From the last Morning Jolt of the week:
You Can’t Help a Man Who Can’t Help Himself.
Between 3 and 5 a.m. this morning, the Republican nominee for president offered some thoughts on Twitter, urging those believing the tale of Miss Venezuela to “check out her sex tape and past.” He declared any stories about his staffers being dissatisfied with his debate performance must be false; –“There are no sources, they are just made up lies!” He also misspelled “judgment.”
Hillary Clinton wanted to make this week about Alicia Machado; Donald Trump agreed. That’s on him.
Many good right-of-center friends are on the Trump bandwagon, and are working for his victory, and fervently hoping he can reach those 270 electoral votes. I think they are working harder, and smarter, and showing more judgment than the candidate himself.
From coverage of his preparation for the first debate:
He has paid only cursory attention to briefing materials. He has refused to use lecterns in mock debate sessions despite the urging of his advisers. He prefers spit-balling ideas with his team rather than honing them into crisp, two-minute answers.
If you knew you were going to speak before 84 million Americans, wouldn’t you do everything humanly possible to maximize your chance of success?
Tuesday morning, he told Fox and Friends, “I really eased up because I didn’t want to hurt anyone’s feelings.” Assuming that’s true, he didn’t maximize his chance of winning over voters… before an audience of 84 million people…. Because he didn’t want to hurt anyone’s feelings.
Now he gets sensitive?
This is the lamest excuse imaginable. “I could have done a lot better, but I chose not to do that.” Trump thinks he’s saying, “look at what a nice guy I am.” What he’s really saying is, “look at what catastrophically egregious judgment I have.”
Why should anyone be emotionally invested in this man’s victory, if he refuses to learn, refuses to improve, and refuses to avoid making the same mistakes, over and over and over and over again? I’d love to see Hillary Clinton defeated. I just have no faith that Donald Trump is capable of doing that. Every now and then, he gains some traction, the polls get closer… and then he goes and does something stupid. And all of his supporters insist it doesn’t matter, and that we should all avert our eyes, and that we’re betraying something good and righteous by noticing what just happened right in front of us. And then they insist it’s not stupid, that there’s some brilliant nine-level chess going on that we can’t possibly understand from the outside, and if we just wait and see, Donald Trump will win in the end. Unless he doesn’t, because the election is rigged.
That’s not a campaign; that’s a cult.