It doesn't get much richer than this—Trump's people are now trying to convince the GOP (and the media) that he's actually a super reasonable guy who will turn the corner on his detestable ways in the general election. The AP reports on the "remaking" of The Donald:
Trump's newly hired senior aide, Paul Manafort, made the case to Republican National Committee members that Trump has two personalities: one in private and one onstage.
"When he's out on the stage, when he's talking about the kinds of things he's talking about on the stump, he's projecting an image that's for that purpose," Manafort said in a private briefing.
"You'll start to see more depth of the person, the real person. You'll see a real different guy," he said. [...] "The part that he's been playing is evolving into the part that now you've been expecting, but he wasn't ready for, because he had first to complete the first phase. The negatives will come down. The image is going to change."
Whoa. Talk about an epic case of take backsies—all that “Mexicans are rapists, no more Muslims stuff”—just an act. Not to mention how pathetic the notion is that this was his "strategy" for winning the nomination, because being reasonable was never going to cut it. But don't worry, Ben “Pyramids are for grain” Carson assures us that Trump's "getting better." Nothing like sound judgment weighing in on sound judgment.
Sadly, the media's already buying into this Trumpian re-write. The New York Times floated a big story Friday about how Trump's "more accepting views on gay issues set him apart." True, Trump's not the raging homophobe Ted Cruz is, but he's also promised to appoint Supreme Court justices who will overturn marriage equality. I mean, if reporter Maggie Haberman’s standard for “more accepting” is whether or not he’s trying to deport all LGBT Americans, then perhaps she’s got a point.
Earlier in the week, Haberman and another NYT reporter touted Trump's "softer side." Maybe they were referring to moments like on Thursday when Trump straight up told a woman to her face that he would deport her relatives before adding, "But many people are very fine people." That must have really taken the edge off.
Let's be clear—there's simply no "evolving" from broadly defining people as "murderers" and "rapists" and "drug dealers," from pledging a no-exceptions ban on anyone who practices a certain religion, and from stoking the volatile racism of white nationalists to boost your candidacy. That's not "an image" or a "campaign strategy," it's an assault on humanity. It has already inflicted harms Trump can't undo and he doesn't get to say "just kidding" and walk away from it. And if the media lets him do that, they are complicit in his crime.