It’s not surprising that some GOP analysts and Trump apologists thought it fortunate timing that Trump was in Scotland when the Brexit vote came down. You see what you want to see. “The Brexit vote will be a boon to Donald Trump and his candidacy, which has tapped into the same set of fears felt by everyday Americans,” assessed Republican George Lemieux, the former Florida senator.
He’s wrong. Again.
It’s already increasingly apparent that acting on gut anger, selective scapegoating and immigration paranoia is not nationalism at its best. Tossing off the shackles of EU bureaucracy makes a good rallying cry, but Brexit is still a recipe for much more than populist perspectives. It triggers scenarios from economic volatility to geopolitical uncertainty. It invokes the law of unintended consequences. Ask Scotland. Ask U.S. exporters. Ask 401-k managers.
Put it this way: When Russia is pleased, it’s more hangover than euphoria.
If Brexit is a net plus for Trump, that means a majority of the electorate has no problem with his take that he’ll “do well in any case”–whatever happens to the British pound, whatever happens to American retirement accounts, whatever happens to European stability.
I refuse to believe that a majority of U.S. voters will sign on to such a self-aggrandizing, globally unconcerned agenda of a presidential poseur ribbon-cutting as Europe convulses.
Surely, the melodramatic politics of fear and ego are not a winning combination. Surely.