Trump's been underestimated during the primary and during the general, and those that continue to underestimate him do so without a strong track record.
I disagree on this. Trump wasn't underestimated, the electorate was overestimated.
Personally, I've thought Trump was working a brilliant con-job from the start and I was one of the people who expected him to pick up the Republican nomination early.
Admittedly, I thought that the people would see through it in the general, and on that count I was wrong. Trump knows how to manipulate the media perfectly. He also intuitively understands that the path to the election does not involve appealing to people's intelligence (it's just a matter of statistics and the bell curve).
Basically, if you look at Trump's campaign objectively, it's a perfect "how to" on running a mass-level con. Wishy-washy declarations, non-stop appeals to emotion, populist pandering, media manipulation. Objectively speaking, it was a thing of beauty.
My greatest hope was that he was enough of a narcissist that he would try to go down in history as a great president, and thus he would go against his promises and instead enact real policies that would make an actual difference. Alas, his cabinet picks show he does not know how to accomplish this.
He may turn out to be an effective and capable manager, leader, and CEO (think about it, he's been all these things for most of his working life), and a pragmatic on at that.
That's just it, though. He
hasn't those things. For example, he bankrupted a casino. A casino, the most rigged system on the planet for making money, and his went bankrupt. Yet he made a fortune while those businesses failed. His investors, who he
conned, lost their asses.
I don't call him a con-man based solely on his campaign. I've done a lot of research into his business style over the years and came to a simple conclusion: He's an exceptionally accomplished con man. If you view his campaign objectively through the lens of understanding this simple fact, everything he does makes sense and, more importantly, he becomes more predictable. Provided you know what his "marks" want to hear.
For example, when news of his settlement over Trump university broke, I said to my wife, "Trump's about to say something stupid to distract from this." Next thing you know, Hamilton. Perfect choice. A bunch of citified urban elitist liberals who unfairly criticize decent honest white folk for no good reason. Who gives a **** if what they said wasn't even the least bit objectionable? His marks find the people
making the statement objectionable. Actually, his
other "marks" (hyper-reactive liberals who are easily distracted by the "shiny") fell in step, too.
So the conversation is shifted away from one that is potentially harmful to him with his primary "marks" to one where they are defending him from the irrational attacks of hyper-sensitive politically correct liberals.
It's a brilliant masters class on mass manipulation in 140 characters or less.
There is much about Trump the campaign person that I didn't like. And I have no illusions that as a private citizen he was sometimes insulting, crude, rude, and in the celebrity culture was sometimes inappropriate if we measure that behavior by what we consider appropriate outside of that culture. He was one of them and was a media darling and pretty much above reproach to an adoring media in those days.