Donald Trump chose to speculate publicly that Gold Star mother Ghazala Khan’s grief-filled silence at the DNC was actually evidence of Muslim-style control of wife by husband. It was a vile slur, this implication that the differences we see just by looking at the Khans reveal something horrible in their family lives. This tack hardly made Trump look enlightened in his views toward women, or toward any other group he singles out. We know him too well by now. Or most of us do.
The occasionally high-minded John McCain, torture survivor and GOP 2008 standard-bearer, condemns Trump’s slur, but not strongly enough to undo his endorsement. Maybe Donald is right, maybe you are not a hero, John. You seem to have forgotten something important in recent years. Thanks so much for giving us all the gift of Sarah Palin on the national stage.
Rising GOP star Marco Rubio condemns Trump’s assault on the Khan family’s right to speak out, but Rubio still finds it essential to get Trump elected. He calls the feud with the Khans unfortunate. Really? Unfortunate is meaning well, but having your words come out the wrong way. That’s not what happened here, “Little Marco.” Donald tried on purpose to drive a wedge been “us” and families with headscarves, no matter what their patriotism and sacrifice have been. Let me borrow some of your own words to help you understand Donald’s use of inflammatory remarks and the news media’s response. We should “dispel once and for all with the fiction that [Donald Trump] doesn’t know what he’s doing. He knows exactly what he’s doing”. He’s doing, and you’re helping.
Speaker of the House Paul Ryan, GOP luminary and third in line for the presidency, for a while withheld his announcement that he’d be voting for Trump. Was he waiting for more information, or consulting his conscience, or simply waiting for outrage to die down, like it did for any mass shooting since Sandy Hook with fewer than eight dead? By now, Ryan has more information, to add to the racism, the birtherism, the celebration of violence and torture, the name-calling, the admiration of Putin, the misogyny directed at Megan Kelly, the contempt for treaties, and the dangerous ignorance of world affairs. Paul Ryan, please tell us what new outrage from Donald Trump would finally mark him as worse for the country than the Hillary Clinton you’ve known through the years?
Having written this much text, and left it to sit overnight, I did not expect Trump’s next salvo, in which he blasted McCain and Ryan for rejecting his religiously tainted attack on the Khans and went on to announce that he, Trump, is withholding his endorsement of them. Gentlemen, is there any Trump outrage, or incompetence, or insult, or mockery, or dare that will finally get you to break ranks? Where is your limit, your line in the sand, the end of your patience? Or does the sunk cost fallacy trick you into moving your Red Line over and over again? What does Trump have to do? Encounter two elderly nuns walking down the street, while on video, and courageously punch the smaller one in the face? Twice?
Sunday, Aug 14, 2016 · 7:14:43 PM +00:00
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modestproposer
So I wrote this August 5th. Four days later, Trump said that if Hillary is elected, if she is headed for the Oval Office,
if she gets to pick her judges, nothing you can do, folks. Although the Second Amendment people, maybe there is.
If Trump had said everything on Day 1 of his campaign, there would have been no campaign. Instead, we see a relentless withering away of principles in the GOP’s top leadership. There is no red line.