The Least Candidate

Aug. 5, 2016

It’s a safe bet that Donald Trump is the least informed, thinnest skinned, and most temperamentally unsuited of any potential president in memory.

All three Trump presidential qualifications were on display on ABC’s This Week program when George Stephanopolis asked him about Vladimir Putin and Ukraine.

As always, Trump’s response was absolute. “He’s not going to Ukraine, OK, just so you understand. He’s not going to go into Ukraine, all right. You can mark it down. You can put it down. You can take it anywhere you want.”

When Stephanopolis pointed out that Putin had, in fact, already gone into Ukraine and occupied the Crimean Peninsula, Trump made a dazzlingly fast pivot. He said it was weak leadership, NATO and President Obama who were to blame for the action he just said would never happen.

And there you had the Trump Trifecta: ignorance of the subject, overselling of his clueless perspective, and immediate blame of someone — anyone — to cover his mistake.

His campaign is not based on any real issues, which is a good thing for him. It’s based on the notion that the sky is falling, those people are to blame, and he, without so much as a single specific explanation of how he will do it, will save us.

First, though, there are enemies to vanquish. Anyone who disagrees with him is added to the list. Trump will then call them a mean name and attempt to Tweet them into submission.

He started by going after entire ethnicities, religions and genders. Mexican immigrants were rapists and murderers. After all, Trump said, they “ … aren’t sending their best … ” Then he added Muslims to the list of people who should be banned from immigrating, and added that those already here should be under constant surveillance.

Regrettably, Trump has a long track record of abusive language toward women. He’s called them “slobs,” “pigs,” fat slobs,” “fat pigs,” “disgusting pigs,” “sick” — oh dear, it’s a long list.

Yet, he says, “the women” love him, and he loves them.

Recently, Trump took his attack strategy to a level not previously seen in presidential politics. Most of us never even imagined it. At the Democratic National Convention, Khizr Khan made a speech while his wife Ghazala stood by his side. They lost their son, Humayun, a captain in the United States Army, in Afghanistan. Muslims, they were there to speak against Trump’s anti- Muslim proposals and suggested he had not made the sacrifices they had.

Trump was shocked that Hillary Clinton supporters at the Democratic Convention would say something critical about him. So he did the only thing he knows how to do: attack and insult, in this case, Gold Star parents who lost their son in service to our country. Besides, Trump said referring to his business deals, “I’ve made a lot of sacrifices.”

His most notable sacrifice has been the truth. His “tens of thousands” of Syrian refugees pouring in, “thousands of Muslims” dancing in the streets of New Jersey on 9/11, claims that we’re the most heavily taxed country in the world — the list of Trump’s preposterous fictions is now so long it would take Factcheck.org multiple pages just to catalog them all.

Trump, it turns out, is a bit of a dullard. He admits he doesn’t like to read books, apparently does not follow current events (or surely would have remembered his pal Putin invaded Ukraine in 2014), has no knowledge of the history or importance of NATO, no idea that presidents cannot impose tariffs, and no idea what Brexit was. The list of what he doesn’t know, that he should know, is even longer than his list of misogynistic insults of women.

His latest inanity is whining about the scheduled debates: Rigged by Hillary and the Democrats, he bellowed, because two of them will be the same night as NFL football games.

It’s a classic Trump lie. Debates are set by an independent commission comprised of an equal number of Democrats and Republicans. They’ve been doing it for three decades.

This year’s schedule was announced in September of 2015, months before anyone knew who the nominees would be. Two debates in 2012 were held on the same night as NFL games without a hitch.

He’s also incensed that fire marshals are attempting to enforce building capacity ordinances at his rallies, which is actually their job, and he has declared that the entire election is probably rigged. Anything that doesn’t go his way is rigged.

Donald Trump’s world is full of conspiracies he believes are designed to deprive him of what he deserves: everything. It’s the ultimate con job, and like all scams, the longer it goes, the trickier it becomes for him.

He has the least plans, the least knowledge, the least qualifications and the least clue. He’s the least candidate, maybe ever.