There’s no need to go further than the end. As illogical as this sounds, it’s true. There is simply no reason for any presidential candidate to raise a personal feud with Rosie O’Donnell to the level of presidential debate.
That Trump feels “Rosie O’Donnell is fat” and that she’s “mean” is truly of no pressing significance to 80 million Americans, and speaking of it at the debate belittles the office of the presidency.
Friends, this debate was not “American Idol.” It’s was not “The Apprentice.” This was to be a serious discussion about the future trajectory of America between two final candidates for the most powerful position on the planet.
Instead, in front of God and 80 million Americans, Trump gave Hillary the gift of “Rosies.”
Trump served up Hillary’s presidential victory on a Trump Signature gold plate. Hillary is no doubt still dizzy considering her good fortune.
Suffice it to say, post-debate, few other than the zombie wing of that organization formally known as the Republican Party could help but reluctantly concede amazement at Trump’s detachment from anything approaching reasonable conduct for any person remotely attempting appearance as “presidential” – let alone thoughtful and rational.
No, we need not go further with our consideration of Trump than the Rosie O’Donnell sequence.
Can you imagine a Barack Obama, or even a gaffe-prone George Bush, or a Ronald Reagan, or Bill Clinton, or George H.W. Bush picking on a B-level TV actress in front of a national audience?
Has Trump become fully disconnected from the reality separating real reality and reality TV? Has too much time playing to dumb audiences in WWF wrestling and “The Apprentice” dumbed down Trump himself?
Under Hillary’s light pressure something inside Trump got unhinged and with that manifest unhinging, so too did Trump’s chances to surpass “Lyin Hillary,” as Trump so churlishly nicknames his opponent.
While most of his performance was disqualifying, truly Trump needn’t go further than those last two minutes, piling on about Rosie and fat folks and beauty queens and other such dithered blathering.
So convoluted by debate’s end had Trump’s syntax become that we’re not exactly sure what he was even hoping to communicate.
Trump’s was a political meltdown for the ages, and Hillary didn’t have to do a thing but to let him ramble and dig himself deeper. Eighty million Americans are now eye witnesses to political suicide by unrestrained mouth.
This debate surely threw fuel on the fire of that wacky conspiracy theory that Trump is actually working for the Clintons and that his entire candidacy has been a ruse to get his friend Hillary elected. Trump’s erratic display was convincing enough to promote such a crazed notion.
Returning to seriousness, acting as he did Monday night alone should disqualify Trump from consideration as president. America was given a gift to view, up close and personal, just how dysfunctional Trump behaves under even the modest stress that the crafty Clinton applied.
Imagine the same Trump you saw subjected to the toughest and shrewdest of world leaders working to get his goat. Oh, heaven help us.
Yes, Trump lost the election at “Rosie.” But wait, there’s more.
Second to his meltdown display of Rosies, Trump also self-sabotaged, boorishly bragging that not paying taxes makes him smart.
While Trump bemoans that our airports are Third World, that our freeways are crumbling and our bridges are falling and everything about America is “terrible, terrible,” he admits he hasn’t paid his fair share for having earned his fortune living here.
Where is there example of presidential leadership here? Yes, his tax moves may be technically legal. But Trump saying paying no taxes makes him smart also, by inference, makes you and me schmucks for paying for the very broken down airports, roads, bridges, security and military from which he benefits, yet bemoans.
In Trump-world, everyday Joe taxpayers like you and me are dumb suckers. So just who’s supposed to pay for all this surrounding us?
It gets worse: Trump’s proposed “tax plans” have “beautiful tax cuts for the rich” trickling down beautiful jobs for us dumb folks. The Trump Organization and family would be a primary benefactor.
We would be “dumb times two” if we let him get away with more of the same – especially under the shroud of the presidency.
There’s no need to go further. A reading of the debate transcript will have anyone’s jaw dropping multiple times over. Trump is wholly unfit by so many measures to represent Americans and America.
“Just say more crazy things,” Hillary goaded Trump at the debate. Trump took that bait, played his fate, and ran with crazy all night long.
Thank goodness he let all America see who and what he really is, before it was too late.
Thanks to something as trite as Rosie, Trump’s campaign is pushing up daisies.
Gary Horton is a Santa Clarita resident. “Full Speed to Port!” appears Wednesdays in The Signal.
