Who is the real Donald Trump? Voters supporting him have no idea

With Donald Trump still riding high in the Republican presidential polls, voters supporting the real estate mogul say they’re attracted to his bombastic, irreverent style.
He’s not a politician. He’s a successful businessman. He’s a billionaire who can’t bought. He shakes things up. He tells it like it is.

Beyond the fact that Trump doesn’t tell it like it is – his track record with Politifact's fact-checkers dating back several years is fairly horrendous – it’s nearly impossible to pin down where he stands on issues because he has flip-flopped countless times over the years.

But it’s the fact that he has switched parties or political allegiances four times in 15 years that makes Trump the ultimate political chameleon.

Here’s a summary from Politico:
“In 1999, Trump quit the Republican Party, saying ‘I just believe the Republicans are just too crazy right.’ Trump was then conferring with political consultant Roger Stone about a possible presidential run as a candidate of the Reform Party, the political organization founded by his fellow billionaire Ross Perot.
“In 2001, Trump quit the Reform Party to register as a Democrat. ‘It just seems that the economy does better under Democrats,’ he told CNN’s Wolf Blitzer in 2004. The Clintons attended Trump’s Palm Beach wedding to former model Melania Knaus in 2005. The following year Trump gave $26,000 to the (Democratic) House and Senate campaign committees.
By the late aughts, though, Trump’s political giving had started shifting back to the GOP, and in 2009 Trump registered again as a Republican. Two years later (after dropping out as a GOP presidential candidate) he registered as an independent while contemplating a third-party bid.”

And let’s keep in mind that Trump has already made it clear in recent days that he may switch again – from Republican back to independent – before the 2016 election arrives.

Beyond his continually shifting views about numerous political figures, the reality TV star’s positions on the issues have changed dramatically through the years.

He favored universal health care; now he wants to abolish Obamacare. He was for a major tax on the wealthy; now he wants to give the rich a big tax cut. He was against the Iraq war, now he hints that a President Trump would launch a major military offensive against ISIS. He was opposed to the flat tax; now he supports it. In 2015, he sounds like a conservative Republican; in the past he backed the assault weapons ban and supported private-sector unions.

So far in the current campaign, despite his newfound reputation as a straight talker, voters and the media have no idea what he stands for.

We could look to his campaign’s political director for insights, but Trump doesn’t have one. We could go to his website, but the site has no section for issues. We could listen to his remarks on the campaign trail, but he’s yet to give any substantive policy speeches on the stump.
According to Politico, Bruce Bartlett, a prominent tax policy analyst with a Republican background, said that Trump’s only consistency is his inconsistency. “He’s been on every side of every issue from every point of view as far as I can tell,” Bartlett said.

In other words, what you see may not be what you get.