There was a moment when Donald Trump seemed almost a viable candidate. With the media helping to fuel Clinton health scares and still fussing about emails while singularly ignoring the daily revelations of genuine scandal with Trump’s slush fund/charitable foundation, the gap between the two candidates had closed enough that, by the time of the first presidential debate, it almost seemed like a genuine race. For that period of a few weeks, Donald Trump was tied up, lashed down by the responsibility of being something reasonably close to a candidate for president. He read his nightly speeches while swinging back and forth between a pair of TelePrompter screens like a spectator at a slow-motion tennis match. He limited Twitter hate sessions to a few stolen moments in the morning. He did his best not to yell at babies in public. And every morning his army of surrogates hustled out to clean up the inevitable mess.
That period is over. Now that Donald Trump’s chances of being president are roughly equal to his odds of taking over as prima ballerina of the Bolshoi (though perhaps that’s his deal with Putin), he’s feeling … free. Free to be fully Trump.
Democrats get a kick out of saying that Donald Trump is “unhinged,” but the candidate views himself as finally being unchained. ...
As his fortunes sour, anger is trumping cogent calculation, and his defiance appears to be increasing in proportion to his decline in the polls. As Republican support was eroding over the weekend, Trump’s campaign worked together talking points for surrogates as part of a defiant effort to attack those lawmakers for bailing on him. After he tweeted Sunday that they’re all pathetic, Newt Gingrich suggested after Sunday night’s debate that they would regret jumping ship so quickly. Campaign manager Kellyanne Conway accused some defecting Republican lawmakers of being sexual harassers themselves.
They can’t take away his freeeedom! (To attack his fellow Republicans, make tabloid rumors about Bill Clinton’s sex life the center of his campaign, and engage in general zany hijinks.)
Free Trump is free to continue saying that the election is so rigged that he can’t lose unless it’s stolen.
Free Trump is free to make more threats against the Clintons.
Trump, speaking before a rally in Pennsylvania on Monday afternoon, said he's been ganged up on ever since Friday's release of a 2005 tape that captured the billionaire speaking in incredibly crude terms about women. …
Trump warned against the release of more damaging tapes of his past comments, threatening to continue attacking the Clintons over former President Bill Clinton’s alleged infidelities and Hillary Clinton’s response to those women’s accusations if more such tapes emerge.
No more revealing his own words recorded on film and audio, or Trump will respond by bringing up even more accusations that were played in tabloids twenty years ago. But somehow Trump doesn’t appear to get the assymetrical nature of this skirmish.
“If they wanna release more tapes saying inappropriate things, we’ll continue to talk about Bill and Hillary Clinton doing inappropriate things,” Trump said. “There are so many of them, folks.”
Free Trump is free to attack the press for not recognizing his perfection.
And by Monday night, Trump iterated his anti-media script, indulging the crowd’s hate for reporters by letting supporters scream for two minutes at the press penned into the venue.
And mostly Free Trump is free to attack his fellow Republicans.
“It's got to be liberating to see some of the baggage fall off the train,” said Michael Caputo, a New York Republican operative and former Trump campaign staffer who has known the candidate for years. “A lot of the support was thin or disingenuous. None of these Republicans were even helping. In fact, some were breathing his name in fear for what it would do for their own reputations. It shows the true nature of the Republican Party.”
Republicans aren’t breathing Trump’s name in fear anymore. They’re too busy sobbing over the party that was.
“He's picking fights because he does not like it when anyone questions him, whether it be Rick Perry in the primary, Susana Martinez in the primary, Ted Cruz, Paul Ryan—he doesn't like when anyone questions him,” said Austin Barbour, a GOP strategist in Mississippi. “He handles that very poorly, and that's what he's doing right now.”
Dear Republicans, do you know what it is that the public remembers most about the Whigs? Nothing. Nothing at all. Be free, Trump. Be free.