National Review contempt for Donald Trump

Kevin Williamson continues the National Review pundits hatred of Donald Trump:

...politicians and ex-politicians don’t generally starve to death, and some, such as the Clintons, cash in on their political connections with extraordinary success and rapacity, but political-guy money for the most part isn’t very much like genuine rich-guy money: the hundreds of millions to billions enjoyed by Silicon Valley entrepreneurs and the cleverest Wall Street players. That’s one reason for Trump’s political pungency: His wealth and his celebrity constitute the two commodities that the political operators covet most intensely. If you naively believe that Trump’s campaign is somehow independent of the usual political operators, take a look at who is working for him and who has taken his campaign to heart.

...Barack Obama’s model of executiveship — president as celebrity — has proven unproductive, and the answer isn’t a bigger and different kind of celebrity.

...Minus the hypnotic power of celebrity, there would be no Donald Trump presidential campaign. Trump is a real-estate developer with a spotty record and a long history of the worst sort of crony capitalism, but he is famous — terribly famous. What is he famous for? He was transformed from a minor business figure little known outside of New York City into a nationally famous figure because of a tabloid divorce case that revealed him to be a man willing to betray his family in the cruelest and most callous way, and by a series of embarrassing business bankruptcies, most notably that of the hideous Trump Taj Mahal casino in Atlantic City, the Mount Everest of bad taste. This celebrity he deftly parlayed into a reality-television career. It doesn’t matter why he’s famous, only that he is famous.

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