audited by the IRS, and has been accused by numerous business associates of breaching contracts.
The biggest victims of these two swindlers are the people who follow them credulously — Sharpton’s black supporters and Trump’s predominantly angry white devotees. Both take advantage of their victims’ economic woes, zero in on their weaknesses with psychological finesse, and drag them along onto their respective train wrecks without regard to the impending crash.
Perpetuating falsehoods at the expense of his victims is Trump’s modus operandi. The “birther” movement, Ted Cruz’s father’s supposed complicity in President Kennedy’s assassination, thousands of Muslims taking to the streets to celebrate Sept. 11, the IRS auditing him because he is Christian, and Mexico deliberately sending its criminals to the United States are but a few of the conspiracy theories Trump concocted to rile up those he needs to further his own mythical grandiosity.
Which brings us to Trump’s claims of a rigged election that could lead to violence if he loses. No one knows if Trump’s threats are, like everything else he spews, empty promises to his fan base, or if he will actually contest the election. If Trump follows through on his promise, who will the GOP represent — those whom John Podhoretz recognized as “the Republicans and conservatives who are dismayed, horrified, dispirited, and devastated by Trump’s hostile takeover of the GOP” — or the Trump voter whose anger and discontent led them to vote for him in the first place?
It currently appears that Trump will pursue the rigged election meme and cause post-election chaos if he loses. Given a recent New York Times report that many Trump supporters are contemplating “revolution” if he loses, Donald “Sharpton” Trump is a dangerous man — a man who told his audiences he’d like to “punch [dissenters] in the face” in the hopes they will be “carried out on a stretcher.”
Those who cynically believe Trump was never in this to win, but rather to promote his upcoming cable network and solidify a viewership of 40 million white folks, are hoping that his supporters see through his shenanigans as merely another branding exercise. Unlike Sharpton, who even MSNBC demoted to a low-rated Sunday morning show, Trump TV has the potential to keep millions of Americans divided at levels that even Obama’s best Alinsky-style community organizing could not have achieved.
Sharpton once explained his transformation from obese to thin: “In New York, you are competing with Times Square lights and all of that, so you’ve got to be 300 pounds and crazy to get anyone’s attention,” he said. “Then you can refine yourself. I always knew under those 300 pounds and tracksuits was a refined, slim, dignified man.”
When this election season is over, we can always fantasize that Trump will turn into a dignified man. The reality is that, whether wearing a cheap tracksuit or a $5,000 business suit, both Sharpton and Trump are empty.
Lauri Regan is a lawyer and frequent contributor to the American Thinker. Thinking of submitting an op-ed to the Washington Examiner? Be sure to read our guidelines on submissions.
