In the past week, the Trumpster version of a race for the White House has gone from farce to fraud and pretty much every other way station in between. But mostly it was variations on the theme of farce – but it was the kind of farce that can make one cry.

The first stop was Mexico City on Wednesday afternoon. For a moment, one could be stunned into thinking Donald J. Trump was now behaving as if he really wanted to be seen as a candidate with both presidential ambitions and presidential gravitas. He met with Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto and then they had one of those joint press conferences national leaders customarily do after they have had one of those “frank and honest” conversations.

To the press, Trump spoke admiringly about Mexico and Mexicans and about how the two men had spoken openly about trans-border problems such as crime and drugs. Trump, of course, chose to say that they had not spoken about how his mythic border wall would be paid for, although the Mexican leader insisted afterwards via social media that, right at the beginning of their head-to-head conversation, he had told his American visitor there was no way Mexico was about to pay for Trump’s folly of a public works project.

Meanwhile, Mexicans have been particularly vocal about the folly of their president having invited Trump (and Clinton, too, while he was at it) to meet with him – before the US election. Peña Nieto’s popularity was already heading south before his meeting with Trump, and given how the whole thing ended, it is a good bet his ratings will not be growing following that meeting, especially after Mexicans read about the Trumpster’s Phoenix speech or had watched it on the news channels.

Reflecting on this extraordinary visit, The Economist noted:

“The invitation proved hugely controversial in Mexico. What, many people wondered, did it take to be removed from their president’s guest list? Mr Trump, after all, has accused Mexicans of bringing drugs and crime into America and of being rapists. Opinions of the Republican nominee south of the Rio Grande vary from the poor to the awful. In June, just 2% of Mexicans said they wanted Mr Trump to be the next president; 74% were rooting for Mrs Clinton. Responses to his imminent arrival were widely vituperative. Margarita Zavala, one of the leading contenders for the presidential nomination of the opposition National Action Party in 2018, tweeted: ‘Although they have invited him, he should know that he is not welcome.’ Another opposition party, the Party of the Democratic Revolution, questioned the rationale behind the meeting, saying it ‘only favours the political aspirations of this anti-Mexican demagogue’.”

Still, for Trump at least, despite the furore in Mexico, American television viewers of the joint press conference could almost be forgiven for believing they had watched the mysterious, sudden maturation of the Republican candidate away from a howling, race baiting, serial truth-telling traducer of his opponents. He seemed so damned normal – it was close to terrifying. As a result, this faux-presidential moment seemed tailor-made to reach to the very demographic that has been running away from the candidate – all those college-educated, white women in key suburban districts in battleground states. The logic of this moment seems to have been to provide a version of Donald Trump who could seem reasonable, thoughtful, articulate, contemplative, and, well, presidential – everything he had not been so far in the general election campaign.

But then something clearly happened to Trump on his return flight from Mexico City to Phoenix, Arizona, where he was scheduled to deliver a major speech on his immigration policy. Daily Maverick has obtained exclusive secret recordings of an airborne Trump staff meeting and we excerpt a key section for readers’ edification, below.

DT: Hey, that was huge. Really huge. The best. And those offices were pretty nice too, although not as good as they would be if they let me build a Trump Tower-Mexico City there. Say, Trump [the candidate sometimes speaks about himself in the third person] sounded like, well, presidential, didn’t he – not like that nasty lyin’ Hillary. She’s so low energy she could never do these two events back to back like I am about to do. Never.

KC

DT: Of course they were impressed. Trump can do anything he sets his mind to doing. And taking on, and dealing with that Mexican guy, what’s his name, oh, yeah, Enrique Peña Nieto, was just as easy as I said it would be. He could be pushed around and smacked, just like one of those piñatas, you know, those things that hang from the ceiling and kids whack at with a stick to get at the little gifts and candies inside when they break it over Christmas or whatever they celebrate down there with their tacos. He’s soft. Say, maybe, instead of Peña Nieto, from now on I’ll just call him ‘The Piñata’. Push him a bit and he gives up all the goodies! [Sound of general laughter on board].

SB

DT: [very excitedly] Yes, of course! The whole package. It’s huge. It is the best one. Nobody else has a plan like Trump. The big, beautiful wall those Mexicans will pay for – and they will pay for it; all those deportations; the ideological screening tests to keep out the bad guys; the new task force to enforce it all.

Yeah, I know, that sneaky Kenyan imposter in the White House already has some kind of an enhanced deportation policy, and they have spent some money on border protection, but they just don’t know how to do it. They are weak, weak and stupid. Trump is not any of those.

Even if we can’t get them all out, all at once, we’ll round up two million of those thieves, muggers, rapists, and all those other criminals; and we’ll send them packing back across the Rio Grande River – unless they pack up and go by themselves first…. And, when I talk in Phoenix, maybe I’ll throw in a line or two about deporting that ‘Crooked Hillary’ too, while Trump is at it. Yup, a swipe at that low energy phony, that always gets Trump’s crowds’ juices flowing….

You get the idea.

And then, of course, Trump actually did land in Phoenix that very same day, and yes he actually did deliver a speech that really was like a best hits version of his throwing-raw-red-meat-to-the-baying-hordes, dog whistle of a speech to a crowd that had clearly already drunk undiluted Trumpean Kool Aid. The sheer audacity of his 180-degree turnabout in one day was mind-bending; the Dr Jekyll-Mr-Hyde-ness of it was astonishing if you viewed the two events back-to-back.

Perhaps somewhere in the midst of the Trump campaign, what with its perpetual tussle over whether the candidate has to be true to his inner demons or somehow figure out how to sound more like a reasonable candidate who doesn’t frighten more voters than he attracts, they thought they could let both halves happen and nobody would notice the outrageous disconnect. Well, that did not work so well as far as Mexico was concerned, but maybe they understood the Hispanic vote was so much of a lost cause for Trump that it didn’t matter what he said or did any more. Not surprisingly, in response to the Phoenix speech, a big chunk of Trump’s Hispanic advisory committee summarily quit on him, more than a little bruised by the week’s events.

Anyway, after this bit of idiosyncratic diplomacy, the Trump machine turned towards its other ethnic gap in American voting, African Americans. For months, the candidate had been articulating a vision that had effectively driven African Americans ever further from the GOP. Then, as the candidate began his campaign manager shuffle – from Corey Lewandowski to Paul Manafort, then on to Steve Bannon and Kellyanne Conway – Trump had begun arguing the trope that life for African Americans was so dreadful, so crabbed, so desperate, that it made sense to stop supporting Democratic candidates and officials because they hadn’t solved the racial divide, violence in urban neighbourhoods, and the economic circumstances of African Americans.

As such, it was incumbent upon them to back him because he, uniquely, could fix it all. He was, after all, the latest candidate from the party of Abraham Lincoln, although he elided around the effects of the southern strategy of Richard Nixon and all other GOP candidates since 1968. This, of course, represented a bit of an end run around his previously implacable criticism of President Barack Obama as a secret Muslim Kenyan who was not really a natural-born American citizen, in Trump’s “birther” phase. Most African Americans, presumably, have not forgotten the essential racial quality of that false charge.

Nevertheless, on Friday and Saturday, Trump made his foray into the inner city, to Philadelphia and then in Detroit, in the company of Dr Ben Carson, the neurosurgeon turned presidential candidate, whom Trump had driven out of the race in the early primaries as one of those low energy types who couldn’t achieve Trumpean lift-off. Before Detroit there was a meeting in Philadelphia with local black leaders, then the speech – well, actually more of a pre-scripted Q and A at a Detroit church, followed by a bit of a walkabout, including a breeze-by to the house Carson had lived in as a child.

Some observers said that this effort seems to have been better put together than some of Trump’s other campaign swings. But, here again, the point was not to expect a mass conversion of black voters from their support for Democrats – and over to Trump and the GOP instead. Rather, given the criticality to victory of Trump’s winning some of those big, urban battleground states like Ohio and Pennsylvania, even a modest shift of a couple of percentage points among African American voters in his favour might conceivably be enough to nudge such states into the Republican column, come 8 November. And without Pennsylvania and Ohio (and the other Midwestern states like Michigan or Wisconsin), the Trumpean electoral adventure almost certainly ends in tears in two months.

Reporting on this latest campaign wrinkle, The Washington Post reported:

“Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump told the congregation at Great Faith International Ministries in Detroit, Mich., that he attended service ‘to learn’ and help remedy ‘injustice in any form’. Trump’s visit to the black church on Sept. 3 is seen as an appeal to African American voters. ‘I fully understand that the African American community has suffered from discrimination’, Trump said, adding that there were ‘many wrongs’ that still needed to be ‘made right’.

“Trump, who has argued that black voters have nothing to lose by supporting him — a line that has been widely criticised by Democrats — also vowed to improve economic conditions across the country. Protesters denounced Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump’s visit to a Detroit black church as he attempts to appeal to African American voters. A crowd protested Trump outside Great Faith International Ministries while Trump attended service and addressed the congregation.

“Bishop Wayne Jackson, who introduced Trump on Saturday, said Great Faith Ministries International was the first black church the Republican nominee had visited. ‘This is the first African American church he’s been in, y’all! Now it’s a little different from a Presbyterian church!’ Jackson said.

“Trump, who did an interview with Jackson before his speech, said he was ‘here today to learn so that we can together remedy injustice in any form’. The interview will be broadcast at a later date. Trump said that the nation is ‘divided’ and that ‘those who seek office do not do enough to step into the community and learn what’s going on’.

“Afterward, Trump accompanied Ben Carson, a former presidential rival turned supporter, on a visit to his childhood home in south-west Detroit. The business executive viewed the outside of Carson’s home, according to a pool report of the event, which was not opened up to a broad press corps. Trump and Carson spoke briefly with Felicia Reese, who has lived in the neighbourhood since 1992, according to the pool report. Trump asked Reese: ‘It’s been a good house?’ He joked that since Carson grew up there, the location was famous. ‘This house is worth a lot of money!’ he said, according to the pool report.”

The question such rhetoric and action both inevitably brings forward, however, is just how well this sits with the support base of the angry, disaffected white voters. These are the voters he has been so assiduously cultivating since he first announced his candidacy, and they may well have a different response to his comments in that Detroit church than did the parishioners he faced.

The Economist has been trying to sort out precisely what kinds of voters Trump actually appeals to, and what buttons he is pushing to gain their support. Reporting on a mammoth survey of close to 90,000 Americans carried out by the Gallup organisation, the journal observed that the supposed close link between the baleful effects of globalisation and Trump support was less than convincing. In fact, people living in areas less directly affected by globalisation’s forces had higher levels of support for him than the other way around.

However, areas with low social mobility and lower health levels were more likely to be strongly supportive of the candidate than otherwise. Still, as his support levels hover around 40%, the periodical and its experts argued that only a sliver of his support derived directly from that socio-economic circumstance. Meanwhile, the idea Trump had tapped deeply into an authoritarian vein in American life was there, but it came down to connections to, among other things, child rearing practices rather than a deep-seated desire for a Mussolini-American-style, as Trump supporters tended to have a preference for obedience and authority over good manners.

But The Economist went on to conclude:

“…One theory of Trump remains standing. Along with the questions on authoritarianism, we also requested YouGov to ask a battery of questions aimed at measuring racial resentment. Different from outright racism, this is measured by support for the idea that blacks are undeserving and clamorous for special assistance. Strongly disagreeing with the claim that ‘over the past few years blacks have gotten less than they deserve’, for example, reflects a high degree of racial resentment.

“Racial resentment was tightly linked to Mr Trump’s supporters. These results held true when we controlled for region, race and religion, among other factors: 59% of Trump supporters in the Republican primary scored in the top quartile on racial resentment, compared with 46% of Republicans who backed other candidates and with 29% of voters overall. Those who thought that more should be done to fight terrorism were also much more likely to support him. In the Gallup study, whites who lived in racially isolated areas had a higher opinion of Mr Trump as well.

“These findings cast doubt on the alarming notion that Mr Trump is propelled by a latent yearning for a strongman. Instead, they bolster the view that the candidate’s recent speeches painting a dystopian vision of black America wracked by crime and unemployment were aimed not at black voters themselves, but rather at the kind of whites who tell pollsters that blacks are lazy and overindulged.”

Such an approach, while it may be good for collecting the votes of the disaffected, does little to help bring a nation together to address common issues and challenges with anything even approaching a sense of broad national purpose.

Meanwhile, while Donald Trump was carrying out such campaign efforts, his main opponent, Hillary Clinton, was wrestling with the continuing irritation of a wound that will not heal, actually, two of them. The first is the e-mails she put onto a private e-mail server while she was secretary of state, and which continue to allow her opponent to charge she was loose with national secrets and thus cannot now be trusted with still higher office. In tandem with that challenge, there is the Clinton Foundation conundrum. While no one denies the foundation’s good works, her detractors keep trying to argue she effectively dangled access to her office in exchange for cash donations to the foundation. So far, at least, despite all the plentiful smoke, no one has found a fire – no national secrets handed over to the Russians, Chinese or al-Qaeda from her e-mails, and no appalling decisions emanating from Foggy Bottom that were a consequence of a million dollars or so given to the foundation from the emir of this or the supreme leader of that. But this will not, of course, stop GOP stalwarts from digging further, and from charging that the proof is out there somewhere – just like The X Files.

Still, the national mood continues to give Clinton a sizeable lead nationally, and, most important, in most of the swing states where the race will probably be won or lost. At this point, it remains Clinton’s to lose and so she and her campaign managers are desperate for her not to commit any kind of blunder. In fact, they hope to bury Trump in her fine attention to policy detail – and his shallow conception of it – in the one-on-one debates that begin on 26 September. It is crucial to remember, too, that while voting traditionally is said to take place nationally on 8 November, because of the growing prevalence of advance voting, as many as a third of the nation will have voted well before that date.

Of course, while all this has been going on, the incumbent president has been engaged in some globe-trotting diplomacy of his own. First there is the G20 meeting in Hangzhou, China, and the ASEAN Ministers Meeting in Vientiane, Laos, upcoming. While in China, Obama and Xi Jinping officially ratified the Paris climate accord – even as there was some bilateral pushing and shoving among senior aides and the media as Air Force One was about to land. With that in mind, perhaps readers imagine Donald Trump in similar circumstances as president at a future G20 meeting – as he plays the overbearing braggadocio card with the Chinese leader and then engages in some public kiss-kiss-hug-hug with Vladimir Putin, in line with his frequent public statements already? This may not be the stuff that dreams are made of. DM

Photo: Penny for your thoughts? Mexico’s President Enrique Pena Nieto meets Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump (Reuters Henry Romero)