On November 28, 2000, Steve Sailer laid out the Republican path to presidential victory (used by Donald Trump in 2016) in what has become known as “the Sailer Strategy.”
Donald Trump declared his campaign for president on June 16, 2015.
On that day, Steve Sailer’s blog posts were:
* ¡Jeb 2016!
* Yes, Sir/Ma’am!
* Keila Ravelo: Woman of Color
Sailer does not mention Trump in a blog headline until July 9: “Donald Trump Is Getting Under the Skin of Caitalina Bush”
The next headline came a day later: “Claude Monet Is the New Donald Trump”
Further headlines came slowly.
July 15: “One Clinton Denounces Trump; Other Clinton Mum About His Continued Membership at Trump National Golf Club”
July 27: “What Donald Trump Is Up to”
July 31: “Bernie Sanders Ruining “Isolate Trump” Strategy”
August 4: “The Debate on Immigration We Need: Donald Trump v. Carlos Slim”
August 5: “Bill Clinton Encouraged His Golf Buddy Donald Trump in May”
August 6: “Q. What Is Trump’s Appeal? A. ItIS”
August 12: “Sailer in Taki’s Magazine: “Obama, Trump, and Daffy Duck”
August 18: “Scott “Dilbert” Adams on Trump’s Sales Techniques”
August 19: “Sailer in “Taki’s” on Trump’s Immigration Position Paper”
The first Steve Sailer commenter to mention Donald Trump after he announced his run for president was a bloke named “Jefferson” who wrote June 17: “And of course Donald Trump is never boring.”
The next comment was June 20. Poster “Sailer has an interesting life” wrote: “Any comment on The Donald? Far be it for me to comment on the stupid party, but selecting a rich blowhard during a recession doesn’t sound like a winning strategy.”
Maj. Kong responds: “Bush. Clinton. Perot.
Bush. Clinton. Trump.”
The next person to comment appears to be the first Steve Sailer commentator to take Donald Trump seriously as a candidate for president. Nathan Wartooth wrote June 20, 2015 on Sailer’s site:
I liked his speech. He was talking about how the middle class gets raped by trade deals and that he wants to actually enforce immigration laws.
If I vote in the Republican primary, I would probably vote for him. He looks like a God compared to the other candidates. The Republicans can’t manage to get anyone to run that is even half decent.
At least the far left has Bernie Sanders to represent them, we don’t have anyone.
After that, the Donald becomes a prime focus of Steve Sailer’s commentators, and of my own blogging.
On election night, Steve wrote that Trump was “heroic” for his entering the race to become president. Anyone notice a thru-line to Steve’s writings on Trump? Was there a time when he began warming up to Trump? When did Steve start taking Trump seriously? Was there a time when he seemed to think that Trump would win? I’d love to know the light bulb moments when Steve realized that Trump was worth taking seriously, that he would win the Republican nomination, that he would win the presidency.
Could someone please post a three-act play about Steve’s evolving thinking about Trump.
Steve Sailer replies: “By the 4th of July 2015, I was noticing that Trump was putting his businesses on the line over the immigration issue, not backing down when the golf tour, NBC, Univision, and Macy’s were boycotting him. Everybody else in America collapses under that kind of pressure.
Also the Kate Steinle murder of early July 2015 by an often deported illegal alien in San Francisco suggested Trump had a method and was willing to use it to break through the media cordon on immigration.”
* Maybe his relative diffidence is strategic, out of some consideration for the Trump team and the importance of this moment for the American people. Compare Richard Spencer.
It may also be said that Trump was and remains somewhat of a wild card. Although he has surrounded himself with good people on immigration, there is still some uncertainty.
Oddly, Mark Krikorian, one of the leading public figure restrictionists in the country, was very cool on Trump for much of the campaign.
* Steve is a journalist and an analyst. Consider whether it would be unbecoming (in our eyes and others’), as well as self-sabotaging of his credibility, for him to come out as a “supporter” of a candidate.
* I started to really like Trump around the time he released a policy paper on immigration that called for large cuts in legal immigration. The paper sounds like it was written word-for-word by Jeff Sessions and Stephen Miller, but at least Trump accepted it. Both Sessions and Miller are now in the Trump administration.
As for Sanders, he’s good on a lot of issues (trade, wage inequality, healthcare, fighting oligarchs, foreign policy, ending wars), but he’s soft on immigration and race. During the beginning of his campaign, he criticized the large scale importation of foreign workers. Unfortunately, he later went silent on the immigration issue, most likely due to pressure from immigrant activists on the left.
* I ended up with Trump after the other candidates blamed him for the threats that cancelled the Chicago Trump rally. That’s kindergarten-level fail.
It was a Holmesian process.
* When did Sailer become enthusiastic about Trump?
Yeah, when was that actually? Never I think, as you suggest. He did spend a lot of words skewering various idiotic forms of anti-Trumpism, but I saw no enthusiasm for Trump (or Cruz, for that matter).
