Trump is History

Trump is History August 9, 2015

As for being a candidate for U.S. president, Donald Trump is history with women, the Republican party, and Evangelicals.

Thursday night, in the first CNN televised debate of most of the candidates who are running for the Republican nominee for the U.S. presidential election next year, Trump blew it. He was being questioned by Megyn Kelly, a former attorney and current Fox News political commentator. Besides being good looking, she is intelligent, articulate, quick-minded, and therefore excellent at her job. Mr. Trump was irritated with her questioning. But he gets irritated with whoever calls him into question or criticizes him and often responds by lashing out with invectives.

Why would Americans want an arrogant man like that to be their president? It makes no sense to me. Even though Donald Trump has taken a substantial, early lead among voters according to public opinion polls, I think he has no  chance of being the president of the United States of America. He is drawing interest mostly from those voters who are so disenchanted with American politics and gridlock in Washington. I don’t blame them. But how would you like someone like that to represent your country to other heads of state? He says he’ll bring back respect for America. Get out of here. No way hosea! He would be a laughing stock to other nations. Donald Trump is good at real estate (though his companies have declared bankruptcy four times), has become an entertaining celebrity on television, and he has a lot of his own money he can use for his political campaign for president. But, in my opinion, he is not qualified to be president of this country.

The next day, on Friday (yesterday), in a CNN interview Mr. Trump alleged that Ms. Kelly’s questioning was hostile. He said further of it, “you could see there was blood coming out of her eyes, blood coming out of her wherever.” Most people understood this remark as an accusation that she was having her menstrual period. Trump later defended himself by claiming that what he meant by “blood coming out of her wherever” was “her nose and ears.” He added concerning those who thought he referred to her menstrual period, “only a degenerative would think that I would have meant that.” Typical Trump. In the debate and succeeding interviews, he called his opponents “losers,” “weak,” and victims of “political correctness.” The latter is a standard attack he uses to defend his hostile invective.

I think that comment by Trump about Kelly in itself was enough to knock him out of the Republican nomination. I wouldn’t be surprised if the Republican party rejects him as a nominee because of it. But he probably won’t give them a chance to do so by announcing his candidacy as an independent. In fact, in the debate, all of the ten candidates were asked that if they didn’t get the nomination would they support the nominee. Trump was the only candidate who declined, obviously signaling that he has been planning to run as an independent if things don’t go well for him. He admitted, or seemed to admit, this but added that his preference is to win the Republican nomination.

If Donald Trump runs for U.S. president as an independent, that will recall Texan billionaire Ross Perot doing that in 1992. That split the Republican party and seemed to have caused Democrat Bill Clinton to become U.S. president. Could the same thing happen again if Trump goes independent? Right now, whoever gets the Republican nomination probably will not have an easy time beating Hilary Clinton if she wins the Democratic nomination. She has a significant lead for it in the voter opinion polls.

In a recent, televised interview with Donald Trump, he was asked about his religious affliation. He said he was a Presbyterian and that he attends church. He admitted the public doesn’t know much about it. The interviewer then asked Mr. Trump if he had ever prayed to God, asking for forgiveness. This question seemed to have been illicited due to Trump’s many impolite and unkind remarks about his opponents. The Donald paused and seemed to indicate he never had. But he clearly answered that if he thinks he has done something wrong, he rectifies it. Then he added that he guessed that he does ask for God’s forgiveness by merely participating in the church communion service by consuming the bread and grapejuice. Due to his answering of this line of questioning, Donald Trump either does not understand the Christian gospel or rejects it. This response and his arrogant bluster will not get him very many votes from Evangelicals. And Evangelicals are a very important voting block for the Repulican party.


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