the average overzealous Daily Kos diarist in 2007 had a better read on what Republican politics is than 95% of elected officials, staffers, lobbyists, and pundits, and so did Trump.
Reposted from
Jamison Foser
in general the people in politics & media who have spent the last couple decades getting to know Republicans personally have been far more surprised by their actions than the people who avoided them like the plague and just watched what they did and assessed them based on it.
Comments
(also the last 30 years of news media, and not just the explicitly republican kind)
(both, in my case)
and that has failed badly
a natural born showman/conman who intuitively knows how to excite a crowd/fleece a mark and catches a glimpse of an underutilized market is all that it took