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'President Trump?' Get Used To It

By Clarence Page, Tribune Content Agency on

President Donald Trump? Surely I jest? I wish.

The billionaire presidential candidate has been riding atop the Republican primary polls for four months. He constantly defies the conventional rules of political etiquette. He reveals no more than a passing interest in facts. Yet the more he is criticized, the more he seems like Godzilla to grow bigger and stronger.

Trump's disinterest in facts came into full bloom after the Paris terrorist attacks. He famously reignited an old and roundly debunked Internet conspiracy theory that thousands of Muslims in New Jersey cheered the World Trade Center's collapse in 2001.

New Jersey officials and journalists -- including the authors of a paragraph that Trump cited -- have found no basis in fact for his assertion.

Even fellow GOP frontrunner Ben Carson, after saying that he, too, had seen the Muslims celebrating on TV, decided that, no, he really hadn't. The Washington Post's Fact Checker columnist Glenn Kessler awarded Trump "four Pinocchios," his top rating for the biggest and most fact-free whoppers.

Trump is used to that. Kessler says he has given Trump more Pinocchios than any other candidate in this cycle.

 

Trump doesn't care. The man who earlier characterized undocumented Mexican immigrants as rapists and murderers went on to propose shutting down suspicious mosques, building a database of Muslims in America and perhaps requiring them to carry special identification showing their religion.

Un-American? You betcha. Yet his numbers remain remarkably buoyant, indicating nobody ever went broke by stoking public fears, anger and resentments. His rival candidates have virtually given up attacking him for anything, for all the good it doesn't do.

Instead Trump's audacity has enabled him to steer the rest of the Republican field further to the right, endangering the party's chances of winning crucial swing voters next November, regardless of who wins their nomination.

With that in mind, Team Clinton privately has been slapping high fives after every new Trump outrage. Considering how general elections ultimately are decided by moderate swing voters, Trump will be easier for Clinton to beat than, say, former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, Ohio Gov. John Kasich or some other similarly pragmatic conservative who cares about things like facts.

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(c) 2015 CLARENCE PAGE DISTRIBUTED BY TRIBUNE MEDIA SERVICES, INC.

 

 

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