JUNE 6, 2016
Photo: Reuters
Poor Donald Trump. He has just endured the worst seven days that any candidate has experienced this primary season. Where does the deliciousness begin?
The week from hell started last Monday when Trump, stung by accusations that, while he has talked big time about helping veterans, he hadn’t come through with actual contributions, announced a big press conference. From the fundraiser for veterans he set up so that he could skip the Fox debate with Megan Kelly in Iowa (a caucus which he wound up losing, possibly because of blowing off the debate), Trump claimed that he has raised $5.6 million for vets (a little less than the $6 million he announced at the event). Sounds like a good Trump story, right? Trump being Trump, however, stepped all over his positive story by an out-of-left-field attack on the press, calling the ABC correspondent following him, Tom Llamas, “a sleaze” and CNN’s Jim Acosta as “a real beauty.” So an event that was designed to extol Trump’s charity gets smothered by the lead story of Trump’s anti-press tirade.
On Tuesday. U.S. District Judge Gonzalo Curiel unsealed documents relevant to the cases brought against Trump for fraud in alleging the now-defunct Trump University claimed to be something that it was not. One Trump sales manager, Ronald Schnackenberg, recounted under sworn testimony that “I believe that Trump University was a fraudulent scheme and that it preyed upon the elderly and uneducated to separate them from their money.” The Trump campaign’s initial uncharacteristic response was…silence.
That silence was even more deafening when USA Today published an article last week about lawsuits. Often, presidential candidates have been involved now and then in a lawsuit. No biggie. But apparently over the last few decades, Trump has been a party to over 3,500 lawsuits! Again…crickets from the Trump campaign.
Trump finally responded with an online ad featuring three satisfied Trump University graduates, extolling on camera how much they got out of their courses. The only problem was that it was quickly revealed that two of the three endorsers have financial ties to the Trump network. So much for that.
To stop the bleeding, the Trump campaign finally decided to let the candidate go out and speak for himself. Great idea. What could go wrong? In this case, everything.
Trump’s defense? He winds up attacking Judge Curiel personally. Who in his right mind attacks the judge who is weighing the very case in which you’re involved? Sheer madness. Trump stated that, with a name like Curiel, he presumes the judge is Mexican. In reality, though Judge Curiel’s parents are from Mexico, he was born in Indiana — he’s a Hoosier, for God’s sake! Doesn’t matter to Trump. To Trump, he’s a Mexican and can’t be fair.
On this weekend’s news shows, Republican leaders tied themselves up in knots trying to justify their party nominee’s behavior. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell denounced Trump’s remarks, but when pressed three times by Chuck Todd on NBC’s “Meet the Press” as to whether Trump’s remarks were racist, he robotically repeated his answer over and over. House Speaker Paul Ryan who, after 29 days of agony, finally decided to endorse Trump on Thursday, had to denounce Trump the very next day for his racist remarks on the judge.
The two likeliest candidates to be Trump’s running mate wound up being caught in the headlights. Newt Gingrich at least stepped up and denounced Trump’s comments as the worst mistake that Trump has made in this campaign so far. But TN Sen. Bob Corker, when confronted with Trump’s actual remarks, got flummoxed on ABC’s “This Week” and had a “hummina hummina” moment, unable to respond with a coherent answer. ‘Bye, guys.
Then came the Hillary speech.
Clinton, who has been anxious to pivot to the general election but who still has to deal with a strong primary opponent in Bernie Sanders, took on Trump directly in a forceful speech in San Diego on Thursday. (Where has this Hillary been hiding?) Clinton used the one tool that rattles Trump but one that eluded his former Republican opponents — mockery. Summing up Trump’s foreign policy experience as simply setting the Miss Universe pageant in Russia, Clinton managed to elevate herself at Trump’s expense, whereas Marco Rubio, who tried the same approach during the campaign, only managed to diminish himself in the process.
Last week was a rarity –the only week that I recall in which Trump did not win a single day in the news cycle. And it looks like it’s going to continue, as Trump just said that, oh yeah, a Muslim judge wouldn’t be fair to him either. If you know or love a Republican, send them a bottle of Pepto-Bismol. They’re going to need it.
