I hope there isn’t a tape of Donald Trump using the N-word in a manner that’s clearly meant to be offensive, bigoted, and derogatory.
We’ve now reached the stage where the existence of such a tape is not proven, but is more than theoretically possible. We have a recording of Trump campaign aides talking about the potential of such a tape in a manner that suggests they find it within the realm of possibility. And we now have Penn Jillette saying that he was in the room when Trump said—frequently—“racially insensitive things.” (Jillette won’t say exactly what he heard Trump say.)
Lastly, we have the bizarre spectacle of President Trump insisting that his former business partner, TV producer Mark Burnett, called him to say that no such tapes exist—while Burnett himself remains publicly silent.
The Trump presidency is oddly dependent on tapes. Trump’s entire existence is so strange and outside the norms of decent behavior that many of his foibles simply cannot be believed, absent hard evidence. Who would believe that Donald Trump would call reporters pretending to be a publicist in order to brag about himself? If you didn’t have the tapes, no one would. Who would believe that Trump would admit—almost to a total stranger, while wearing a microphone—to grabbing women by their genitals and forcing them to do whatever he wanted? Without the tapes, no one would. People have speculated for almost two years about a Russian pee tape that almost certainly doesn’t exist. And everyone will continue to view it as a fantasy. Unless it surfaces. At which point we will all shake our heads and say, “Actually, we should have known …”
The other factor in why you need documentary materials is that the president, his advisers, and his supporters in the media use gaslighting as their primary means of defense. They make frictionless transitions from “no one ever met with Russians,” to “the meeting with Russians was about adoption,” to “of course they met with Russians about getting oppo on the Clintons and why do you have have a problem with that?”
Without tapes, or emails, or hard evidence, Trump World simply denies everything as a matter of course.
The N-word tapes occupy a middle ground in the public consciousness between the Access Hollywood and the Russian pee tape. There is circumstantial evidence to suggest they might exist—and people within Trump World have privately acted as though they believe the tapes might exist. But so far they remain mythical.
Yet no matter what your feelings are about Trump, you should hope that these tapes, if they do exist, never see the light of day. It sounds counterintuitive. But let’s game out—honestly—what we think would happen if such a tape of the future president of the United States surfaced tomorrow.
Do you think he’d lose support from his base? Do you think he’d pay a price for lying about the tape’s existence? Or for using the N-word? I do not. Everything we know about the president’s base supporters suggests that there is no straw that will break the camel’s back—only goalposts, receding constantly to the horizon.
This is a comment on the character of his base, certainly. But it’s more about how narrow his base already is to begin with. Trump’s approval rating among strong Republican partisans is extremely high: 93 percent of the people who voted for him in 2016 approve of him to this point. His approval among everyone else is dismal: 39 percent among independents; 9 percent among Democrats. Just as a structural matter, he doesn’t have very far to fall with either of these groups. And if the last two years are any guide—Stormy Daniels, tariffs, denigrating America while praising Russia, the fluffing of Kim Jong-un, personnel scandals—then Trump is already resting on his foundation.
But let’s pretend that Trump could hollow out, that an N-word tape would finally be the straw that breaks the camel’s back. Let’s pretend that Trump’s approval collapsed among Republicans. What then? He’s not going to resign. He’s not going to be impeached and removed from office. The #Resistance fantasy is that some deus ex machina will make Trump disappear. This is not going to happen. The only way Trump leaves is if he loses re-election in 2020. For both good and ill, President Trump is our reality and he will continue to affect the world around him.
So now we must imagine what a weakened Trump would be like for the next two years. Do you think he’d knuckle down, start acting like a statesman, and try to unite the country? Or do you think he’d push for more chaos and division in the hopes of somehow drawing to an inside straight (again)? Assuming he does, the only possible downside of such a strategy, from Trump’s perspective, would be salting the ground of American political life for any potential successor. And he would view this not as a bug, but as a feature.
If you look at the Trump administration and think it can’t get worse, then you haven’t contemplated what a scorched-earth Trump might be like.
But the worst outcome is the one that requires the least speculation and imagination. As things stand right now there are still a handful of norms left in public life. Not saying the N-word is one of them. It would be nice if we could hold on to that norm. If we have a tape of the president of the United States saying it and he suffers no proximate consequences, that norm will be shattered.
Think of it this way: The Access Hollywood tape didn’t break Donald Trump. It broke the Republican party’s willingness to insist that character matters.
In fairness to the GOP, the Clinton-era Democrats struck the first blow with this norm. But that’s the thing about norms: In order for them to survive, everyone has to buy in. As soon as one side chucks them, it’s only a matter of time before the other side decides that there’s no reason for them to be hamstrung, either.
And eventually that’s what will happen if we see Donald Trump using the N-word on tape.
For all of our sake’s, let’s hope it never happens.
