Thursday, March 10, 2016

TELL ME AGAIN HOW EASY IT WILL BE TO MAKE THE TRUMP CAMPAIGN RESPECTABLE (updated)

I just told you in my last post that I can't imagine Donald Trump making a smooth transition to a tame, domesticated, responsibly right-centrist general election campaign, even though many pundits think it'll be easy for him, and quite a few think it's already happening. I said that I can't imagine the Trump campaign forswearing thuggishness, in part because it's the candidate's preferred mode, and in part because Trump's fan base wallows in it.

I expressed my doubts and now look what's topping the Trump news:
Breitbart reporter Michelle Fields is discussing her "jarring" physical altercation with Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump's campaign manager, saying she was "shaken" by the incident.

Fields wrote in a piece published Thursday that she was trying to ask Trump a question about affirmative action during a press conference earlier in the week when she was almost pulled to the ground.

"Trump acknowledged the question, but before he could answer I was jolted backwards," she wrote.

"Someone had grabbed me tightly by the arm and yanked me down. I almost fell to the ground, but was able to maintain my balance. Nonetheless, I was shaken."

The Washington Post's Ben Terris told Fields that Trump's campaign manager, Corey Lewandowski, pulled her. Fields said Lewandowski would "be out of line" if he had taken these actions, even if Trump was done taking questions.

"Campaign managers aren't supposed to try to forcefully throw reporters to the ground, no matter the circumstance," she wrote.
Also this:
A white man in a cowboy hat appeared to sucker-punch a black protester being escorted out of Donald Trump's North Carolina rally on Thursday, according to multiple videos of the incident.

The protester, identified by The Huffington Post as Rakeem Jones, can be seen in video footage waving his middle finger at the crowd as he's escorted by men in uniform up the stairs of the Crown Center Coliseum in Fayetteville, North Carolina.

Then the man in the cowboy hat, who has not been identified, approaches the aisle and seems to punch Jones:



Do you think reporters are going to stop trying to ask Trump uncomfortable questions? (The Daily Beast tells us, "Lewandowski’s explanation ... was that he and Fields had never met before and ... he didn’t recognize her as a Breitbart reporter, instead mistaking her for an adversarial member of the mainstream media." If she'd been from the "adversarial" media, I guess roughing her up would have been just fine, according to Team Trump.) Do you think protesters, some of them non-white, are going to stop showing up at Trump rallies? So what reason is there to believe that this thuggery will be contained?

****

But naivete about the Trump general election campaign is widespread. On the op-ed page of The Wall Street Journal, Edward Luttwak tells us that the transition to a kinder, gentler Trump is easy to imagine:
True, Mr. Trump launched his campaign by denouncing the supposed crimes of illegal immigrants from Mexico. But given his personal history, one may seriously doubt the sincerity of his anti-Mexican sentiments. He must certainly find ways of undoing the damage -- starting with a fulsome apology -- but nobody should view Trump as a racist because of those remarks.
(Emphasis added.)

"A fulsome apology" from Donald Trump for the very pronouncement that made his campaign? Oh, right, Edward, that'll totally happen.

****

UPDATE:



Yeah, these people will just go away quietly as soon as Trump pivots to Hillary, won't they?

Posted by Steve M. at 2:05 PM 0 Comments
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