Brooks: ‘I Continue to Believe ... to My Dying Day’ Trump’s ‘Numbers Will Collapse’

‘I still think the electorate will turn, but he is not to be underestimated for that demagogic ability’

WOODRUFF: "What effect — David, you said, short-term, it helps him politically, but what effect is it having on this race? How is it changing the shape of this presidential…"
BROOKS: "Yes. Well, first, on the Republican Party, it doesn’t — not — looking at the data, it doesn’t seem to be bleeding over into hurting the Republican brand. If you look at the party approval, it pretty much where it was. It’s slightly up where it was three or four months ago. People may disapprove of Donald Trump, but, so far, they don’t see him as a typical Republican, maybe because he’s running against the party. I continue to believe — and I will believe to my dying day — that he will — his numbers will collapse. I have said it here on a weekly basis, and I don’t think any of this matters until the final months. But events like Paris…"
WOODRUFF: "We’re getting close."
BROOKS: "We’re getting close. And events like Paris — and his genius for attention — what he does is, he takes a concrete issue or a broad issue which is complicated and he turns it into sometimes brutal and sometimes horrific simplicity. And so there is this broad fear of security and terrorism. He — specifically Muslims, and that, like, lodges in people’s minds as something simple and bold, and somehow he seems to some people like a strong leader. Do you hate women? The question that was asked to him in one of the debates. No, just Rosie O’Donnell. How much money are you worth? He could say 6.8 million — he says $10 billion. So, there’s a genius for attention by turning everything into concrete, very specific things that lodge in the mind. And that is a demagogic genius, but let’s face it, he has it. I still think the electorate will turn, but he is not to be underestimated for that demagogic ability."

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