'Don't Worry About It'
‘I’m, like, a really smart person.’
"Believe me."
Political Editors · Mar. 4, 2016
Since most of the focus was on Donald Trump in Thursday night’s debate in Detroit, most of this analysis will focus on Trump, though that can be difficult because he doesn’t complete half the sentences he starts.
There were, as always, numerous phrases that Trump repeated over and over and over again. But one stood out to us as representative of his entire presidential bid: “Don’t worry about it.” Implication being, “I’ve got this, and I’ll work out the details later.” Oh, and, “Believe me.”
The other moment was when, for what surely was the first time in American history, a presidential candidate on a nationally televised debate stage told us there was “no problem” with the size of his, er, manhood. How utterly appalling that this boorish and crude man may in fact be the next president.
The two things Trump hates most are questioning his wealth and questioning his hands. And no jab, no matter how silly or inconsequential, goes un-parried by the thin-skinned narcissist frontrunner.
Last week, Marco Rubio quipped, “You know what they say about men with small hands? You can’t trust them.”
Last night Trump fired back, “He hit my hands. Nobody has ever hit my hands.” In fact, Trump has been defending his small hands since 1988, when a New York satire magazine panned his book, “Art of the Deal,” calling him a “short-fingered vulgarian.” That running dispute was highlighted last year in Vanity Fair. Though Rubio was pushing a well-known button when mentioning Trump’s small hands, Trump’s rebuttal is just more obfuscation.
And by the way, we guarantee Rubio regrets making the joke because it’s not who he is, but Trump has been in the gutter for the entire campaign. Sometimes you have to fight where your opponent is.
Back to the first phrase — “don’t worry about it” — because it’s (arguably) more defining. With few exceptions, Trump offers no substantive answer to any question. To be sure, the 60-second-answer “debate” format lends itself to precisely his kind of vacuous rhetoric. But from a man trying to convince us that he can lead our nation out of the Obama malaise, is any answer more revealing than his dismissive, “Don’t worry about it”? No policy. No thought. No workable prescription for making America great again. Only The Donald’s mere presence and sizable, well, you know.
His answer on H-1B visas for higher-skilled workers may typify this attitude more than anything else. “I’m changing,” Trump said of his position. “I’m changing it and I’m softening the position because we have to have talented people in this country.”
Mark Krikorian, an immigration hawk’s immigration hawk, was astounded: “True enough, except that we already have twice as many technical degree holders as there are tech jobs. What made Trump’s ‘I’m changing’ comment even more shameless than usual for him is that just on Sunday he held a rally featuring former Disney employees who were replaced by the very foreign worker program he’s now praising.”
Wonder what Sen. Jeff Sessions thinks about his endorsement of Trump now.
There were also shades of Hillary Clinton being asked to release transcripts of her high-dollar speeches on Wall Street, as Trump was challenged to release a transcript of his recent “off the record” conversation with the The New York Times' editorial board. In that discussion, Trump has been accused of contradicting key positions he has taken on immigration, the border wall, etc. Trump insisted, “I did have … a very nice meeting. Many of those things were off the record. … I have too much respect for that process to say, just release everything. I would not do that.”
Certainly, Trump’s immigration position is completely malleable, like everything else about him.
Moderator Chris Wallace asked about Trump’s claims he will balance the budget — and Trump trapped himself, responding with claims about hundreds of billions in savings in Medicare drug costs if we “bid properly,” insisting “they have hundreds of billions of dollars in waste. … Take a look — excuse me. You are talking about hundreds of billions of dollars.”
Unfortunately for Trump, Wallace had taken a look, and responded, “You say that Medicare could save $300 billion a year negotiating lower drug prices. But Medicare total only spends $78 billion a year on drugs. Sir, that’s the facts.” Trump stared at Wallace like a deer in the headlights of an oncoming semi.
Wallace (and Rubio and Cruz) further trapped Trump on the fact that his name-brand line of clothing is made in China and Mexico, and Trump stumbled over trying to justify that.
Another observation: Trump’s rebuttal every time he was pressed to respond with substance rather than fragrance was to invoke “polls,” the now-trademark operating procedure of the media poll master. “Donald lives by the polls every day,” Ted Cruz said.
Trump could only bluster, “No, I don’t. No, I don’t.” Yes, he does.
But by far the most troubling response of the night was Trump’s reply to moderator Bret Baier when asked about issuing illegal orders to military personnel: “So what would you do, as commander in chief, if the U.S. military refused to carry out those orders?”
Trump responded, “They won’t refuse. They’re not going to refuse me. Believe me. … If I say, ‘Do it,’ they’re going to do it. That’s what leadership is all about. … When I say they’ll do as I tell them, they’ll do as I tell them. And that’s very — it’s very simple. It’s very simple.”
Well, no, it’s not. And his response to Baier betrays his confusion about his authoritarian lording over a private company with totalitarian control of a country.
Active-duty military personnel, and those of us who have family members serving our nation in uniform, take this presidential contest more seriously than most. What Trump fails to understand is that our military personnel are obligated, first and foremost, to uphold their oath “ to Support and Defend” our Constitution, not their commander in chief. Our frontline fighters are not kitchen workers in a Trump casino.
Finally, when questioned by Megyn Kelly about “a class-action of over 5,000 plaintiffs” now suing Trump over his fraudulent “ Trump University,” he claimed, “We have an ‘A’ from the Better Business Bureau.”
Kelly corrected the record: “The rating from the Better Business Bureau was a ’D-‘.” Caught in yet another outright lie, Trump flailed.
But it was these words Kelly read from the court’s judgment against Trump that best summed up his entire presidential campaign: “The victims of con artists often sing the praises of their victimizers until they realize that they have been fleeced.”
Trump’s supporters are being fleeced by a con artist, and the most pressing question is, will they realize it before it is too late?
And a footnote: In a moment of supreme hypocrisy, Trump complained to Bill O'Reilly after the debate, “I think you get a little carried away with yourself.”
http://patriotpost.us/articles/41099 |
