Trump’s Terrible, Horrible, No-Good, Very Bad Two Weeks

Donald Trump lost Wisconsin last night to Ted Cruz.  And not by just a little.  Cruz beat Trump by 16 points, and that’s after Trump had been beating Cruz a week earlier by 6 points – 39% to 33%.

Republican presidential candidate, Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, waves to his supporters as he arrives at a campaign stop at Waukesha County Exposition Center, Monday, April 4, 2016, in Waukesha, Wis. (AP Photo/Nam Y. Huh)

So what happened?  Why did Donald Trump’s numbers drop like a rock?  Well, just about everything that could go wrong, did go wrong for Trump.  Let’s review.

It started with the big flap about Trump and Cruz disparaging the appearance of each other’s wives.  Trump looked worse in this embarrassing debacle because he PERSONALLY retweeted a particularly unflattering photo of Ted Cruz’s wife Heidi.  It was stupid and unprofessional and mean-spirited and juvenile on Trump’s part.  And it hurt him – a lot.

2 a lot

Then Corey Lewandowski, Trump’s campaign manager, was accused of assaulting a female reporter who was approaching Trump to ask a question.  Lewandowski allegedly grabbed Michelle Fields’ arm with sufficient pressure to leave bruises.  The video of the confrontation was shown over and over on cable news.  I’ve seen it quite a few times, and for the life of me, I can’t see anything that constitutes a criminal offense (having practiced law myself for nearly 20 years, and seen my fair share of criminal cases.)  But whatever the ultimate result in the case, it hurt the Trump campaign.

3 hurt the trump campaign

Trump then managed to alienate both pro-life and pro-choice voters, when he declared that women who have abortions, should be punished.  The pro-life point of view has always been that it is the abortionist who should be subject to criminal prosecution, not the woman, who should always be treated with compassion, and certainly not punished.  And of course the pro-choice point of view is that destroying the unborn human life is of no consequence, so no one has done anything wrong.

4 anything wrong

Trump then, in a later interview, further disappointed pro-life folks when he stated that “… the laws are set.  And I think we have to leave it that way.”  Well, since Roe v. Wade basically allows abortion on demand, to “leave it that way” means to leave Roe in place, which is clearly not satisfactory to pro-life folks (like myself.)  Fortunately, the Trump campaign, realizing that Donald had stepped in it again, clarified his pro-choice-sounding comments, by releasing the following statement:

“Mr. Trump gave an accurate account of the law as it is today, and made clear it must stay that way – until he is President.  Then he will change the law through his judicial appointments and allow the states to protect the unborn.”

5 protect the unborn

Donald Trump also waded into the foreign policy arena, opining that the United States should allow/encourage South Korea and Japan to develop nuclear weapons to defend themselves against a nuclear-armed North Korea, so they aren’t so dependent on the United States’ nuclear arsenal to defend them.  The Obama Administration, and many of their friends in the mainstream press, took turns painting Donald Trump as a naive, dangerous war monger – but Donald is actually on to something here.  Let me explain.

The only country on earth, that has the leverage with North Korea, to get them to back off their nuclear recklessness, is China.  China has been resistant to exercising this leverage with North Korea.  China fears its local rivals, Japan and South Korea, developing nuclear weapons.  A serious discussion between the United States and its allies, Japan and South Korea, about their developing a nuclear weapons program, is probably the only thing which will spur China to exert pressure on North Korea.  Let’s not reject this tool in our toolbox out of hand.  So in my opinion, criticism of Trump, relative to Japan and South Korea, is unwarranted.

6 is unwarranted

Similarly, Trump has been criticized for saying that our NATO allies are not pulling their weight in the alliance, and that NATO is obsolete.  Well he’s right – our NATO allies are far too dependent on the U.S. taxpayer to pay for their defense.  Our European allies need to step up, pay the 2% of their GDP they have committed to for defense, and stop depending so much on the United States.  However, unlike Trump, I would not say that NATO is obsolete.  NATO still plays a key role in maintaining peace and security on the European continent, against both Russian aggression and terrorism – even though there have been woeful deficiencies on both counts recently (the Russians successfully annexed Crimea, and the terrorists successfully attacked Paris and Brussels.)

7 and brussels

So all that being said, where are we after Wisconsin?  Hillary is still likely to be the Democratic nominee (assuming she’s not in jail), even after Bernie Sanders wiped the floor with her in Wisconsin (and as a matter of fact in 6 of the last 7 primary states.)  And I think Donald Trump is still likely to be the Republican nominee for President, even though his loss in Wisconsin last night makes it tougher for him to reach that magic number, 1,237 (delegates), before the July convention in Cleveland.  That means that Ted Cruz will continue to battle it out with Trump all the way to the convention, and no one knows what will happen there.

8 happen there

As an old Chinese curse says “May you live in interesting times.”  We sure do.

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