Vindicating Trump

Donald Trump is unquestionably the most unique and charismatic figure in American politics in a generation. Yet despite his familiarity on the public stage, he remains an enigmatic, mysterious figure. Not since Lincoln has a man drawn such intensely opposite responses, of love and hate, and even in Lincoln’s case the intensity was over the issue of slavery. With Trump, the intensity is over the man.
 
How can the same man inspire such radically opposite reactions, to the point that there are some who would take a bullet for him, and others who celebrate the would-be assassin who actually attempted to take his life? This is the Trump enigma.
 
Then there are Republicans and moderates who seek to sidestep the enigma of Trump the man by saying, “I don’t like him, but I like his policies.”  Yet if Trump’s critics are right that he is an aspiring tyrant, a dictator, something akin to Hitler circa 1933, it is the man—not the po