Trump off target as usual
It’s all about “the issues.”
Supposedly.
That’s the go-to response by Donald Trump’s merry band of campaign apologists every time he shoots off his mouth.
“We’re trying to make this about personalities. It’s not about personalities. This is about something that is much bigger than Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton. It’s not about people,” claims Dr. Ben Carson.
That’s his diagnosis of the media’s repeated questions about Trump’s suitability to occupy 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.
Carson, the onetime Trump irritant and opponent, is now his full-throated supporter.
He appeared last week on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” to talk about “the issues,” but, instead, he found himself being peppered with questions about another Trump controversy.
When Trump took his roadshow to a group of evangelicals last week, he didn’t speak so much about his faith, but of Hillary Clinton’s lack of it.
Trump, who’s hardly a Bible-thumper, has a long history of mouthing off about people’s religions and their religious beliefs.
During the Republican primaries, Trump cast a shadow over Ben Carson, only because he’s a devout Seventh-day Adventist.
“I mean, Seventh-day Adventist, I don’t know about. I just don’t know about,” Trump claimed when Carson appeared to be catching him in the polls last October.
He applied his personal religious test to Ted Cruz last January. To him, Cruz, the son of a Southern Baptist pastor and a Cuban immigrant, required scrutiny.
“Just remember this, in all fairness, to the best of my knowledge, not too many evangelicals come out of Cuba,” Trump offered.
When Mitt Romney took his highly public stand against a potential Trump presidency, that qualified him for Trump’s wrath.
“Are you sure he (Romney) is a Mormon?” Trump asked during a speech, and in all places, Salt Lake City – the home of the Mormon Church.
Where Carson, Cruz or Romney go to church, or how strongly are their beliefs, have nothing to do with “the issues.”
Nor are his ongoing attempts to paint President Obama as some sort of secret Muslim.
Yet, Trump’s army of surrogates’ bristle when they’re repeatedly asked to respond to his latest unforced, and unseemly attacks.
To them, the media is at fault for bringing up their candidate’s heated rhetoric.
Even when Trump decides to speak seriously about “the issues,” he finds himself swirling in his own controversy.
He’s gained a much-touted endorsement from the National Rifle Association.
The NRA might want to re-think that endorsement after he tried to inject his foolish logic into the Orlando tragedy.
“If you had guns in that room, even if you had a number of people having them strapped to their ankle or strapped to their waist where bullets could have flown in the other direction right at him, you wouldn’t have had the same kind of a tragedy,” Trump said with a straight face.
But Wayne LaPierre, the face of the NRA, responded like most rational people would – “I don’t think we should have firearms where people are drinking.”
To be honest, there had been guns in the room, but not among the patrons.
A 15-year veteran of the Orlando Police Department was working security at the nightclub, and he was armed.
Patrol officer Adam Gruler did聽 trade fire with the killer, but he failed to bring him down.
So Trump was wrong to assume that a gun in the room would have made a difference. But he was even more wrong to believe that giving handguns to people who may have been under the influence of alcohol, and without the benefit of sanctioned weapons training, would have altered the outcome.
Trump’s campaign operatives sure have a tough job trying to steer interviewers away from Trump’s latest headline-grabbers.
They can balk all they want.
Trump can’t seem to prevent the fact that he continually gets in his own way every time he holds a rally, and he avoids talking about “the issues.”
He’s known to many Americans as the host of “The Apprentice.”
But it’s revealing that as a presidential candidate, he, too, is nothing more than an apprentice.
Edward A. Owens is a three-time Emmy Award winner and 20-year veteran of television news. E-mail him at freedoms@bellatlantic.net