The first rule of holes
by Rob Howard
Political Columnist
After watching Donald Trump campaign for the last 14 months (seems more like 10 years), one thing has become abundantly clear. Trump doesn’t know the “First Rule of Holes”: When you’re in one, stop digging.
From his first announcement in June of last year to the middle of this August, Trump has consistently doubled down when he has said something offensive or stupid.
He never apologizes, never admits he is wrong. It’s always someone else’s fault. I could compile a list that would go on for pages, but I’ll just mention the ones that are more egregious.
He started right out saying that people illegally immigrating to the United States are murderers and rapists. He continually says he will build a wall to keep Mexicans out and that Mexico will pay for it. He has never let up on that, even though two things are abundantly clear: one, neither Congress nor the Mexican government will ever give him the billions that it would take, and two, both undocumented workers and drug smugglers have shown that where we already have a wall, it doesn’t keep many people out.
To me, one of his standouts was saying Sen. John McCain is not a war hero because he was captured and spent years as a prisoner of war. Trump prefers veterans who aren’t captured. And it’s only recently that he tepidly endorsed McCain for reelection, reading from a statement clearly written by his staff.
His continuous war with Muslims is troubling, and although his campaign has tried to tone it down, the damage is done. His latest, and most offensive to me, was his weeklong battle with the Muslim parents of an Army captain who was killed in combat.
He always takes something that would have been a day in the news cycle, and turns it into several days where the talking heads are doing nothing but talking about it.
And Trump wonders why his poll numbers continue to go down. When both conventions were over, FiveThirtyEight.com gave Clinton a 52.8 percent chance of winning, with Trump at 47.1. After a series of blunders, at the writing of this column Clinton’s chance of winning is at 87.5 percent, with Trump’s at 12.5.
The website is predicting that Clinton will have 365 electoral votes, with Trump getting 172, almost 100 less than he would need to win.
Trump’s campaign has tried several “resets”, promising that he will be more focused and more presidential. I doubt it. The same week he gave a major policy address on the economy, he couldn’t resist bleating the outrageous statement that President Obama and Hillary Clinton were the founders of ISIS.
If I were Trump’s campaign manager, I’d take all his social media devices away from him.
So, even if his aides fill him in on the first rule of holes and he stops digging, he is now faced with the “Second Rule of Holes”: When you have stopped digging, you are still in a hole.
Republican leaders are abandoning him right and left, and they fear losing the Senate to Democratic control as a result of his woeful polling numbers. What can he do to get out of the hole? I don’t know, and if I did, I wouldn’t tell him.
As most of my readers know by now, I wouldn’t vote for him if he were the only person running.
I’m not going to predict what Trump will do between now and November 8 – he’s just too unpredictable. But it sure would be nice if he noticed he’s in a hole and quit digging. I’m tired of his conspiracy theories, his outright lies and his gross exaggerations, to say nothing of his offensive tweets. I’m sure my readers are too.
The Gayly and its staff do not necessarily agree with the opinions expressed in this column.
Copyright The Gayly - 9/17/2016 @ 8:18 a.m. CDT.