[Note: Are you guys digging this new serialized format? No. Oh okay, we’ll excuse me for experimenting five years in. Yeesh, try to do something different…]
Where was I? Right, so Trump was mad that Ted won Iowa through dirty tricks, and it let Ted ….s army of writers open up a Twitter trend with “Trumpertantrum.” It also let Ted pretend that he’s the rational, calm one despite openly saying he’d rip up everything from an Iran treaty to healthcare for millions to gay marriage being legal, etc.
He even got to pretend that he was the level-headed one when it comes to foreign policy, but saying Trump would get pissed over something and try to nuke Denmark. Even though it’s actually Ted who wants a war with Iran, North Korea, and–oh what the fuck, why not?–Russia too. In fact, Trump’s relatively sane foreign policy (Iraq War=bad, making deals=good) is one of the few areas where I agree with him.
At the debate, this might have been a good time for Trump criticize the hawkish ways of neocons like Bush (which he has done, admirably, many times) and pseudo-evangelicals like Cruz. He could have sold his vision of peace and prosperity to an American public that’s sick of being entangled in Middle-Eastern quagmires.
Instead, his most memorable debate moment came when he stood beside Ben Carson as they tried to prove…some point…with the point being unknown. That is unless you count getting schooled by Jeb Bush of all people on imminent domain. [Donald’s defense of imminent domain was actually true but any defense of any government program is likely to lose him the “Hill People” vote.] When Jeb Bush—the son of a president and brother of another president and grandson of a Senator Prescott Bush who tried to carry out a coup on FDR (true story, look up “The Business Plot”)—can make Donald Trump look like the establishment, something is off. It’s also the first of Jeb’s many failed attacks on Donald that was actually somewhat successful.
But don’t worry, Donald played it off…by going meta-politics and saying that the audience was RNC insiders and paid lobbyists for Jeb. That may be true. [It is accurate to say that a guy who can’t get even claps at one of his own rallies can probably only get laughs in a room full of his own campaign people.] But all the media reported was that Trump was loudly booed.
None of this has been that bad until what happened the day right before New Hampshire…[Cliffhanger] To be continued…