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Donald Trump Is Already Doomed: Why His Campaign Is A Bigger Disaster Than His Hair

Photo by: Dennis Van Tine/STAR MAX/IPx 6/16/15 Donald Trump announces his Candidacy for President of The United States of America at Trump Tower. (NYC)
Photo by: Dennis Van Tine/​STAR MAX/​IPx
6/​16/​15
Donald Trump announces his Candidacy for President of The United States of America at Trump Tower.
(NYC)

So far, Donald Trump’s pres­i­den­tial cam­paign has lived up to, and arguably exceed­ed, every expec­ta­tion for self-beclown­ing while also simul­ta­ne­ous­ly hav­ing det­o­nat­ed a 50 mega­ton crazy bomb inside the GOP. Indeed, every time he’s opened his yap since announc­ing, some­thing hor­ren­dous has spilled out. Whoever start­ed the rumor that Trump might be a Democratic Party appa­ratchik sent to infil­trate the GOP nom­i­na­tion process and det­o­nate one crazy-bomb after anoth­er might actu­al­ly be onto some­thing. Trump’s been act­ing errat­i­cal­ly enough to mer­it some seri­ous ques­tion­ing not only about his par­ty loy­al­ty, but also whether he’s caught in the throes of a ner­vous break­down. Maybe it’s both.

Trump might very well be the least self-aware politi­cian in the his­to­ry of mod­ern cam­paign­ing, not only because he stu­pid­ly grap­pled onto the third and fourth rails of Republican pol­i­tics — rape and race — but in the wake of doing so he can’t stop respond­ing to the pre­dictable back­lash, thus keep­ing the sto­ry about call­ing Mexicans “rapists” alive for much longer than it oth­er­wise would’ve been. If he was half the politi­cian he thinks he is, he’d sim­ply shut the hell up and allow the sto­ry to fade away. By now, and due most­ly to his total lack of self-con­trol, every­one knows what he said about Mexicans, and they’re ver­bal­ly and deserved­ly smack­ing him in the back of his clown­ish head.

Let’s first recap some of the most recent respons­es to Trump’s Mexicans-are-rapists state­ment, then we’ll get into Trump’s responses:

• Mitt Romney, who deaf­en­ing­ly toot­ed near­ly every imag­in­able racial dog-whis­tle dur­ing his 2012 cam­paign (remem­ber “Obama Isn’t Working” and Obama’s poli­cies are “for­eign?”), denounced Trump’s rapists remark at an Independence Day parade in New Hampshire, say­ing, “I think he made a severe error in say­ing what he did about Mexican-Americans.” Trump was talk­ing about undoc­u­ment­ed work­ers, so it’s refresh­ing that Romney would add “Americans” to that title.

• George Pataki, mean­while, referred to Trump’s remarks “divi­sive rhetoric,” which is clear­ly soft-ped­al­ing what ought to be described as “unfor­giv­ably stu­pid and offen­sive.” But we’ll take it.

• On Fox News Sunday, George Will couldn’t stop talk­ing about Trump’s awful­ness, going so far as to com­pare Trump to the noto­ri­ous Todd Akin, who infa­mous­ly described rape as “legit­i­mate rape.” Ouch.

Said Will:

“Picture him on stage in [the GOP debate in] Cleveland,” Will said on Fox News Sunday this morn­ing. “He says some­thing hideous­ly inflam­ma­to­ry — which is all he knows how to say — and then what do the oth­er nine peo­ple on stage do? Do they either become com­plic­it in what he said by their silence, or do they all have to attack him? The debate gets hijacked. The process gets hijacked. At the end of the day he is a one-man Todd Akin. He’s Todd Akin with ten dif­fer­ent facets.”

I’m not sure what exact­ly Will means by “Todd Akin with ten dif­fer­ent facets,” but sure. Why not.

• The reign­ing Miss Universe, Pauline Vega, called Trump’s remarks “hurt­ful and unfair.”

• Jeb Bush, whose wife Columba is Mexican, said:

“To make these extra­or­di­nar­i­ly ugly kind of com­ments is not reflec­tive of the Republican Party,” Mr. Bush said about Mr. Trump, whose com­ments caused NBC, Univision, Macy’s and oth­ers to cut ties with him. “He’s doing this — he’s not a stu­pid guy, so I don’t assume he thinks that every Mexican cross­ing the bor­der is a rapist. He’s doing this to inflame and incite and to draw atten­tion, which seems to be the orga­niz­ing prin­ci­ple of his cam­paign,” Mr. Bush said.

• But, actu­al­ly, the most remark­able attack on Trump came from this guy:

Rick Perry and Sean Hannity
Rick Perry and Sean Hannity

That’s Rick Perry aboard a bor­der patrol gun boat prac­ti­cal­ly dry-hump­ing an auto­mat­ic rifle aimed at Mexico, which, come to think of it, might actu­al­ly be moreoffen­sive than what Trump said. And yet, the guy who dressed up in bor­der patrol regalia with Sean Hannity ripped into Trump’s state­ment about Mexicans, say­ing:

“Donald Trump does not rep­re­sent the Republican par­ty,” Perry added. “I was offend­ed by his remarks. Hispanics in America, and Hispanics in Texas, from the Alamo to Afghanistan, have been extra­or­di­nary peo­ple… they have served nobly. To paint with that broad a brush — he’s going to have to defend those remarks. I nev­er will.”

Nope, Perry won’t defend Trump’s remarks, but give the for­mer Texas gov­er­nor a big ass machine gun and he’ll anni­hi­late Mexican immi­grants by the boat load. But call­ing them “rapists” is inde­fen­si­ble to Perry. Don’t get me wrong, they’re both demons on immi­gra­tion, but it’s hilar­i­ous to observe a guy who wants to shoot Mexicans scold­ing anoth­er guy who believes Mexicans are rapists.

The only two can­di­dates to rush to Trump’s defense have been, nat­u­ral­ly, Ted Cruz and Chris Christie. Clearly none of these guys got the GOP memo about Latino out­reach. And you know what? Great. There’s real­ly noth­ing wrong with the Republican Party com­mit­ting polit­i­cal sui­cide. Along those lines, Trump is the first to tie cin­der blocks to his feet and jump head-first into the Hudson. Trump, suf­fer­ing from an almost Tourettes-like com­pul­sion to counter-attack, has respond­ed to all of the attacks.

So how did Trump respond to all of this crit­i­cism? Let’s review:

• Trump called Pauline Vega a “hyp­ocrite,” say­ing on Sunday: “Miss Universe, Pauline Vega, crit­i­cized me for telling the truth about ille­gal immi­gra­tion, but then said she would keep the crown. Hypocrite.”

• He hit back at Jeb Bush, writ­ing:

“Today, Jeb Bush once again proves that he is out of touch with the American peo­ple,” Trump wrote Saturday. “Just like the sim­ple ques­tion asked of Jeb on Iraq, where it took him five days and mul­ti­ple answers to get it right, he doesn’t under­stand any­thing about the bor­der or bor­der secu­ri­ty. In fact, Jeb believes ille­gal immi­grants who break our laws when they cross our bor­der come ‘out of love.’”

Maybe Trump is right and Bush doesn’t know any­thing about bor­der secu­ri­ty or, for that mat­ter, Iraq. But what does Trump call­ing Mexicans “rapists” have any­thing to do with bor­der security?

• Trump also went ad hominem against Rick Perry, crit­i­ciz­ing the for­mer governor’s trade­mark smart-guy glasses:

Screen-Shot-2015-07-05-at-11.45.03-AM

• And final­ly, dur­ing an inter­view on Fox News (Trump’s best friend right now), he lament­ed why-oh-why every­one thinks he’s a racist:

“It seems like I’m sort of the whip­ping post because I bring it up. And I don’t under­stand whether you are lib­er­al or whether you are con­ser­v­a­tive or whether you are Republican, Democrat — why wouldn’t you talk about a prob­lem?” Trump said Saturday. “The crime is rag­ing. It’s vio­lent, and peo­ple don’t want to even talk about it. If you talk about it, you are a racist. I don’t under­stand it.”

Aww. Poor you. I’ve said this about celebri­ties who mar­ket in con­tro­ver­sial state­ments, and it total­ly applies here: if you delib­er­ate­ly say some­thing out­ra­geous, don’t act all shocked and hurt when peo­ple become out­raged. It’s part of the game. If Trump doesn’t want to be a “whip­ping post” then stop say­ing things that incite peo­ple to whip him. There’s this lit­tle thing called account­abil­i­ty, and, frankly, I thought the Republican Party is all about tak­ing per­son­al respon­si­bil­i­ty. Not Trump, though, who thinks every­one is stu­pid except him.

But as Trump ric­o­chets around the GOP field, wreak­ing may­hem and under­min­ing the par­ty, allow me to join the cho­rus of lib­er­als who are hop­ing he’ll just keep going. Because in terms of anni­hi­lat­ing the GOP brand, he’s doing a fan­tas­tic job. In fact, I might actu­al­ly donate some mon­ey to his cam­paign today.

MORE BOB CESCA.