Is Donald Trump the Manchurian Candidate?

The suggestion made perhaps not entirely seriously by Rushdie of a scheme on the part of the Clintons to set up an unelectable opponent in Hilary’s bid for the White House was taken up by other commentators, including conservative columnist James Hohmann.

Writing in The Washington Post in May this year, Hohmann informed readers that what had might have seemed a fanciful suggestion on the part of Rushdie was being taken seriously by Trump’s opponents within the Republican Party.

“Salman Rushdie floated last fall that Donald Trump is a Democratic plant whose ultimate goal is to get Hillary Clinton elected president. To many conservatives, this feels less and less facetious. The presumptive GOP nominee has spent the past few weeks doing almost everything you would do if you were trying to throw an election, from attacking a federal judge over his Mexican heritage to not building a serious ground game or actively raising the money necessary to wage a credible campaign for the presidency.”

Anyone who sees political posts on social media will be familiar with a photo showing the Clintons rejoicing at the 2005 wedding of Trump and his second wife, an event at which they were invited guests. Moreover, there have been reports that Bill Clinton encouraged Trump, who hitherto had shown no strong interest in a political career, to run for president.       

A dimension to the speculation surrounding the unlikely candidacy of Donald Trump, who has been characterised as a “post-truth” politician, was added as a result of comments he made that were seen as pro-Russian. A new parallel between the Trump campaign and The Manchurian Candidate has been put forward, though this time it comes from a Democrat perspective. Writing in Salon in August, literature professor Stephen Paul Miller argues that Trump’s apparent admiration for Russian President Vladimir Putin suggests that Trump is being manipulated by the Russian government.

“Hmm. Trump’s advocacy of dismantling NATO over unpaid bills, his continuous and effusive praise of former KGB chief Vladimir Putin (amply reciprocated), his bizarre request of Russia to hack Hillary Clinton’s emails, his coming perilously close to supporting Russia’s annexing of Crimea, and his campaign’s redaction of the Republican platform plank in support of arming Ukraine against Russia can’t help but raise suspicions of a hard quid pro quo between the Trump campaign and Russian government.”

So, is Trump part of a conspiracy on the part of the Clintons or the Russians, or could it somehow be that both are operating through Trump independent of the other? To say the least, Trump has seemed to many observers an unlikely, even accidental presidential candidate. Not only has he no practical experience as a political or military leader but his critics have repeatedly pointed to his lack of understanding, much less respect, for the institutions and protocols of government and diplomacy.

In public appearances, Trump appears to have no sense of decorum, no inner monologue, and speaks the language of violence, even raising the possibility of the assassination of Hilary Clinton. Moreover, Trump has canvassed the idea that he might well lose the election because it is “rigged”.

Notoriously Trump himself has been a booster of conspiracy theories including the Obama birther movement, an advocacy which he has only recently disavowed presumably in order to seem more responsible. Did he ever really believe that President Obama was not an American citizen?        

If Trump himself is indeed the pawn in a larger conspiracy, then it may appear as though he is hiding in plain sight.   

Even the lurid sexual aspect of Condon’s novel has an echo or two in the public utterances attributed to Trump. If Bill Clinton, due to the revelations of his affair with White House intern Monica Lewinsky, introduced sex into the political conversation, then Donald Trump has pushed the boundaries of taste even further. Not only has Trump been prepared to engage in a public debate about the size of his penis, he has also, notoriously, shared on national television his apparent willingness to “date” his own daughter.

Truth, the cliché has it, is stranger than fiction. In the case of the 2016 US presidential election, the candidacy of Donald Trump has provoked comparisons with a novel from the 1950s whose strangeness has turned out to be regarded as a function of its plausibility.