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Donald Trump, Shifting Tone, Still Tone Deaf

By Clarence Page, Tribune Content Agency on

As Donald Trump expressed "regret" for saying "the wrong thing" sometimes in his campaign, I thought he was going to break into song:

"Regrets, I've had a few/ But then again, too few to mention...."

Yes, that line from Frank Sinatra's "My Way" (actually Paul Anka's rewrite of a French song) reflects the wealthy developer-turned-Republican presidential candidate's attitude in Charlotte, N.C., in his first speech since rebooting his failing campaign's leadership.

Regrets? He's had a few, Trump tells us. But apparently they are too few to mention, since he didn't bother to mention any of them.

Or more likely, listing his offenses against various groups and individuals -- varying from a Gold Star family to Fox News' Megyn Kelly -- would "take too much time," as he says of all "political correctness."

Instead of apologies, Trump prefers to blame a whipping boy that everyone hates, us media workers, for allegedly distorting what he has said. And after all the billions of dollars' worth of free publicity that we have given him, this is the thanks we get.

 

"They will take words of mine out of context and spend a week obsessing over every single syllable," he said. Sure. It takes about a week to find our way through his word salad.

In this case, he offered us a non-apology apology, an apology that does not include having to say you're sorry or what you should be sorry about.

"Sometimes in the heat of the debate and speaking on a multitude of issues, you don't choose the right words or you say the wrong thing," Trump said in his Charlotte speech, prudently reading from a Teleprompter so he would not say the wrong thing. "I have done that, and believe it or not I regret it. And I do regret it, particularly where it may have caused personal pain."

He was not specific about what he regrets, but he lamented with a line that you don't often hear from politicians: "(S)ometimes I can be too honest." That's a sarcastic signal to his supporters who hear Trump as a truth-teller, even when he screws up the facts.

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(c) 2016 CLARENCE PAGE DISTRIBUTED BY TRIBUNE MEDIA SERVICES, INC.

 

 

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