Columnist.
Everyone knows I'm not a Trump supporter. He's personally embarrassing. He has embarrassed the Republican Party. He has embarrassed the country. He's right about many things. And he did much better at the second debate. But it doesn't matter. Unless there's a miracle, he's going to lose to Hillary. He's going to be defeated by the weakest, most unlikable, least trustable candidate the Democrats have nominated since, well, her husband.
The Mike Pence-Tim Kaine bout Tuesday night wasn't the main event of 2016.
The Great Debate already seems weeks ago. I watched every minute of it with my wife and daughter and a glass of good wine. I've found it's the heart-healthiest way to watch a presidential debate, because you can't scream like hell and wave your arms around with a glass of wine in your hand. We all know that Trump did well in the first 20 minutes of Monday's debate because he stayed on message. We also know he lost the debate and missed a dozen opportunities to hit Hillary.
For months we've been hearing complaints from the pundits that Donald Trump has not given us a clear idea about how he plans to defeat ISIS. The TV pundits — left and right — are frustrated because Trump won't say whether he'd use American ground troops. He won't even automatically take the use of nukes off the table. Their complaints remind me of what Ronald Reagan did during the 1980 election against Jimmy Carter. The pundits did the same thing to my father that they're doing to Trump. They never stopped asking him during the campaign what he was going to do to solve the Iran hostage crisis. But he did the right thing. He never said anything.
Now that the health of Hillary has become a serious issue in the mainstream media and not just a dirty alt-right rumor, maybe someone should carry Bill Clinton down to the nearest clinic for a checkup. Bill appears to be in much worse shape than poor old Hillary. In his campaign speeches the old lech looks and talks like some retired codger you'd find hanging out at Jerry's One Stop convenience store in Hope, Ark. If I'm running Hillary's Campaign to Nowhere, I'd pull the old man off the trail immediately and let him appear only at private $100,000-a-plate fundraisers in Hollywood. All thin, rich Bill does now is remind people how old and tired he and Hillary are.
It's after Labor Day. Now the presidential election is getting serious. Now is when what the candidates say and do really counts. And now, incredibly, an already depressing campaign is getting worse every day. No matter who wins in November, we're going to end up with a president that half the country hates and the other half didn't really want to win. We have Hillary the Crooked still trying to lie her way out of her email crimes like a cheap lawyer.
Donald Trump actually looked like a statesman in Mexico City Wednesday afternoon. It didn't matter what he and the president of Mexico talked about. It didn't even matter if they made a secret handshake deal to split the cost of building the great Wall of Trump. For the first time in his long campaign, Trump actually looked presidential. The visual gravitas didn't last long, though. Six hours later in Arizona the old Trump was back, reading a speech from the teleprompter and throwing big slabs of U.S. Prime red meat to his hardcore fan base. He erased all thoughts that he was headed to a kinder, gentler place on immigration, which, unfortunately, remains the signature issue of his campaign.
The Great Donald Trump Pivot is still very much in progress. Who knows where his position on illegal immigration is going. If he does anymore specials with Sean Hannity, he's liable to replace his signature border wall idea with a big open gate in El Paso manned by volunteers from Welcome Wagon. What's the next late-August surprise going to be? That he's fired Kellyanne Conway and Steve Bannon and replaced them with James Carville? That he's offered the secretary of state job in advance to Khizr Khan?
I've finally figured out what Donald Trump's main problem is. No jokes, please. It's because at his core he's an entertainer who's looking for applause, not a politician who's looking for votes. Applause makes you feel good on stage at the Improv or at the end of a Broadway play. But it doesn't get you elected. If Trump really wants to save what's left of Western Civilization from four years of President Hillary Clinton, he's got to learn how to get his message out to more voters.
Donald Trump didn't listen. Last week I said the only thing that could save his campaign was for him to literally shut up for at least a month. My modest proposal was for his campaign people to lock him in a soundproof booth until November 9th. But forget that. I've got a better idea to put the Trump circus train on the right track. Trump's support in the polls is stuck at about 42 percent. To win, we know he has to get the votes of disaffected Republicans, terrified independents and people who don't already believe Obama was born in a grass hut in Kenya.
Forget the idea of a Republican intervention. Nothing GOP bigwigs or people like Rudy Giuliani can say to Donald Trump now will get his head straight and get him back on track. For candidate Trump, it ought to be pretty clear by now that there is no track, no train, no schedule and no final destination. His track goes wherever his wandering mind and runaway ego take him at any given instant, whether he's speaking to 3,000 people or tweeting from his bedroom.
A federal judge has ruled that John Hinckley Jr., the mentally disturbed man who tried to assassinate my father 35 years ago, will be set free in about a week. Many people, including members of my own family, think it's a terrible injustice that Hinckley, now 61, will be allowed to leave the mental hospital and live permanently with his elderly mother in Virginia. I don't. Before I explain, I'd like to remind people of what my father said and did in the days following the events of March 30, 1981.
Those of you who regularly read my column know that Donald Trump was not my first choice for the GOP nominee. He was not my second choice either. Rather than belaboring the point, I'm just going to say that while I am not "Never Trump," I am most assuredly "Never Hillary." That's why I'm going to be voting for Donald Trump in November. But he doesn't make it easy. Many political experts are wishing Trump were a constitutional conservative. Others are wishing Trump were more open to free trade. While another group wishes he would give some clarity as to his final position on taxes and the economy. Personally, I think granting those wishes would make Trump a more acceptable candidate to members of the GOP base and a portion of the independent electorate. But rather than focus on policy, I just wish the Almighty would see fit to grant Trump a longer attention span.
The stunt Ted Cruz pulled at the GOP convention in Cleveland Wednesday night may someday become known as his "Mistake on the Lake." By making a point to not endorse Donald Trump in his speech and telling people to vote their "conscience" in the fall Cruz did his own political future and his conservative principles no favors. He merely made himself look like a political brat and made a few million new enemies in the Republican Party who are unlikely to forgive him when 2020 comes around. Cruz also broke one of my father's most important rules — always support the party's nominee.
It happened after Sandy Hook. It happened after San Bernardino and Orlando. It happened last week after Dallas. Whenever a spoiled young nut job, wannabe Islamic terrorist or disturbed cop-hater goes on a mass killing spree, liberals and their choir members in the mainstream media can be counted on to react in the same ignorant, knee-jerky way. It was the gun's fault.
I didn't intend to run the red light. I didn't intend to run you over in a crosswalk. I didn't intend to get you pregnant. I didn't intend to write this column. Therefore I'm not guilty of writing it and I can't be blamed if you're reading it. The lawbreaking that Hillary Clinton committed with her serial mishandling of classified material in her emails should not be excused with the argument that "I didn't intend to break the law."
How many more Istanbuls and Orlandos and Brussels do we need before we wake up and smell the gunpowder? ISIS started World War III years ago, but apparently no one in the Obama administration noticed. We're in a bloody war with radical Islamic terrorism, but we're not fighting in it. No one else in the West is, either. The United Nations, NATO, the Germans, the Israelis — they can't do anything about ISIS and won't. America must now do what it should have done years ago — take the lead and destroy ISIS. The world can no longer afford to wait for us to get off our butt.
Hillary Clinton may have been better off wearing the Emperor's New Clothes during her victory speech after the New York primary, rather than what she chose to wear and her aides managed to overlook. Clinton, who has decried income "inequality" throughout the nation during her campaign, stood before the assembled ---- and carefully screened ---- crowd wearing a $12,495 Giorgio Armani jacket.
It's time for Bernie Sanders to step down. His young supporters will be disappointed for the rest of their lives, but it's time for Bernie to join the cast of "Saturday Night Live." He fought hard and if nothing else he showed the America people how to deliver a speech full of stale socialist ideas with a lot of honesty and pizzazz. Hillary and Trump are vying to get Bernie's enthusiastic army to enlist on their side. Trump is hallucinating. Hillary is only dreaming.
Donald Trump is still no conservative and never will be. He still hasn't figured out that the mix of insults, bluster and off-the-cuff political statements that won him the Republican Party primary won't work in the general election.
