For months Trump’s rivals and other Republicans have either retreated in silence or tentatively and ineptly criticized him for exactly those traits that voters like about him: for being a slapdash, politically incorrect money-hungry bully.
.. Internal Trump University documents suggest that the university wasn’t really oriented around teaching, but rather around luring customers into buying more and more courses.
.. In 2008 a New York State Supreme Court judge ordered Trump Mortgage to pay her the $298,274 she was owed. The bill wasn’t paid. “The company was set up in a way that we could never recover what we were owed,” she told The Washington Post.
.. The betrayal of investors when his casino businesses went bankrupt. The betrayal of his first wife with his flagrant public affair with Marla Maples. The betrayal of American workers when he decided to hire illegals. The people left in the wake of other debacles: Trump Air, Trump Vodka, Trump Financial, etc.
A National Descent Into Trump’s Pants
A gobsmacking day of intraparty pie-throwing ended with Donald J. Trump, from the stage of the Fox Theater in Detroit, assuring the American public that the size of his male appendage was just fine. “I guarantee you,” he said, “there’s no problem.”
There was a time when I might have been stunned. There was a time when Mr. Trump kept his anatomical allusions to post-debate interviews, when he referred to the moderator Megyn Kelly — who was tough on him at his last debate on Fox, in August — as having “blood coming out of her wherever.”
I might have been shocked, once, at this whole debate — the hooting audience, the barking candidates, the NSFW content — but those days are over.
.. They attacked him for lies; he answered with size.
.. Mr. Romney’s speech was high-minded and flowing, quoting presidents and philosophers. Mr. Trump throws sentences like punches. Sentences that repeat. For emphasis, they repeat. Mr. Romney disparages Mr. Trump’s integrity. Mr. Trump visualizes Mr. Romney as, literally, beneath him. Romney: You lack gravitas, sir! Trump: I got your gravitas right here!
.. But Mr. Romney was at least partly arguing for standards that Mr. Trump’s supporters reject. Over and over, they tell reporters, “He’s just saying what everyone thinks” and “He says what’s on his mind” — which are not the same thing as “He always tells the truth” or “He never contradicts himself.”
Republican Debate Takeaways: Voters’ Options Couldn’t Be Clearer
Time and time again, anxious Republican leaders have urged their more conventional standard-bearers in the race to take on Mr. Trump. Thursday night’s debate showed why that almost never works. He talks over attack lines. He refuses to admit to flip-flops, even when pressed by a moderator or hemmed in by video footage. He blusters his way past fact-checkers and rivals alike.
.. But it was impossible not to watch the debate without suspecting that the right-leaning and highly influential news network was using the evening to litigate each of Mr. Trump’s faults and vulnerabilities.
.. If the Republican establishment’s strategy now is to deny Mr. Trump the nomination by keeping the field as large as possible — diluting his chances to reach a majority of delegates on the first round of votes at the party convention in July — the debate may have offered a preview.
.. Unlike his rivals, Mr. Kasich is running as a “compassionate conservative” who is disinterested in the culture wars and who can reach out to the opposing party. If his message does not resonate, it will not be because voters did not hear it.
.. The exchange produced a CNN headline for the history books: “Donald Trump defends size of his penis.”
Donald Trump and the Ku Klux Klan: A History
Trump replied that he had no idea who Duke was. Heilemann asked if Trump would repudiate Duke’s endorsement. “Sure,” Trump said, “if that would make you feel better, I would certainly repudiate. I don’t know anything about him.”
.. It should be noted that Trump’s unfamiliarity with Duke is a recent condition. In 2000, Trump issued a statement that he was no longer considering a run for President with the backing of the Reform Party, partly because it “now includes a Klansman, Mr. Duke.”
.. Each time Trump was asked on Twitter about his white nationalist supporters, the candidate, who is ready to respond, day or night, to critics of his debating style or his golf courses, simply ignored the question.