There’s a basic truth in US presidential candidate Donald Trump’s bluster

DONALD Trump is inflammatory and his policies questionable but his success shows how the people hate being browbeaten by an out-of-touch elite, writes Andrew Bolt.

Basic truth in Trump’s bluster

GET used to it. Donald Trump is a long way to becoming president of the United States after his smashing primary wins yesterday.

The message: US voters are sick to the guts of their media and political class. Of the cultural elite.

And aren’t you just a little sick of our own? Trump’s win really should not seem so surprising and shocking as most commentators and politicians here suggest.

Don’t Australians want to see someone here, too, who finally says what the media screams must not be said and confronts what weak politicians shy from?

Don’t you, too, want to see someone who affirms a pride in his country, a faith in his culture, a defiance of the media, a contempt for insider politics and an utter determination not to import trouble, whether Islamic radicals or immigrant criminals?

Don’t you, too, want to see someone exude the can-do confidence that seems almost extinct in these times of sanctimonious hand-wringing and professional victims, endlessly demanding “rights” simply taken from others?

In the far more nationalist and individualistic US, Trump is that man. And after Trump’s massive win yesterday in Florida — home state of now-destroyed Marco Rubio — there is now only a vanishing chance of Ted Cruz overtaking him in the race for the Republican nomination.

True, I have no faith in this loudmouth’s ability to deliver some of the wild things he’s promised, even if he manages to defeat the Democrats’ Hillary Clinton in the election.

Donald Trump speaking to supporters in Palm Beach, Florida.

I have even less faith that Trump means all he says, given how he’s ricocheted from being a Democrat supporter to Republican flag-bearer.

I also fear how his in-your-face crudity (“I’d like to punch him in the face,” he said of a protester) will play if a President Trump is dealing with the leaders of China or Russia.

But Trump at least names the problems and gives voice to the unspoken fears of so many people — unspoken because they invite a pack attack from the totalitarians of the Left.

For one, Trump is the man who promised “a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States until our country’s representatives can figure out what is going on”.

Yes, an inflammatory over-reaction, but is it worse than the lethally reckless immigration and refugee policies that let in so many rioters, trigger-happy gangsters and would-be terrorists here, too? Who else will discuss closing the gates?

Trump also promises to build a wall across the border with Mexico because “a nation without borders is not a nation” and “Mexico’s leaders have been taking advantage of the United States by using illegal immigration to export the crime and poverty in their own country”.

Again, the talk is inflammatory, but is it really worse than the dangerously reckless border policies that let in an astonishing 15 million illegal immigrants? Who else in the presidential race has a credible plan to defend the US borders?

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Trump also promises nearly $10 trillion of tax cuts over the next decade, without explaining credibly where the money will come from.

This could doom the US to fiscal disaster, but which other candidate also looks tough enough to at the same time slash the bloated government spending that is the real problem, both in the US and here?

Donald Trump after his victory in the Florida primary. Picture: AP

Which candidate looks more likely to inject the US with can-do spirit, and mock the you-owe-me apathy that is now sinking the West?

And which other candidate looks likely to arrest the disastrous fall of the US in prestige and power — a fall that threatens us, too?

“We’re gonna start winning again,” Trump promises and the way he says it terrifies anti-Americans, not least in the foreign media. They suspect he means it.

But far more importantly, Trump keeps challenging the “you-can’t-say-that” punishers and straighteners — especially in the media class — who make most politicians afraid of their own shadow.

He whacks aggressive journalists, including even those deemed untouchable — such as Fox News’s Megyn Kelly — thanks to their smarts and looks, and keeps winning through his indomitable chutzpah and despite the wall-to-wall outrage of journalists.

He even took on the Pope, who whinged about his wall, and made the Holy Father seem just another Latino politician.

Trump wins these battles because there’s a huge and growing public that wants him to and cheers every blow he lands against the classes many feel have oppressed and belittled them. In fact, on a fine day, and in a kind light, Trump’s ludicrous bombast starts to look almost like the indomitable strength of a statesman.

Trump’s imperviousness to the counter-attacks of the media and political class have made some of the Left turn to the violence so implicit in their ideology.

Trump’s huge rallies have increasingly been infiltrated by hecklers trying to shut them down or provoke Trump’s supporters into reactions that journalists can then deplore.

Donald Trump with New Jersey governor Chris Christie.

The George Soros-funded MoveOn.Org, along with Occupy Wall Street, anarchists, F--k The Police, Black Lives Matter and campaigners for Democrat candidate Bernie Sanders even managed to create such a volatile confrontation at Trump’s Chicago rally that it had to be called off.

Naturally, much of the media then attacked Trump for inciting the violence that the Left actually unleashed. President Barack Obama, too, implicitly blamed Trump for being attacked, criticising his “vulgar and divisive language”.

How often have we also seen that blame-the-Left’s-victim talk here, too? Remember how visiting Dutch political leader Geert Wilders was blamed by journalists for being divisive when screaming Leftist protesters tried to shut down his public speeches? Remember how our journalists abused Reclaim Australia protesters for being physically attacked by radical Leftists and anarchists, many masked?

It was the same story when Trump was rushed from behind by a far-Left protester at a rally last week.

Journalists here laughed that he seemed scared and eagerly replayed footage of him flinching at what he probably thought was the much-threatened assassination attempt. CNN honoured the protester with a sit-down interview.

Yet, despite all this, plus attack ads and newspaper stories likening him even to Hitler, Trump had those huge wins yesterday and came much closer to sealing his nomination.

Sorry, I used the wrong word. Trump won huge not “despite all this”, but “because of all this”.

Voters can spot the power battle here — the low tactics used by the media class to defend its own. They can see the vilification, hypocrisy, mock screams of outrage and implicit violence and they want Trump to win. The more he defies the worst of the Left, the more he gives the powerless courage. His supporters see he’s winning against those who’d shut them up, too.

And Trump knows this. In his victory speech yesterday, he entertained the crowd with tales of “disgusting reporters” and the barrage of “horrible” and “vicious” anti-Trump ads he’d had to watch.

Trump knows his battle with the cultural elite is the main game and he is the champion of the underdog.

Originally published as There’s a basic truth in US presidential candidate Donald Trump’s bluster