NEW YORK — Since Donald Trump announced last month that he is running for president, one of the country’s most prominent and respected opinion journals has called him a “witless ape,” “a buffoon,” and “an ass.”
It’s the kind of criticism of the real estate mogul and reality TV star that you would expect from a liberal publication. But this tidal wave of invective and contempt is coming not from Mother Jones or The Nation, but The National Review, the granddaddy of conservative opinion magazines.
Since Trump’s mid-June entry into the race as a Republican, the magazine founded by conservative icon William F. Buckley, Jr. has run at least eight pieces attacking him, often in the harshest and most personal of terms. The stories have ranged from a carefully reasoned, fact-heavy argument by Linda Chavez challenging Trump’s demonization of Mexican immigrants to a pair of angry, disparaging screeds by Kevin D. Williamson.
In his June 16 piece, Williamson went all out, branding Trump “a ridiculous buffoon with the worst taste since Caligula” and “A reality-television grotesque.” That piece and a second one later in June spewed contempt for Trump’s business record, calling him “a tax-happy crony capitalist,” and his policy proposals, deriding his supporters as “Trumpkins.”
“The reaction to Donald Trump’s announcement of his presidential campaign suggests that there is room for one more: Grow the Hell Up Conservativism,” Williamson wrote.
Other pieces have implored Republican voters to ignore Trump, arguing that he is unelectable, hurts the GOP’s chances of winning the presidency in 2016 and has a history of taking positions at odds with conservative goals and policies.
“He has no chance of becoming president, but he has the huge potential to deny his alleged party a White House victory in 2016,” Jonah Goldberg wrote on July 8. “And when that happens, he will of course stay a celebrity, but he will have traded his fame for infamy, even among those now cheering him on.”
The fierce attacks have not gone unnoticed in Camp Trump. In a July 8 interview on NBC, the casino mogul hit back at Goldberg, calling him “a failed man.” After touting his own wealth, Trump taunted Goldberg as “a guy that can’t afford to buy a pair of pants.”
Trump’s campaign did not return an email request for comment on this story.
National Review Publisher Jack Fowler defended magazine’s carpet-bombing of Trump in an interview with InsideSources. The magazine’s criticism of him boils down to two issues, Fowler said: He’s unelectable and in the past has espoused liberal positions on healthcare, taxes, eminent domain and other issues. Fowler questioned whether Trump, who was once a Democrat and has given money to the party’s candidates, is truly committed to the GOP and conservative causes.
“Our very smart writers have been rightly critical of him because of Bill Buckley’s rule: Nominate the most conservative electable candidate,” Fowler said. “There are questions about his electability and uneasiness about his rightward-ness. When you have both qualities under the Buckley Rule questionable, I think it’s pretty cut and dry.”
What about the ferocity of the attacks directed at Trump? Fowler noted that the magazine took a similarly combative stance when Newt Gingrich vaulted to the top of polls in 2012. Like Trump, Gingrich was unelectable. He later adopted Democratic attack lines that hurt eventual nominee Mitt Romney — much as Trump’s overheated rhetoric threatens to undermine the 2016 nominee, Fowler said.
“We have had a lot of relatively fierce commentary over the years whether it be on Donald Trump or other candidates,” Fowler said. “We were critical and harshly so — I would even use the even use the word ‘brutal’ — to Newt Gingrich.”
National Review’s war on Trump has been decidedly unpopular with many of its readers. They have flooded the comment sections of the magazine’s anti-Trump articles with thousands of angry retorts, defending the real estate entrepreneur and condemning National Review writers as “RINOs” (Republicans in Name Only) and “sellouts.”
“Boy, the RINOs are running for cover….at least Trump is for America, unlike many of the liars and outright frauds competing for the nomination,” wrote one reader using the name “Fatnot” in a typical post.
Fowler, who strongly rejects the RINO label, acknowledged that the magazine’s position is unpopular with many of its readers, especially those particularly focused on illegal immigration. But most voters look at a wider variety of issues, and he dismissed the possibility of Trump’s candidacy splitting the party.
“No party is a monolith,” he said. “Is there debate within the party? There’s always debate within the party. I don’t see that as a bad thing.”
Peter Brown, assistant director of the Quinnipiac Poll, meanwhile, downplayed Trump’s recent surge to the top of some polls. With so many candidates bunched so close together, those numbers are statistically meaningless, he said.
Trump’s biggest obstacle to becoming president: Sky high negatives, even among Republicans, Brown said.
“His negatives are higher than virtually everyone else’s,” Brown said. “When voters are asked, ‘Is there a candidate you would never vote for?’ Trump is at the top of that list among Republicans. These are the people he should be most attractive to.”
