Trump’s Huge Boomerang
Boomerangs have a wonderful property. Aboriginal Australians designed them as weapons that would come back if they missed their target. That works in hunting a bird. It is counterproductive in politics. Your attacks on your opponent should not end up coming back to wound you.
If this were just a one-time event in the Trump campaign, you could excuse it as just coincidence. But it has happened so often that you have to start treating as a feature rather than a bug.
Here are just a couple of examples.
“What is being uncovered now is one of the most shocking political scandals in American history,” Trump said on Thursday. “A secretary of state sold her office to corporations and foreign governments, betraying the public trust.”
This is in reference to a recent release of emails while Clinton was Secretary of State and Trump’s claim that donors to the Clinton foundation were getting special favors from Clinton in return for their donations. I’m not going to dig into the accuracy of these claims. They have already been fairly widely debunked by organizations like PolitiFact and CNN.
The boomerang is the fact that Trump himself donated to the Clinton foundation and got nothing in return. When confronted by Bill O’Reilly, here’s what he said.
And I have to tell you this, in all fairness, I thought that money was being put to very good use. I assumed it was being put to whether it’s Haiti or all of the different things that I heard about. I didn’t know about the private airplane rides all over the place and if you look at the kind of expenses that they charge and the way they lived, I had no idea that, but I will say, that as far as the foundation’s concerned, I assumed it was being put to good use, and so did everybody else that gave, and there were a lot of people that gave. They never really did anything for me, but I will say this, if I think they probably would have liked me, and, you know, whether you give here or give there, I got along with everybody, Bill.
Trump claims to be the best negotiator in the world. He claims that he will be able to get Mexico to foot the bill for a wall designed to keep Mexican’s out of this country. He claims that he will be able to renegotiate our trade agreements with China. He claims to take no prisoners and feels no remorse. Yet, if his claims about Clinton’s method of soliciting donations are true, he ended up being a chump. Many other people got a better deal that he did when they gave money to the Clinton foundation.
One of Trump’s other recent claims is that Clinton isn’t fit enough to be President.
“To defeat crime and radical Islamic terrorism in our country, to win trade in our country, you need tremendous physical and mental strength and stamina,” he said in Wisconsin. “Hillary Clinton doesn’t have that strength and stamina.”
He supported these claims using faked videos and out of context photographs. All of these were quickly and widely disproved, but remain a part of Trump’s basic stump speech.
Trump’s own claim to health, however, is based on one bizarre letter from a gastroenterologist who has dubious credentials. A gastroenterologist treats patients with some intestinal distress. They don’t generally treat healthy people. There are a lot of questions about the letter itself too, but the physician explains a lot of the strange terminology with the excuse that he wrote it in less than 5 minutes to satisfy a request by the Trump campaign.
The result is that the spot light has turned back to Trump’s health. If elected, he will be the oldest President ever to serve. He father died from early onset Alzheimer’s disease. He also received a medical draft deferment because of bone spurs. There is no mention of either condition in the physician’s letter. Ultimately the specious questions regarding Clinton’s health have lead back to a heightened awareness that Trump is the one with unanswered questions.
Then there is immigration. Trump made his mark on this issue, but it has also been his undoing since the end of his campaign. Clinton has effectively used this issue to paint Trump as a racist crazy person.
As Trump’s polling numbers began to head south, he brought in a new team and attempted to walk back some of his comments regarding mass deportation. His failed to thread the needle between those who support mass deportation and those who think it is crazy and racist. As a result, instead of revealing a “kinder, gentler” Trump, he seems even more uncertain and unstable.
Worse yet, his biggest supporters including Sarah Palin and Anne Colter are warning him that any wavering from his original plan will come at great cost.
All the while Clinton suffered the worst week of her campaign since Comey met with Congress. Instead of letting Clinton flap in the breeze, Trump continued his misguided attacks. So far, Clinton has only had to duck and wait for the inevitable. Trump wounded again by his own attack.
