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Easy man to loathe. He's a chronic liar. A braggart. A swaggering blowhard and self-promoting narcissist. A cheat. A swindler. A crass talker with a mean glare and the morals of an alley cat.
He seems incurious about the world beyond him. Appears devoid of sympathy for the suffering of others. Vain and arrogant, too - camouflage for a man-child secretly craving validation and acceptance.
But to hell with it. There's something about Donald Trump that's growing on me.
Maybe you're feeling it, too. Gut-wrenching, isn't it? Every fibre in your body screams that the man is a BS artist, a shallow figure obsessed with wealth and celebrity culture.
The ultimate creature for our times.
He's all that. And yet you can't deny a begrudging admiration for the man.
An errant bullet grazes his ear. Secret Service agents surround him and force him to the floor. Trump clambers to his feet, face streaked with blood. Senses the moment like any instinctive entertainer. Raises a defiant fist in the air. Mouths the word "Fight!" as the American flag flutters in the blue sky behind him.
The man has a knack for timing. A performer, not a politician. America hasn't seen his like since the days of PT Barnum, the 19th century showman who gloated "there's a sucker born every minute" as crowds queued for his freak shows and hoaxes. They erected statues of Barnum. Hailed him as a philanthropist.
Trump's redemption is also thanks to a couple of suckers - a 20-year-old would-be assassin with bad eyesight and a feeble president with a bad memory.
A fortnight ago Trump was petulant and self-absorbed. Easy to picture the bored child within plucking the wings off butterflies. Now, in a nation so fractured it sports a passing resemblance to the dying days of the Roman empire, he's hailed as a potential healer. Caesar with a ducktail haircut.
![Former US president Donald Trump. Picture Shutterstock Former US president Donald Trump. Picture Shutterstock](/images/transform/v1/crop/frm/3BUUzmFAhrhLyX9rFCubPq5/07eab1be-42c6-4d74-ab4c-bf351c24158b.jpg/r0_30_2667_1535_w1200_h678_fmax.jpg)
Instinct tells you it can't be right. Trump a saviour? A statesman? It's like a movie laden with special effects. You know it's not real. But you suspend disbelief anyway. Perhaps that's what you're starting to admire about him. The audacity. The sheer chutzpah.
Trump's transformation continued at this week's Republican National Convention in Milwaukee when he named JD Vance, one-time critic turned acolyte, as his vice-presidential running mate.
Trump's fake tan was tempered. That sweep of glowing orange hair, normally associated with those working long hours in nuclear reactors, was an age-appropriate grey. And in case anyone forgot, sticking plaster on the draft dodger's right ear, displayed like a military medal for courage.
The more dramatic change was in words and tone. Sober. Reserved. The instinct of the showman again. The usual crazed conglomeration of capital letters and exclamation marks absent from his social media rhetoric. Trump's relationship with the English language has long matched his regard for the truth. Both are malleable, easily twisted when seeking to divide.
Yet there he was, days after the attempt on his life, six weeks after his felony conviction on 34 counts of falsifying business records and three months away from a likely landslide victory, sombrely asking the nation to help repair the same societal rifts he has exploited and encouraged.
Just as many failed to understand the respect middle Australia had for John Howard, Trump's appeal to working Americans baffles the elites. They deride his constituency as cap-wearing, truck-driving, God-fearing conservatives whose weekends are filled with church and professional wrestling.
But those supporters have long understood the truth about Trump. For all his flaws he's also like them, an outsider who's given up banging on the door and now only wants to knock it down.
Can this latest version of Trump - the diplomatic statesman garnering growing admiration - last the distance?
He reminds me of an old manager I once suffered under for several years. He, too, was a lot like the old Trump. Cold. Distant. Delighted in mentally torturing his underlings. A certifiable sociopath who curled his lip when colleagues were late for meetings because their bus was delayed.
"Buses are for losers," he'd sneer, an unsubtle reminder that in his world of power and wealth, winners travelled in chauffeur-driven limos.
I saw him a few years later. He was warm, affable and no longer seemed interested in petty mind games. But as we recalled former colleagues I saw that old familiar sneer cross his face.
He couldn't help himself. And you know what they say about leopards and their spots.
HAVE YOUR SAY: Have you changed your mind about Donald Trump since his debate with Joe Biden and last week's assassination attempt? Do you believe the American era of dominance is fading? Could a Trump-like figure succeed in Australia? Email us: echidna@theechidna.com.au
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IN CASE YOU MISSED IT:
- Labor has moved to suspend donations from the NSW, Victorian, South Australia and Tasmanian branches of the CFMEU's construction division after the union was placed under administration. The ALP national executive unanimously agreed to suspend affiliation from the branches following a meeting held to Labor's future ties to the embattled union, following serious allegations of organised crime and links to bikie gangs.
- Australia's unemployment rate has held above 4 per cent for three months even as an uptick in hours worked and a healthy employment increase hint at ongoing resilience in the jobs market. Ticking higher to 4.1 per cent in June from 4.0 per cent in May, the jobless rate was in line with consensus forecasts.
- Foreign Minister Penny Wong has condemned Israel's killing of innocent civilians as part of operations in Gaza, branding the deaths unacceptable. Senator Wong reiterated Australia had been calling for a ceasefire for eight months.
THEY SAID IT: "Coming to terms with Donald Trump as the Republican nominee is like being told you have stage one or stage two cancer. You know you'll probably survive but one way or the other, there's going to be a lot of throwing up." - Christopher Buckley
YOU SAID IT: Sometimes screen adaptations do justice to the book. Often they don't. If you watched Netflix's 3 Body Problem be sure to read Cixin Liu's books as well.
Ian writes: "A book requires the reader to construct the characters and surroundings using their imagination, a creative and rewarding process. The movie adaptation does much of the thinking work for us and so can be easier on the brain. But, I'm still fascinated by how another person (film director) constructs characters and story for a book sometimes quite differently to my interpretation. John, I recently read The Crow Trap by Ann Cleeves which features your favourite detective, Vera Stanhope. The TV Vera is short, somewhat dumpy, and orchestrates the whole investigation. The book Vera is tall and is rather more incidental to proceedings. I like both versions of Vera."
"Thank you for this recommendation," writes Janet. "I'll be looking for Cixin Liu's trilogy. I know I need to expand my reading to include more African, Asian and South American authors. Not that I read that much fiction. George RR Martin really challenged our family with the widening gap between books and TV dramatisation. My son said you've got to think of the book as the canon or the real history and the TV series is the popular historical account (yes, we both know it's a fictional history). There've been so many Jane Austen dramatisations with varying degrees of faithfulness to the novel, but they've all done a good job of telling her stories."
Brian writes: "Like yourself I was intrigued with 3 Body Problem and enjoyed the series. I was able to locate the books through my e-reader and have them downloaded ready to read. I am currently reading Hilary Mantel's trilogy about Cromwell and Henry VIII. This was also a series adapted from the first book Wolf Hall. If you like historical fiction it is well worth the read. I think both books and movies bring their own essence to a story, and I don't think that screen adaptations have to be a complete rewrite of the book. I now regularly search out books on which movies have been based."
"Movies are mostly unsatisfactory versions of the books, in my experience, because the characters in my head don't look or behave like that," writes Maggie. "There are exceptions: the Forrest Gump movie used the book as a launch pad to find its own much better world. The BBC's 1995 Pride and Prejudice series did Jane Austen proud. And conversely, the book of ET which resulted from the movie, I actually found more fulfilling than the movie."
Sue writes: "Adapting from words to audio-visual involves using the strengths and also weaknesses of the new medium while compensating for the strengths lost from the previous medium. For example in writing, the characters tell the audience what they feel, the mood of the moment, the tone of the author's opinion, and these can be difficult to convey with the same degree of precision in an audio-visual medium. For description, audio-visual has it hands down over words. I did end up reading Catch 22 as a result of watching the film, but it was almost like two different narratives with a few similarities. Will keep an eye out for Liu's trilogy. Thanks for the tip."
"The screen adaptation of Isaac Asimov's Foundation trilogy was very different from the books," writes Jim. "A creative rewrite? I enjoyed both after I adjusted my expectations. The books are old favourites. I'm looking forward to the continuation of the TV series."
Geoff writes: "Like you, I can take or leave sci-fi novels but the science has to be feasible for me to want to continue to read."
"When the film was released in 1965, I was captivated," writes Jan. "Many, many times have I watched in amazement and awe as the Von Trapp family was depicted in The Sound of Music. The book was read once, years later. Tomorrow I go on The Sound of Music morning tour in Salzburg!"