"...What is happening now is not normal politics...."

[harumph]

40. Once we remove the misdirective gee-gaws and rhetorical bullshit from whatever Brooks says,

his obvious gripe is that Trump is showing his autocratic tendencies for all to see, and that's bad form. Because you know, a decent republican plan to relegate a majority of the population to a hopeless impoverished existence in an autocratic state depends on fooling enough people - and MUST BE DONE WITH DECORUM else the proles start to catch on to the game and get ideas. Trump's sin then is his OVERT theft and farcical malignancy that contrasts with say, a George W type of character, who had just enough sense for a dry drunk to combine his public theft with a kind of insufferable naivete such that self serving rationales and plausible fictions could be peddled by the mainstream media. Sadly for Brooks, there's no hope of polishing this turd. Trump is boldly showing the world what the Republican party has always been and will always be; a theft machine run by some of the worst human beings on the planet.