Donald Trump Releases His Inner Ape

British politician Nigel Farage is a big fan of Donald Trump, although he chose an odd way to express it while chatting with reporters backstage after Sunday's presidential debate.

A leader in Britain's "Brexit" movement to leave the European Union, Farage praised Trump's performance against Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton to "a silverback gorilla," according to The Guardian.

"He looked like a big gorilla prowling the set," Farage said, "and he is that big alpha male -- that's what he is, that's what he is."

He said that. I, as a non-fan of Trump, am more inclined to view Farage's remark as an insult to gorillas.

Since the New York real estate developer and reality-TV star has a grasp of important issues that is about as deep as a birdbath, he tried to make up for it with bizarre body language and other antics to look tough.

He prowled the stage. He did pushups on the back of a chair. He stalked his rival Clinton. He walked toward her and stood behind her as she spoke. His eyes locked on the back of her head like a jewelry store security guard, waiting for her to steal something.

With his chin up in a silent Mussolini-like pose, cameras caught the video-savvy Trump looming over his opponent like an orange-topped chicken hawk, ready to pounce or, at least, ready to rattle her and the audience with childish distractions.

Al Gore was properly ridiculed for walking over into his opponent George W. Bush's space during Bush's turn to speak during their first debate in 2000. Sixteen years later, Trump seemed to think that cheap distraction had become a good idea.

He repeatedly interrupted Clinton like a hyperactive schoolboy. He boldly branded her as "a liar" and "the Devil," even as he praised his own temperament.

If he is elected, he said -- throwing a porterhouse steak of red meat to his base -- he will direct his attorney general to appoint a special prosecutor aimed at putting her "in jail."

Excuse me? Are we Americans crying out to have our own Robert Mugabe or Kim Jong Un? Or was Trump's admiration for Vladimir Putin spinning out of control?

His staff later said he was joking with that jail thing. But the deeper truth is that Trump's desperation was showing. His lack of preparation and abundance of missed opportunities in his first debate had put his poll numbers into a slide and his Grand Old Party's leaders into a panic.

Worse, an anonymously released 2005 video a couple of days before the second presidential debate caught Trump bragging lewdly and crudely about using his fame to force himself on women.

Suddenly, dozens of prominent Republicans were withdrawing their support and looking for ways to force their nominee off the ticket, perhaps to replace him with his more traditionally conservative and sane running mate, Indiana Gov. Mike Pence.

So with less than 30 days to go to Election Day, a time when most nominees are turning their appeals to moderate undecided or uncommitted swing voters, Trump was pivoting back to shore up his hardcore Hillary-hating base.

Against that backdrop Trump's bombastic behavior begins to make some sense, as Farage suggests, in a simian sort of way. In fact, celebrated primatologist Jane Goodall agrees.

In a pre-debate analysis by journalist James Fallows in the October issue of The Atlantic, he quotes her as saying before Trump clinched the GOP nomination that, "In many ways, the performances of Donald Trump remind me of male chimpanzees and their dominance rituals."

"In order to impress rivals, males seeking to rise in the dominance hierarchy perform spectacular displays -- stamping, slapping the ground, dragging branches, throwing rocks," she said, according to Fallows. "The more vigorous and imaginative the display, the faster the individual is likely to rise in the hierarchy, and the longer he is likely to maintain that position."

Sound familiar? Imagine a big ape -- an orange-haired orangutan sounds about right -- wearing a baseball cap that says, "Make the Rain Forest Great Again."

Clinton's supporters complain that she passed up opportunities to wash Trump away in a flood of facts. But with her lead in polls widening, she refused to take Trump's bait. Instead she followed the old advice often attributed to Napoleon: Never interfere with an enemy while he is in the process of destroying himself.

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(E-mail Clarence Page at cpage@tribune.com.)