A series of articles to look at, give a partial analysis and outline of Trump’s base and what it cam expect of him. We are starting with that portion of Trump’s base which are those who are very anti-gay, homophobic, are sure gay folks are trying to convert their children, destroy Christianity and the values they claim to hold close to their hearts and so much more. You know the rhetoric and you know that portions of Trump’s base overlap. It is very true that those who are homophobic have other bigotries against other groups which overlap, but this article addresses itself to the anti-gay community portion of Trump’s agenda.
Trump has tried to satisfy them by attempting to ban transgender people from serving in the armed forces, throwing out of the armed forces those transgender people already serving and more.
We will not say much about Donald Trump in his teens because those are tender years and can be the background for the direction in which a person travels, but could also be just experimental and a passing phase.
When we get to Donald Trump in his 20’s, however, we see a person beginning to show his values and to set his life’s path.
One of the people Donald Trump met, who became his mentor, was Roy Cohn. Roy Cohn was a prominent New York attorney with an awesome reputation for bullying. He was, at the time, a very famous attorney in these United States and not always for the best of reasons. At the end of his life he was disbarred for many reasons like – particularly reprehensible conduct, and his ethics were called into question and so much more. Cohn’s clients included several of New York City’s mafia, who he defended along with a large and impressive roster of clients.
Roy Cohn connects – Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, Donald Trump, the Rosenbergs, Roger Stone, Joseph McCarthy, and many more. A surprising confluence of people.
For the purpose of this article, that which is right out there about Roy Cohn is that he was gay and he died of AIDS. He is the person most responsible for helping Donald Trump move from his father’s businesses in Queens, New York to Manhattan. In the process Donald Trump and Roy Cohn were extremely close. If you could not find one you called the other and that person could tell you where to go or call to find the other – they were that close.
They spent evenings together over candlelight dinners at Club 54; once Trump married, Roy Cohn spent many evenings having dinner with the Trumps at their condo in Trump Tower and that in spite of the fact that Roy Cohn did not think Ivana was the person Donald should have married.
Donald Trump was in the middle of the male gay community which surrounded Roy Cohn. He was accepted as one of the boys and his relationship with Roy Cohn was common knowledge and also accepted.
Donald Trump was one of Roy Cohn’s most important clients. If you did anything with Trump that would or could have resulted in a legal battle you had to deal with Roy Cohn, but Trump rarely, if ever, paid Cohn. And if you went to Trump’s office during that time there would be a large picture of Roy Cohn on his desk.
We could go on for pages about Donald Trump’s relationship with Roy Cohn, but the point of this article is that during that time and for many years after Roy Cohn’s death, Donald Trump was in the middle of a very sophisticated gay group in Manhattan in which he was totally accepted. According to some he provided an apartment, at Roy Cohn’s request, to one of Cohn’s friends who was dying of AIDS so he could live out his shortened life in relative comfort and Trump did just that – giving up a condo in Trump Tower – for free.
With that background, where does this hatred of people who are gay come from? Where does this doing whatever he can to limit access to the gay community of the many things previously granted them as equality – like gay marriage? The question becomes – why does Trump’s background and relationships show that he would do the exact opposite? Why did he have a mentor who was very gay and in the middle of a gay community bringing Trump into the middle of that community in a very public way?
At no time has Trump acknowledged that lifestyle, nor has he said anything about that personal history. He did not come out, for example, to say that “at one time I was very supportive of the gay community, but in xxxx year I discovered my fault and reformed – turned my back on that history and all of the people with whom I had a close association and friendship and now have decided that homophobic is what I really am and have cut off associations and friendships with any and all gay people except those who have recanted, turned their lives around and are now straight.”
From where in his soul does this close association and friendship with many gay males come from – people with whom he had an extremely close relationship – to make him today able to move his campaign to take an active homophobic stance on many issues; to talk about people who are gay in very negative and subhuman terms; to go after those who are transgender to keep them away from serving in the armed forces and in many other ways.
More to the point would be – how and why do the people who really are homophobic and whose agenda is to rid society of everyone who is gay, transgendered, etc. have simply taken Trump at his word. Even knowing this background and history, they have never questioned any of this background. What is going on here that they believe that he, without political campaigns to win, would continue to act to make sure this gay group of people are clearly oppressed and not equal to the rest of society?
Surely they have had at least a passing thought that when Trump has no more campaigns to win he would then govern in such a way as to bring the gay community into equity with the rest of society and the goals of the homophobic community destroyed and turned against them.
Anything else makes no human sense. To say God is using Trump makes even less sense because in my many decades of reading scripture God does not involve me and mine in any evil that God moves to eliminate. God takes the evil hitting me and turns it into good. God does the work and humanity benefits. God upheavals and me and mine are playing God as we see fit. But this part of Trump’s base has many excuses as to why they are supporting Trump because they believe, in the long run he will act in the interest of and promotion into society of their anti-gay, homophobic, anti transgender beliefs and life actions.
We believe that is nonsense and we believe something else is operating here and we believe we know what that is about.
Take a look at Bill Cosby and the evil he inflicted on dozens of women with his corrupt actions. Look at how many years and how much pain and suffering and hard work it took to expose Bill Cosby and bring him to justice. Why was that? Why did so many people for so long support Bill Cosby in spite of what was showing right in their faces up close and personal?
For many, many decades television, books, and much more of media coverage portrayed Bill Cosby as this loving father and great man. He received all kind of awards – not based on who he was, but based on his media persona – which many believed and would not let go of even in the face of facts which proved otherwise. It took decades before it began to seep into the world’s conscience that the Bill Cosby on television and all of those Cosby family books and other kinds of media that circulated was created fiction and not the real Bill Cosby. The real Bill Cosby was the person going to Court who was finally proven to be the sexual predator that he actually was and not the great, kind, with it father he portrayed in many media settings. The kind of father we all want and many of us don’t have. It is extremely difficult to give up on that kind of dream. And the kind of dream Turmp portrayed – great business executive, incredibly successful giving others and maybe one day us the opportunity to follow in his footsteps. That is like giving up on the lottery for those so addicted.
For many years, Donald Trump has been portrayed on television as this great business mogul with all of the trappings to create a romantic figure to get us to tune in year after year. We have in mind the man created by good writers, camera people, directors, producers, in books ghost written for him by others. We have not been able to believe and to take down the man so constructed for us by the media to see the real person who is the real Donald Trump. The media is now doing its best to show us that person, but many are resisting because Donald Trump is putting himself in front of the public as the created, romanticized person who actually exists only on television and not in real life.
Don’t you think it is time to look carefully and scrutinize this man the way many had to scrutinize Bill Cosby to see who he actually was and to look away from and put in the fairy tale books the Bill Cosby and Donald Trump created as marketing tools to sell all kinds of products to the average American citizen?
And don’t you think, given those two examples of human beings turned into almost monsters by their media persona and how far we have had to go to expose them as other than that romantic image – that we should give lots of thought to what we create and watch and give credence to in the media because clearly that is now roiling our society by the way it has seeped into our consciousness and affected decisions in real life and in how we make choices for ourselves and others?
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