Trump Has Decided To Live in Breitbart's Alternative Reality

Eleven weeks before the general election, with polls showing Donald Trump staring at a potential electoral rout, the New York businessman decisively ended speculation that he would "pivot" to end the race a more "presidential" candidate by naming Stephen Bannon, chairman of Breitbart News, as the campaign's new chief executive.

The campaign overhaul means that Trump is choosing to end his campaign living in the alternate reality that Breitbart creates for him on a daily basis—where everything he does is the best, where everyone who questions him is an idiot or a traitor, where big rallies portend electoral victories, where House speaker Paul Ryan is the problem with modern conservatism, where polls that find him down are fixed, where elections he loses are rigged, where immigration and trade are the nation's most pressing issues, and where, truly, Trump alone can fix it all.

Breitbart is the only place that is more Trumpian than Trump. When others roll their eyes at Trump's campaign boasting and public self-reverence, Breitbart writers seem to believe he's being too modest. When Trump can't explain his own words, Breitbart faults the journalists who have asked the questions. (I speak from experience on this.)

Hiring Bannon allows Trump to seek external validation of what already exists in his own mind. It's Trump's way of channeling himself.

Trump, who has argued that he "has the best words" and that he knows "more about ISIS than the generals do," believes he doesn't need advisers to rein him in so much as to affirm his way of operating.
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