For the past sixteen months, roughly since Donald Trump’s insult of Senator John McCain (“I like people who weren’t captured”), the Republican Presidential nominee has been behaving in ways that were far outside the bounds of acceptable behavior for a Presidential candidate. For most of that time, it only seemed to make him more popular.
This changed with a series of events, beginning in the summer, that the Clinton campaign either orchestrated or exploited, and that caused Trump to become unhinged at a new, more self-damaging level.
.. Trump, who thinks of himself as a Seigneur surrounded by admiring and grateful servitors who call him “Mr. Trump” (at least until the moment when he tells them, “You’re fired!”), suddenly finds the social order reversed. The little people are attacking him, and he’s expected to grovel and beg for forgiveness. And that makes him blow up.
.. Clinton’s biggest mistakes, like setting up her private e-mail server, spring from excessive fear and caution, rather than excessive confidence
Trump’s Debate Flameout
It takes a tremendous ego and a healthy dose of hubris to believe that you can simply bluster your way through a presidential debate, but if anyone thinks that way, it’s no surprise it’s the uniquely underqualified and overblown king of bragging and whining: Donald J. Trump.
.. “Donald started his career back in 1973 being sued by the Justice Department for racial discrimination because he would not rent apartments in one of his developments to African-Americans, and he made sure that the people who worked for him understood that was the policy.”
Trump’s response was not that they hadn’t discriminated, but rather that “many, many other companies throughout the country” were also sued, that the suit was settled “with no admission of guilt” and that “it’s just one of those things.”
No, Donald, racial discrimination isn’t “just one of those things.”
.. He invoked his euphemistic lament that the country needs more “law and order,” which is simply code for flooding poor and minority communities with more officers and giving them a nod of approval to crack down on these communities more harshly.
.. three undercover New York City police officers approached Patrick M. Dorismond, an unarmed, 26-year-old black father of two and asked to buy drugs. This made Dorismond angry, just as it would have made me angry. The incident escalated into a scuffle and one of the officers shot and killed Dorismond.
.. The maleficent Giuliani took the extraordinary step of releasing Dorismond’s sealed juvenile records to show that the dead man who became upset over being propositioned for drugs was “no altar boy.” In truth it was just another attempt to blame and defame the victim.
.. “More than 70 percent think he has flubbed race relations. And most blacks and Hispanics frown on his anti-crime policies.”
.. Trump’s response was not to deny the charge or to decry the language, but to resurrect his old hostility with Rosie O’Donnell. Rosie O’Donnell? That’s when you know the man is grasping at straws.
Donald Trump’s Ideology of Applause
“He does have an 82 percent approval rating,” Donald Trump said during the special “commander in chief” forum last week. It’s worth dwelling on that sentence, because it’s the key to what drives and guides his presidential bid. It’s the giveaway.
For Trump, the whole point of political office is adulation, and adulation is the entire proof of a person’s worth. Rectitude pales next to ratings. Ethics are a sorry substitute for applause. And the methods by which a crowd is fired up don’t matter, so long as he can bask in the clapping.
.. He grew so enamored of a magnificent, impenetrable wall along the Mexican border because the primary-season voters who thronged his rallies went gaga for it. He was a rat pressing a lever and getting precisely the pellet of reverence that he sought, so he kept pressing, over and over, harder and harder: Mexico will pay for it! Meanwhile I’ll round up and deport all the illegals! Let’s ban Muslims while we’re at it!
.. The general election is a laboratory with rules different from those of the Republican primaries, and he’s still trying to figure out which lever to press.
.. When his insults aren’t about physical appearance, they’re about popularity.
A newscaster is incompetent because his or her show isn’t No. 1. A newspaper isn’t trustworthy because its profit margin is down. Jeb Bush wasn’t fit for the presidency because voters didn’t swoon for him. Trump deserved the job because more people chanted his name.
.. The idea of intrinsic merit is alien to him.
.. the Russian word that Putin used for Trump can mean not only “brilliant,” which is Trump’s interpretation, but also “colorful” or “flamboyant.”
.. When he demeans the very Republican senators whose re-election campaigns he should be helping, it’s typically on the grounds that they haven’t showered him with praise or genuflected when he draws near.
.. He’ll play a fascist if that’s the path to the throne. He’ll weave ludicrously tall tales if that’s the route. Should he get there, he’ll proclaim his arrival the very evidence that he’s worthy, and then he’ll do whatever it takes to continue feeling as affirmed.
I Ran the C.I.A. Now I’m Endorsing Hillary Clinton.
I found her to be prepared, detail-oriented, thoughtful, inquisitive and willing to change her mind if presented with a compelling argument.
.. her understanding that diplomacy can be effective only if the country is perceived as willing and able to use force if necessary
.. During the early debates about how we should respond to the Syrian civil war, she was a strong proponent of a more aggressive approach, one that might have prevented the Islamic State from gaining a foothold in Syria.
.. When some wanted to delay the Bin Laden raid by one day because the White House Correspondents Dinner might be disrupted, she said, “Screw the White House Correspondents Dinner.”
.. the character traits he has exhibited during the primary season suggest he would be a poor, even dangerous, commander in chief.These traits include his obvious need for self-aggrandizement, his overreaction to perceived slights, his tendency to make decisions based on intuition, his refusal to change his views based on new information, his routine carelessness with the facts, his unwillingness to listen to others and his lack of respect for the rule of law... President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia was a career intelligence officer, trained to identify vulnerabilities in an individual and to exploit them. That is exactly what he did early in the primaries. Mr. Putin played upon Mr. Trump’s vulnerabilities by complimenting him. He responded just as Mr. Putin had calculated...ignoring that he has killed and jailed journalists and political opponents, has invaded two of his neighbors and is driving his economy to ruin. Mr. Trump has also taken policy positions consistent with Russian, not American, interests — endorsing Russian espionage against the United States, supporting Russia’s annexation of Crimea and giving a green light to a possible Russian invasion of the Baltic States...This position, which so clearly contradicts the foundational values of our nation, plays into the hands of the jihadist narrative that our fight against terrorism is a war between religions... Our nation will be much safer with Hillary Clinton as president.