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Despite his huge rallies, President Trumps core base appears to be faltering. Buzz60

President Trump speaks to the press on August 11, 2017, at Trump National Golf Club in Bedminster, N.J.(Photo: Jim Watson, AFP/Getty Images)

There's trouble in Trumpland.

The voters who backed Donald Trump like the disruption but are looking for more function from the outsider they helped put in the White House, members of the USA TODAY Network Trump Voter Panel say.

While they still approve of the job President Trump is doing, the collapse of the GOP's promise to repeal the Affordable Care Act has rattled some of his loyalists. Sohave chaos in the White House staff and the public humiliation of Attorney General Jeff Sessions.

"All the bickering, fighting and firings taketime away from solving all of our problems," worried Joe Canino, 62, of Hebron, Ct.

"Thecaveat or the pause there is, he's got to figure out a way to get more done collaboratively with CapitolHill," Barney Carter of St. Marys, Ga.,said. "The Hill to me has the most to blame for it, but he's got to figure out a way to solve that problem."

The loyalty of the president's base voters who tend to be older, socially conservative and mostly white has been a critical source of hispolitical strength. Trump continues to hammer messages that appeal to them on such issues as limiting immigration and reversing Pentagon policy on transgender troops.

That said, the spiderweb of concern among his supporters in these interviews is an anecdotal finding consistent with the results of recent nationwide polls. ACNN survey at the six-month mark of Trump's presidency last week showed his approval rating among Republicansat a healthy 83%, but the percentage of Republicans who "strongly approve" haddropped by double-digits, to 59% from 73% in February.

None of the 25 voters on the USA TODAY panel expressregret for casting a ballot last November for Trump instead of Democrat Hillary Clinton or someone else. They generally trust him to handle the crisis with North Korea, although there is concern about his bellicose rhetoric.

But now some couch their approval of the president with a hedge that wasn't there in three previous rounds of interviews with this group. And their disdain for congressional Republicans and the GOP establishment is rising, a troubling development for the party as it heads into the 2018 midterm elections.

"I approve, but not 100%," Monty Chandler, 46, a disabled veteran from Church Point, La., said of the president.

"I'd have to approve, but with some laughter in the background," said Duane Gray, 63, a truck driver from Boise, Idaho. Asked if Trump was doing better or worse than he expected as president, he said:"I don't know what I expected. I just didn't want Hillary in there."

Another new poll means another new low for President Trump. Buzz60

There's also bit less confidence these days about how history will judge Trump. In January, 21 members of the panel predicted he ultimately would be seen as a "great" or "good" president. In February, there was even more unanimity: 23 gave thatpositive assessment.

Now that number has slipped to 19 still favorable territory, but with signs of some erosion. Four predict he'll be seen as a "fair" president. Twodidn't respond.

Read previous stories on the USA TODAY Network Trump Voter Panel:

Trump voters like the president's actions but not his tweets

Great expectations: These Trump voters expect him to deliver for them

No regrets: 100% approval at 100 days from these Trump voters

The panel of 25 Trump voters from 19 states is drawn from respondents in the USA TODAY/Suffolk University Poll taken in December, just after the election. The group of 18 men and seven women, ranging in age from 31 to 88, agreed to weigh in occasionally for a look at how Trump is faring with his supporters.

The GOP's failure to repeal the Affordable Care Act has enraged some of these voters.

"Killing Obamacare was a key component of the Republican platform, and I believe all Republican senators campaigned on that very issue," Daniel Kohn, of Corpus Christi, Tex., said. "The inability to move forward is embarrassing and disgusting."

For Ken Cornacchione, a 65-year-old financial consultant from Venice, Fla., the issue is personal. "My premiums have doubled and my deductible has increased nearly three times under Obamacare with no claims by either my wife or me," he said.

Asked whom they blame for the failure, not one singled out Trump, although several volunteeredthat everyone involved ownedsome responsibility. Only a handful cited congressional Democrats or the news media, frequent targets of Trump.

Instead, a solid majority placedthe responsibility squarely on congressional Republicans.

"There's some blame to go around with everybody, but I continue to be the most disappointed in Congress," said Carter, 50, who works for a medical device firm."We could have had a plan for this long before Trump was elected, and you would have just had to go to the bookshelf and pull the binder off."

"Seven years: Think about it," railedJoAnne Musial, 65, of Canadenis, Penn."Who are they kidding, too? This whole baloney with all of them any more makes me sick to my stomach."

That sentiment helps explain Trump's Twitter blasts last week at Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell. The attacks may complicate White House efforts down the road to work with the Kentucky Republican on raising the debt ceiling, funding the government and passing a tax bill.

At the moment, though, they reinforce the sentiment that Republican senators, not the president, areto blame for the stunning setback on health care.

"They've been talking about this for seven years, show-boating for seven years passing resolutions they knew (President Barack) Obama would veto," said Rick Dammer, 45, a an IT project manager from Zephyrhills, Fla. "When the rubber needed to hit the road, they chickened out."

"I like that Trump said that," Chandler said of the president's comments welcoming Obamacare's demise. "He's not going to sugarcoat it. You made your bed, now lie in it."

On North Korea, Trump voters like policymakers and experts and nearly everyone else around the globe see no easy answers and worry about what's ahead. Theyare inclined to trust Trump to handle it, albeit not without some nervousness.

"I'm in agreement with how Trump's approached it, kind of," said Francis Smazal, 54, a registered nurse from Marshfield, Wis. "If this guy (in North Korea) is left unchecked, I believe conflict is inevitable."

Several said they hope Trump tries to build an international coalition through the United Nations, or with China and Russia. "I think we need to go through China," said Patricia Shomion, 67, of Mount Gilead, Ohio. She blames Beijing, North Korea's neighbor and ally, for not doing more to block its nuclear program. "That's our solution, becauseall of those nukes and missiles have 'China' written all over them, 'Made in China.'"

But Pat Jolliff, 60, of Rochester, Ind., worriedthat Trump's threat of "fire and fury" riskedmaking a bad situation worse. "I think his words, once again, are some of his worst enemies," she said. "He comes across as a bully, a tyrant, somebody who always has to have his way."

The belief that Trump isn't just another politician, that he has a combative style and is comfortable breaking old norms, is his fundamental appeal for many of his supporters. "Everyone's having a hissy (fit) because a politician isn't the president," scoffed Musial."Cut and dried: He's not a politician and doesn't fit in (your) little clique here, so they're trying to cause a ruckus for him."

"Trump is a different kind of person; he's not a politician," Shomion agreed. "They're not used to that. They don't know what to do with him."

But the continuing soap-opera drama onthe White House staff is worrisome to some: Chief of Staff Reince Priebus, out. Press secretary Sean Spicer, out. ("A sweetheart," Musial said affectionately.) Communications director Anthony Scaramucci: In, then out after 11 days. ("He was horrible," Jolliff said.)

"I am somewhat concerned with all the tension," saidWayne Moore, 60, a procurement manager from Henderson, Ky. "It looks like there are more chiefs than Indians."

Several volunteered dismay over Trump's public humiliation of Attorney General Jeff Sessions.

"I was very disappointed in the way he ripped up Jeff Sessions, who was basically the first one to sign up" to support Trump's candidacy, Carter said. "He's a long-tenured, respected lawmaker, and it just didn't make sense to me."

David McDonough, of Brownsburg, Ind., says he voted for President Trump but considers himself an independent.(Photo: Mykal McEldowney, USA TODAY Network)

David McDonough, 55, a plumber from Brownsburg, Ind., predicted things eventually would settle down. "It's like taking over a new business and some employees don't like the way you run things," he said. "In time, once the kinks are worked out and the leakers are found, I believe the White House will run smooth."

Then there are those tweets.

Some supporters say the president's thoughts in 140-character bursts make them wince. "He comes out looking like a damn fool 60% of the time," Gray said.

But by more than 2-1, his loyalists say he should continue posting on Twitter and acknowledge that he's not likely to stop, no matter what they think.

"I don't necessarily agree on what he's saying, but if Twitter is the only way to get the truth out and the truth only comes from him, then that's OK," Steven Spence, 70, of Mesa, Arizona, said. "He either lives or dies by the sword, and we'll find out four years from now how the American public rates him."

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Trouble in Trumpland: The president's core supporters begin to worry - USA TODAY

But at least one key Republican remains firmly in his corner.

On Sunday night, Vice President Mike Pencecondemned the violence in Virginia, praised Trumps response to the situation, then slammed the media for its reaction to the presidents statement blamingmany sides instead of white supremacists.

We have no tolerance for hate and violence, white supremacists or neo-Nazis or the KKK, Pence said, according to The Hill. He said Trumpclearly and unambiguously condemned the violence.

Jonathan Ernst / Reuters

Pence, who is currently in Colombia, also took aim at the press for raising questions about Trumps response after the president not only refused to condemn the neo-Nazis and KKK on Saturday but walked out when reporters asked about white nationalists.

I take issue with the fact that many in the national media spent more time criticizing the presidents words than they did criticizing those that perpetuated the violence to begin with, Pence was quoted as saying.

However, the issue wasnt just raised by the media.

The white supremacists themselves were heartened by Trumps response, with one neo-Nazi website praising it as really, really good.

The White House later issued a second statement about Charlottesville on Sunday that condemned all forms of violence, bigotry and hatred and specifically mentioned white supremacists, KKK, Neo-Nazi and all extremist groups.

That statement was attributed to a spokesperson and not to Trump himself.

See the original post here:
Mike Pence Defends Donald Trump, Slams Media Over Charlottesville Response - HuffPost

Donald Trump has come under fire for his response to the violent Charlottesville white supremacist rally, and he couldnt have had a different reaction to that of former president Barack Obama.

While President Trump failed to mention racism or white supremacy in his statement on the matter, Obama quoted the late Nelson Mandela in his apparent response to the violence.

"No one is born hating another person because of the color of his skin or his background or his religion," Obama wrote on Twitter on Saturday.

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People must learn to hate, and if they can learn to hate, they can be taught to love, for love comes more naturally to the human heart than its opposite. - Nelson Mandela.

But while Obama referenced the anti-apartheid leader, Trump was criticized for failing to acknowledge the clearly racist element of the protests.

In a statement, Trump said: We condemn in the strongest possible terms this egregious display of hatred, bigotry and violence, on many sides. On many sides. It's been going on for a long time in our country. Not Donald Trump, not Barack Obama. This has been going on for a long, long time."

Responding to the criticism, the White House attempted to issue reassurances that Trump intended to send an anti-racist message.

The president said very strongly in his statement yesterday that he condemns all forms of violence, bigotry and hatred, and of course that includes white supremacists, KKK, neo-Nazi, and all extremists groups. He called for national unity and bringing all Americans together," a White House spokesman said in a statement.

But other leaders reacted very differently to the attack, which left three people dead including one woman who was killed after a car rammed into a group of counter-protesters at speed.

We know Canada isn't immune to racist violence & hate. We condemn it in all its forms & send support to the victims in Charlottesville, Trudeau wrote on Twitter on Sunday, in another response that differed greatly to that of the U.S. president.

Continued here:
Obama's Reaction To the Charlottesville Rally Was Very Different from Trump's - Newsweek

Americans love celebrities. Americans hate politicians.

Those sentiments gave us Donald Trump, fresh from the set of The Apprentice, and proudly unschooled in the art of politics. The sheer entertainment factor of his presidency has everyone on the edge of their seats waiting for the next episode.

Hes opened the door to other celebrities with an urge for elective office. Kid Rock is toying with a Senate bid in Michigan. Cynthia Nixon of Sex in the City fame is floating a possible challenge to New York Governor Cuomo in next years Democratic primary. And Michael Moore from his perch on Broadway with a new show says Democrats should nominate Tom Hanks for president in 2020.

Its not crazy to detect a rising trend of celebrity as a credential for entering politics at a very high level, says Bill Galston, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, but its not a sufficient codicil for political success, or even a necessary codicil.

Its also a mistake to see Trump simply as a celebrity, says Galston. Celebrity was the platform on which he built his campaign, but he ran on trade, immigration, and an America First foreign policy. He didnt say vote for me, Im a celebrity; he said vote for me, I happen to be a celebrity with ideas and feelings that match your own. Not a bad idea to have me on your side.

Celebrity has always been a big advantage in terms of name recognition, thoughat least until recentlycandidates needed a certain degree of credibility. Ronald Reagan was president of a union, the Screen Actors Guild. Arnold Schwarzenegger chaired the Presidents Council on Physical Fitness. Even Trump could claim hes run an international business.

For someone like Kid Rock, this is the new generation, says Jack Pitney, professor of politics at Claremont McKenna College. Youre inviting voters to express an attitude rather than choose a qualified public servant.

Kid Rocks Senate page says hes beyond overwhelmed with response from community leaders, D.C. pundits, and blue collar folks tired of the extreme left and right bullshit. He says hell hold a press conference in the next six weeks or so, and that if he decides to throw his hat in the ring for the Senate next year, believe me it will be game on mthrfkers.

The McCain campaign in 2008a long ago, perhaps simpler timetried to get its game on by attacking Barack Obama as a celebrity candidate with an ad that cut between Obama before a huge crowd in Berlin and shots of Britney Spears and Paris Hilton as a female narrator confides, Hes the biggest celebrity in the world, but is he ready to lead?

Obama strategist David Axelrod recalled the strategy behind the ad as a kind of jujitsu to try and turn the outsized interest and energy he was attracting against him.

That failed, Axelrod said in an email, not only because Obama was a serious person who had thought deeply about the issues and sealed the deal with his performance in the first debate, but, also because McCains nomination of Sarah Palin really robbed him of his standing to launch the undeserving novice argument against Obama.

The ad did strike a nerve, just not the one McCain wanted. Hilton, the hotel heiress whose parents helped bankroll McCain, had a clever comeback. Hey, America, Im Paris Hilton and Im a celebrity too, she said in her own spoof ad posted days later. Only I am not from the olden days and I am not promising change like that other guy. I am just hot.

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But then that wrinkly, white-haired guy used me in his campaign ad. Which I guess means I am running for presidentso thanks for the endorsement, white-haired dude. And I want America to know that I am, like, totally ready to lead.

The idea of a wrinkly, white-haired guy from outside of Washington running the country is nothing new, with voters and pundits talking for decades about having a CEO as commander in chief. Ross Perot had a good run in 1992 with his charts, infomercials, and warnings of a giant, sucking sound if NAFTA became law. Three-term New York City Mayor and billionaire Michael Bloomberg encouraged endless talk of a run of his own, before deciding in each of the last three elections that there was no way for him to win a campaign.

Lee Iacocoa, the president of Ford and then-chairman of Chrysler, had a familiar-sounding rant in his 2007 book, Where Have all the Leaders Gone?:

Am I the only guy in this country whos fed up with whats happening? Where the hell is our outrage? We should be screaming bloody murder. Weve got a gang of clueless bozos steering our ship of state over a cliff, weve got corporate gangsters stealing us blind, and we cant even clean up after a hurricane much less build a hybrid car. But instead of getting mad, everyone sits around and nods their heads when the politicians say, Stay the course. Stay the course? Youve got to be kidding. This is America, not the damned Titanic. Ill give you a sound bite: Throw the bums out!

Now, the bums have been thrown out, the bar for a president lowered, and its not going well at all so far for President Trump.

Going forward, he will raise the bar, says Bob Shrum, a veteran consultant of Democratic presidential campaigns. Our experience with Trump means that if a celebrity runs, they better instill confidence that theyre competent, responsible, know what theyre talking about and wont embarrass us.

Shrum added that, Business people get a little bit of a pass on what they can do, and he might change that too.

Axelrod agrees, writing in an email: Certainly, celebrity is valuable in an environment in which its hard to break through and traditional politicians are held in such low esteem. Trump proved that with his march to the White House [as] the best known and least experienced person to run and win. But Trumps ascent, and subsequent problems, may well make celebrity candidacies harder for the foreseeable future, if people come to value experience more.

Fixating on any single credential as the magic formula can backfire. John Kerry stood before the Democratic Convention in 2004 to accept the nomination and said, Reporting for Duty. He wagered that his distinguished service in Vietnam would help him vanquish an incumbent president. Instead, his war record was turned against him, and the veterans he wanted to win over pilloried him for turning against that war.

Kerry learned then as Trump is discovering today that when you lean hard on something, it better be really strong. You cant just bring up a piece of your history, not with Special Counsel Mueller rifling through financial records of real estate deals never meant to see the light of day.

Its too soon to know how this turns out for Trump, but its already clear that running the country is not the same as running a business or basking in the celebrity of a reality TV show.

Read more here:
Donald Trump May Only Be the Beginning of the Era of Celebrity Politicians - Daily Beast

Michael Flynn was back in the headlines earlier this month, as special counsel Robert Mueller asked the White House for any documents on the former national security adviser. Flynn, who had to step down from his position in the wake of revelations that he had discussed lifting U.S. sanctions with the Russian ambassador, has been a continued source of scandal for the Trump administration. And yet, reports claim that President Donald Trump has been pining for his former adviser. The two, after all, are kindred spirits, who bonded over lock her up chants and the supposed threat posed by Islam and attacks on establishment leaders in both parties for failing to understand what they consider the true dangers to the homeland.

Though the flamboyant businessman and the former general may seem like an unlikely pairing, their alliance draws on the style, ideas and worldviews of another partnership between a businessman-turned-politico with a flair for sales and conspiracy theories and a hard-line general who spied threats under every rockone that took place decades ago.

Story Continued Below

John Birch Society founder Robert H.W. Welch Jr. and Army General Edwin A. Walker were two of the most notorious anticommunists of the Cold War era. Both Welch and Walker, like Trump and Flynn, embraced conspiracy theories that anti-American forces had infiltrated the highest levels of government and media. Their informal alliance rested on a shared view that corrupt elites had rendered the country defenseless. And their association raised liberal fears that a dictator would seize control of the White House. In fact, the New Republic published a series of fictional news reports in 1961 imagining Walker leading a military coup and installing a military junta in the White House. In the narrative, Walker, the temporary president, appoints Welch as head of a Subversive Activities Control Board and taps a rogues gallery of right-wing businessmen, media moguls and arch-segregationists to other key posts.

Look, and youll see in Welch and Walker some of the strains that reappear in Trumpism today.

***

Welch, a blue-eyed, balding candy manufacturer, became Americas most visible political extremist in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Born on a farm in North Carolina in 1899, Welch graduated from the University of North Carolina at 16 and attended Harvard Law School before dropping out to launch a fudge-making company in Cambridge, Massachusetts. When Welch was mired in debt during the Great Depression, his company folded, and he joined his brothers already established candy-making business, the James O. Welch Company, as a sales manager. Welch spent decades selling Pom-poms and helping to turn the company into a multimillion-dollar operation. His first book, The Road to Salesmanship, published in 1941, offered business primers on the art of the sale.

While the marketing skills Welch honed early in life would help bring him to national political prominence, his ideological awakening didnt come until the postwar years. During the early Cold War, the businessman began to see an American system that had lost touch with its founding principles. In his view, the rising power of the welfare state was destroying the individualist ethic that had once made the United States a beacon of freedom. Caught up in the anti-communist tide washing over postwar politics, Welch used his status as a successful candy manufacturer to give talks about the Red threat in public. We are throwing away [the country we had] for a phony security and a creeping collectivism, warned Welch in one speech. On visits to England in the late 1940s, Welch recoiled at the state socialism he saw there, and cautioned American audiences upon his return against let[ting] ourselves be infected by such diseases as socialism and communism and other ideological cancers as Western Europeans had.

Welchs wealth and public profile rose as his anticommunist fervor intensified. Politicians began to solicit his endorsement to boost their campaigns in Massachusetts. He delivered rousing talks to political audiences and recruited volunteers to aid his chosen candidates. In 1950, Welch even ran for lieutenant governor of Massachusetts as a Republican, his lone try for elective office. He was badly defeated, and he began to nurse the sort of grievances and aching sense of betrayal by the establishment that have infused Trumps short-lived political career.

In Welchs eyes, the progressive era was the culprit. President Woodrow Wilsons agenda had put this nation on its present road to totalitarianism, he said. He fingered federal agencies, global financiers and elite-run international institutions such as the Council on Foreign Relations as the insiders that were conspiring to destroy the nations founding virtues of free enterprise and individual liberty. He saw the assault on the American way of life intensify in 1952, when the Republican establishment deprived Sen. Robert Taft of the 1952 presidential nomination and handed it to Dwight Eisenhowerthe dirtiest deal in American political history, Welch called it. In 1954, when the Eisenhower administration and American liberals destroyed anti-communist firebrand Sen. Joseph McCarthy, Welch despaired. These moments ignited what D.J. Mulloy, in The World of the John Birch Society, called Welchs career in conspiracism.

Robert Welch, founder of the John Birch Society, poses at his Belmont, Mass., headquarters, from which he directs the affairs of the militant and conservative organization, April 18, 1963. | AP Photo

Serving on the board of the National Association of Manufacturers in the 1950s, Welch grew close to like-minded conservative business leaders, turned away from the candy business and became an author and advocate. In the early to mid-1950s, Welch helped forge a burgeoning world of conservative organizing. He marshaled his skills as a marketer and pamphleteer to burnish his image as an anti-communist visionary speaking impolite truths to Americas sleepwalking political establishment. His goal was to open peoples minds to the grave communist dangers that sought the destruction of our own liberty, as the New York Times characterized one of his early arguments. That there are more communists and communist sympathizers in our government today than ever before seems to me almost a certainty, Welch declared. As Jonathan Schoenwald reveals in A Time for Choosing: The Rise of Modern American Conservatism, Welch persuaded conservative publisher Henry Regnery to publish a 30,000-word letter he had penned as a short book, May God Forgive Us, in 1952, and then established a Welch Letter Mailing Committee that urged potential buyers to pick up his book and learn from its revelations. Welchs marketing strategy, Schoenwald wrote, was a stroke of political genius.

In 1954, Welch published The Life of John Birch, in which he depicted the Baptist missionary who was killed by Chinese communist troops just days after the end of World War II as the first victim of the communist war on free people. William F. Buckley would ultimately distance the conservative cause from Welchs most outlandish conspiracies, but in the mid-1950s the founder of National Review praised Welch as the author of two of the finest pamphlets this country has read in a decade. Welch fixed his ire on establishment politicians who, he charged, had intentionally assisted the communists in their quest to destroy American life from within.

In 1958, Welch was sending his friends another book-length manuscript, The Politician, promulgating his most incendiary charge yet: that Eisenhower was a dedicated, conscious agent of the Communist conspiracy. Welch justified his allegation by claiming his goal was simply to inform a limited number of patriotic friends of mine what I personally believed about the present situation, why I believed it, and what I personally was trying to do about it as just one patriotic American who was greatly concerned. In later self-defenses, Welch glowingly cited the 95 percent of well-informed, influential readers who completely agree with my conclusions.

That same year, just as The Politician was generating enthusiasm among some of Welchs allies, Welch invited 11 sympathetic businessmen to a home in Indianapolis where over two days they listened raptly as he talked for roughly 13 hours about the domestic communist peril. By the time Welch was finished, he had established the John Birch Society, or JBS, to organize grass-roots anti-communists to educate the public and halt the spread of communism in the United States. Welch adopted a top-down, autocratic approach to the organization (Democracy is merely a deceptive phrase, a weapon of demagoguery and a perennial fraud, he said in justifying his iron grip). He drew on his salesman skills, concentrated decision-making power in his own hands and helped recruit an estimated 60,000 to 100,000 members. Many of them became devoted to direct political action and raising awareness in their communities about the communist dangers lurking within.

Welchs Ike-is-Red bombshell exploded in the public conscience in the early 1960s. Numerous moderate and liberal politicians of both parties, as well as journalists, excoriated Welchs charge as the ravings of a right-wing crackpot. Still, some anti-communists praised Welchs revelatory book as the kind of truth-talk desperately needed in order to win the Cold War. By 1961, Welchs thesis, and the John Birch Societys growing visibility, made him and his members the leading national symbol of right-wing extremism in the eyes of countless critics.

***

Just as Welchs star burned hotter, a second scandal ensnared the JBS. The Overseas Weekly, a privately owned tabloid read by U.S. soldiers, reported that General Edwin Walker, who commanded the Armys 24th Infantry Division based in West Germany, had established an education program designed to instruct his men in the teachings of the John Birch Society and the true nature of the communist enemy. Welchs The Life of John Birch appeared on Walkers recommended reading list. Further, the Weekly charged, Walker, a Silver Star-winning World War II and Korean War veteran, had identified Harry Truman and Eleanor Roosevelt as definitely pink. (Why he singled them out wasnt clear.)

President John F. Kennedy asked the Army to investigate, and in June 1961, the Defense Department reassigned Walker and admonished him for having made derogatory remarks of a serious nature about certain prominent Americans, the American Press, and TV industry and certain commentators, which linked the persons and institutions with Communism and Communist influence. Rather than accept his reprimand, Walker resigned from the service. He wanted, he explained, to be free from the power of little men who punish loyal service, and devoted himself to educating citizens about the scope of the communist threat.

Maj. Gen. Edwin A. Walker, former commander of the 24th Infantry Division in West Germany, poses in his quarters in Heidelberg, Germany, Sept. 7, 1961. Walker, listed in an official Army report as a member of the militantly conservative John Birch Society, received an official reprimand after an investigation of a troop education and indoctrination program he sponsored. | Kurt Strumpf/AP Photo

Walker, at least initially, became a hero to countless conservatives. The way they saw it, he had short-circuited his distinguished military career to speak the truth about communist infiltration in key sectors of American government. One California congressman and JBS member defended Walker on the House floor: Since when is it wrong to advance the cause of Americanism?

Newsweek put Walker on its cover in 1961 with the headline, Thunder on the RIGHT, above a description that labeled Walker a new crusader. The former general quickly rose to Welch-like fame, as the two became seen as anti-communist heroes in the eyes of many conservativesand right-wing fanatics in the eyes of liberals. The businessman and the general did not actually have a personal relationship, but they did feed off of each other and, together, inspired roiling debates about the direction of the conservative movement and how best to fight the communist threat.

Welch and Walkers shared abhorrence of civil rightstheir mutual conviction that communists were behind the drive to topple Jim Crowprovided another source of their alliance-building. After being arrested for leading pro-segregationist riots at the University of Mississippi in 1962, Walker was surrounded by rabid supporters upon his return home to Dallas. Their signs said Welcome Walker and Walker for President, 64; one well-wisher hoisted a Confederate flag. A year later, Welchs JBS published The Invasion of Mississippi, a pro-Walker, segregationist defense of the Walker-led riots at Ole Miss. When Walker embarked on a speaking tour in 1963 to rail against the communist conspiracy in the United States, Welch and his fellow JBS leaders urged their members to support Walkers crusade. Members recruited citizens to attend Walkers speeches and helped with logistics.

The generals extremism deepened rapidly. In April 1962, after delivering rambling congressional testimony denouncing Secretary of State Dean Rusk as part of an apparatus devoted to selling out the United States, he punched a reporter in the face. In 1963, he denounced Kennedys brother, Attorney General Robert Kennedy, as little stupid brother Bobby. Walker also conspiratorially implied that the government had tried to assassinate him, stating they had to [arrest and] get rid of me because I knew too much about Mississippi. (Seven months before John F. Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas, according to the Warren Commission, Lee Harvey Oswald tried to assassinate Walker, firing a single shot into his Dallas home that came within about an inch of Walkers head.)

Up until then, much of the conservative press and political class either supported Walkers crusade or remained relatively silent about his controversial views. In 1961-1962 GOP leaders decided that remaining silent [on the Walker case] was preferable to drumming out the extremists in an ugly public purge, Schoenwald writes. But eventually, some of the most conservative leaders had to repudiate Walkers descent into fanaticism: Even JBS quelled its support as the general became more unhinged.

As Walkers anticommunist career fizzled, Welchs remained an inflection point for conservative activists, Republican leaders and liberals. Some conservatives who were striving to become politically more viable, including Buckley and Ronald Reagan, denounced Welchs theories as too extreme. But many of the same conservatives benefited from JBS members fundraising and organizing support. Some of the muscle that powered conservative politicians in the 1960s was supplied by Welchs followers.

History, of course, is a flow rather than a pattern or a cycle. But if we are searching as we should be for some of the seeds that flowered into Trumpism, the short-lived radical ascendance and the shared flow of ideas that defined Welch's and Walkers informal partnership isnt a bad place to start.

In Trump's and Flynns shared conspiracies about the power of Muslim extremists and illegal immigrants within the United States; their jaundiced views that Republican and Democratic insiders have rigged the system to favor global and coastal elites; their faith that only fearless, politically incorrect leaders can restore American greatness; and in the sheer temerity of their racial provocations (Fear of Muslims is RATIONAL, Flynn tweeted; a judge overseeing a Trump University case was biased due to his Mexican heritage, Trump charged), we see that Trumpism owes an unwitting debt to the Welch-Walker alliance. The partnership anticipated the paranoia, distrust of elites and hard-right vision of an America unfettered by such nefarious values as liberal pluralism, the welfare state and the liberal internationalist order. It may have taken decades for them to achieve a small measure of political vindication, but in Trumps ascendance, Welch and Walkers radicalismdecades after the Cold War endedhas found some unlikely champions in the Oval Office.

Matthew Dallek, an associate professor at George Washington Universitys Graduate School of Political Management, is author, most recently, of Defenseless Under the Night: The Roosevelt Years and the Origins of Homeland Security.

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The Donald Trump and Michael Flynn of the Cold War - POLITICO Magazine