Billionaire Donald Trump has pulled the debate for the US Republican presidential nomination so far to the right that we saw the spectacle of left-winger Michael Moore appearing on Fox News, defending one of their hosts.
Fox anchor Megyn Kelly has won the wrath of Trump by calling him out over sexism. She is not radically different to Trump, praising him for not caring about that politically correct culture.
In part, Trump has tapped into an anti-establishment feeling. The New Statesman found that readers of his book, Crippled America, also liked the Hunger Games novels, Orwell’s 1984, To Kill A Mockingbird, and The Diary of Anne Frank. These books are about battling tyranny or oppression.
This sense of taking on an elite that doesn’t represent us combined with racism is at the heart of his lead in the polls. Trump’s book talks about “The illegal immigrants who have taken jobs that should go to people here legally, while over 20 percent of Americans are currently unemployed or underemployed.” High unemployment is a problem but it is a result of a failing system that has made a few people like Trump rich and everyone else poor.
Left wing candidate for the Democratic nomination Bernie Sanders said, “What Trump has done with some success is taken that anger, taken those fears which are legitimate, and converted them into anger against Mexicans, anger against Muslims.”
Both are outsiders but one more so. In December last year, Trump had received 234 minutes of US network news coverage, while Sanders received all of ten minutes.
A section of the media thinks that while Trump is popular among right wing Republicans, they need to take him on because he will not pose a credible challenge to the Democrats