(Fred Weinberg) – It didn’t take the Republican establishment—which already hates Donald Trump—from declaring the end of his candidacy when he said about John McCain what all of us have been thinking for years.
McCain’s war hero status does NOT qualify him to be President.
Fox News is upset, Britt Hume is in high dudgeon, CNN hosts have worked themselves into orgasmic paroxysms chanting Trump’s candidacy is dead. The broadcast media is only slightly more circumspect because they are all making money covering the show and they want the show to continue for a while.
There’s one radio talk show which even suggests that Trump will lose the GOP primaries and then endorse Hillary.
I’ll take the Vegas odds that he stays at number 1 for a while longer.
When CBS News quotes the Des Moines Register telling Trump to drop out of the show, you know that, in the words of the late Ed Sullivan, it’s a really big show!
Here are the facts:
Being a less than great fighter pilot and getting shot down over Hanoi does NOT make you any more of a hero than a GI who enlisted and defended the perimeter during the Tet Offensive, OR someone who was called up from his or her Guard unit from their quiet life and sent to Iraq. Everybody who has served honorably is, by definition, a hero.
John McCain, however, used his POW status and the undeniable (and highly admirable) fact that he refused the North Vietnamese offer of an early release to lever himself into a Congressional career where he has lined up with Democrats enough to make about 4,000,000 Republican voters sit on their hands when he ran for President in 2008.
The point that Trump was inartfully making was that such behavior does NOT qualify one to be President.
And the Washington Hackockracy went nuts because they thought that this was their chance to rid themselves of Trump.
Ummmm. Don’t think so.
You see, all of those people who either held their nose and voted for McCain or sat on their hands and stayed home are just as frustrated with Washington political hacks today as they were then. Maybe, after two terms of Barack Obama, more. And, like it or not, Trump is talking to them, singing their song.
Can he win?
My guess is still no. But I could be wrong. And, at least he is engaging people who were fleeing the party in droves.
It was enough for the tea party folks to take over the House and have a significant tea party influence on the Senate.
Trump is not a long-time conservative in the mold of a Ronald Reagan or a Barry Goldwater. But he’s a pretty smart businessman whose strength is diagnosing and solving problems.
The baggage he carries is his public persona, but, for the moment, it is that very persona which is keeping him on top despite the media—the entire media including Fox—waging all out war on him.
I would not be surprised to see Fox try and keep him out of the first debate.
The Huffington Post refuses to cover him in their political section, although their entertainment section, where they do cover him, is always more interesting and better read than what they call their political section.
I suspect that the only reason Fox doesn’t dare to exclude him from the debate is they would lose viewers in droves to the new Newsmax network.
At the end of the day, what you read, see and hear has nothing to do with what voters actually want or think. It has to do with money.
When you see a Republican commentator screaming that Trump is a clown show who should be drummed out of the party, rest assured, that’s just part of the big media show. As long as people watch, as long as Trump’s ratings are good, the show continues. If the American voter tires of him and his message, then, in his own words, he’s fired.
If that doesn’t happen…
Mr. Weinberg is publisher of the Penny Press. Get to know more about him by visiting www.PennyPressNV.com.
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