Trump/West 2016

It’s becoming clear that Donald Trump is going to be the Republican nominee for president in 2016. Against all conventional wisdom, common sense, good breeding, and natural law, Trump has emerged unscathed from numerous supposed faux-pas, in which his plainly hateful comments would shake his 40-odd percent of right-leaning voters out of the foolish reverie that had them contemplating a reality TV star, known for his numerous petty grudges with other low-level celebrities, as worthy of possessing the nuclear codes.

But now Trump has won three of four primaries, and is leading significantly in all polls heading into Super Tuesday. It says a lot about the field of candidates the GOP put forward this season that we are now down to five and Donald Trump is, terrifyingly enough, the best of them.

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“President Trump” is a chilling thing to imagine, but not as chilling as “President Cruz” or “President Rubio.” As I have written before, Cruz looks and sounds like a child molester — though I am in no way alleging that he actually is one — and appears to be to the right of Martin Sheen’s character in THE DEAD ZONE.

Rubio’s whole case for being president, as I have also written before, is that unlike any of the other candidates, a woman might actually sleep with him if he were the last man on Earth. People didn’t want another Bush in the White House, but Rubio reminds me a lot more of W. than Jeb! did — he is blankly almost-handsome, he does okay with the right script, and a vote for him is a vote for all the old-GOP neocon advisors that will surround him out of nowhere the moment he takes office.

Given the alternatives, I have to say that, of the current Republican field, Trump would make the least awful president, and it’s clear that voters agree.

Trump could very well wrap up the nomination on Tuesday, and if he does speculation will begin to turn to who he will choose as his running mate.

Given Trump’s obviously high opinion of himself, it’s hard to imagine who he might consider worthy to share his ticket. I heard someone speculate that he won’t even have a running mate, so outsized is his ego.

Though the office of vice president is famously undemanding, a vice presidential candidate does play an important role in a campaign. They ideally provide some kind of racial, gender, or regional balance to the ticket, to appeal to a wider spread of voters, but more importantly they serve as chief public attack dog, taking every opportunity that a camera is nearby to tear down the top of the opposing ticket. Sarah Palin famously drummed up speculation about Barack Obama and Willam Ayers in 2008, for example, and Dick Cheney attacked John Kerry’s military record in 2004.

Trump is a man of high standards, as one can plainly see in his choices in gold plating, hairplugs, and European women. It’s fair to assume he would only want the best in a running mate, and in this case “the best” would obviously be another version of himself — someone ruthless, vicious, petty, unconcerned with “political correctness” or “coherent policy” or “complete sentences.” Someone strong enough to respond aggressively to any slight, no matter how small or how irrelevant the source — but someone who could deliver another demographic chunk of voters, like women, or Latinos, or whatever Kim Kardashian is.

And this person’s capacity for asymmetric warfare with any and all detractors must be bottomless if it is to equal Trump’s. Trump is well known for taking to Twitter to insult his critics:

My favorite of Trump’s Twitter battles was the one with Modern Family writer Danny Zuker, who called him out after Trump tweeted about China:

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So we need someone willing to make a total fool of himself on Twitter to destroy his enemies, someone with boundless self-confidence, someone with an entrepreneurial spirit — Trump parlayed his success into the fashion industry, for example. Someone rich and Not White.

I think I have the guy.

Who is Bob Ezrin, those of you who left your bedrooms in high school are probably asking? Why, Bob Ezrin was a record producer who had some hits in the ’70s! He made the least shitty-sounding KISS record and some late-period Pink Floyd albums, but more recently he wrote a critique of Kanye West on a blog somewhere. Would anyone anywhere have ever heard his comments had they not been responded to for an audience of 19 million? I don’t believe they would. Is there any reason other than unchecked narcissism, megalomania, and translucently thin skin to engage this person in such a massively public way? No there is not. It is as vicious an attack as it is pointless and petty. Which is why I think Kanye West would fit right into the Trump 2016 campaign like a pair of $5,000 jeans.

Kanye is the black Trump: he is rich, he is paranoid, his self-regard is matched only by his lack of perspective and his capacity for spite. He wants his name on everything and he has an overpriced fashion line, and he gets off on saying stupid controversial things solely for the attention.

Kanye has already indicated his interest in making a 2020 run — more proof of his similarity to Trump — so this would be a natural move for him. A key part of Trump’s appeal is his contempt for “political correctness,” and a running mate would have to share that.

See? Black Trump!

And I’m telling you, he is going to be terrific on the campaign trail, he’s a great guy and a great friend and people are going to love him.

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