Donald Trump signaled very clearly in his apology video where hes going now. Yeah, I may have said some awful things, but the Clintons did them: Ive said some foolish things, but theres a big difference between the words and actions of other people. Bill Clinton has actually abused women, and Hillary has bullied, attacked, shamed, and intimidated his victims. We will discuss this more in the coming days. See you at the debate on Sunday.
A normal politicianwell, first of all, a normal politician would never have said these things on tape to a reporter. So theres that. But what I was going to say was, a normal politician, confronted with a revelation like this, would try to pivot away. Hes spend three days apologizing, and not just publicly but privatelymaking phone calls to key supporters, eating the requisite humble pie, pleading for them to stick with him. We know Trumps not going to do any of that. Then hed let the media decide theyd kicked him around enough on this one and try to roll with a change of topic.
But that aint Trump. Hes leaning in. Imagine the transcript of last nights conference callTrump, Roger Ailes, Steve Bannon, maybe Roger Stone, and Kellyanne Conway (not poor Kellyanne Conwayshe has free will, and she decided to do this). I can imagine Conway, who was brought in to stop him from doing stuff like this, begging him to just apologize and leave it at that. But its not hard to see how she would have been outvoted.
Interestingly, it has echoes of Bill Clintons own nationally televised apology to the American people in August 1998. It was the night of the day that his testimony before Ken Starrs grand jury was released, which was when America heard him admit for the first time that yes, he did have inappropriate relations with Monica Lewinsky. But then he went after Starr, saying the investigation had gone on too long, cost too much, and hurt too many people, insisting that even presidents have private lives. The media savaged Clinton.
Trump did exactly the same thing, except, being Trump, he did it on steroids. And he signaled where hes going to drag this election for the final month. Perhaps inevitably, Donald versus Hillary is going to end as a war of the sexes.
I would expect that in Sundays debate, hes going to rip into Bill and Hillary about Lewinsky, Gennifer Flowers, Juanita Broaddrick, and who knows who else. This might be difficult given that its a town hall, with questions from regular voters; but surely the subject will come up in some way, shape, or form. And depending on how it goes, hes going to, ahem, keep it up, the whole rest of the way, getting coarser and coarser as he becomes more and more desperate.
What Trump has done this entire election has been to reduce arguments to their crudest and most basic form: We white people just dont want this many brown people around. Thats essentially what he communicated to voters. A large enough percentage of Republicans generally agree, which is why he won the nomination. Americans generally dont, which is why hes behind now.
Thats what he does. He reduces everything to the caveman level. So thats what hell do here. Emotionally, his play will boil down to: Yeah, Im a cad. So what. But Bills a cad too. All men are cads. Grow up, America, and deal with it.
As with all of Trumps caveman declarations, there is some (emphasis on some) truth to it. All men arent cads, but a lot are. And I would imagine that far more 60-year-old men talk like this sometimes than many people would prefer to think. In the coming month, Trump will represent that America.
Hillary will represent the America that doesnt think like that anymore. Which America is bigger? Im not entirely sure. I actually suspect Trumps might be. Today, across America, men will fill sports bars to watch their favorite college football games. Some women will be at those bars, too, of course, but itll be 80 percent men. Theyll talk about Trump. Wont a lot of them laugh and kind of sympathize? Sure they will.
Howevermost of these men will probably also know that a guy who talks like that, while they might buy him a beer and a shot, maybe shouldnt be the president of the United States. And by the way, of course he talks like that. He said in his statement that anyone who knows me knows these words don't reflect who I am. Right. In 16 months of serial lies, that may have been the lie-i-est lie of them all. Trump and Ailes were probably talking like this last week. This week. Unfazed, because theyre utterly un-faze-able people, theyll probably do it today.
But yes, these sports-bar men will know that Trump crossed a line. So that may be the saving grace here: The fact we as a society agree publicly that there have to be such lines. Conservatives call it political correctness, and they revile it. Other people call it manners. Whatever you want to call it, I think it will prevail here. But not before Trump drags us all through yet another gutter, the most sordid and Freudian one of all. Hard as this concept may be to grasp, Id advise you to grasp it: We havent even seen nasty yet.
source http://allofbeer.com/2017/10/23/donald-trump-just-revealed-his-next-debate-strategy/
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