Trump is an Entertainer

Jonah Goldberg, a conservative columnist writing in The Greenville Post, has explained the Trump phenomenon in a way that I understand.

Republican politics have (has) always been a serious thing; their ideas have usually been serious, Ted Cruz notwithstanding.  Trump,  however—Goldberg says—is primarily an entertainer.  A freaky set of circumstances, and some chaotic ideas, most of them in Trump's head, came together, and Trump found himself President.  The GOP played along, and on the way, a different set of people took control of the party. 

But, says Jonah, in time, Trump and his policies have become unpopular, a fact that has a difficult time penetrating into his Trump's) awareness.  He lost the 2020 election, which he could not accept.  And, Jonah Goldberg says, J. D. Vance was a way Trump sought to balance his candidacy.  But Vance is serious, not an entertainer, and things are not going well for them.  In fact—if Goldberg is right, and I think he is—a soon as the mainstream of the GOP realizes that being led by an entertainer is a liability, things are going to soon get a lot worse.

Furthermore, he says, there is a thing he has called the Greenland effect: when Trump adopts even a reasonable conservative idea, he poisons it with his unpopularity.