Donald J. Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee for President, isn't having the best month in politics. In fact, he is having one of the worst stretches in any election cycle of recent memory -- and it's his own fault. It's not some drawn-out scandal that has traditionally taken down politicians in the past. It's his own words. Not from 20 years ago, but from this present moment.
It was expected by many inside the Republican party, and perhaps the Democrats, that Trump would begin to tone down his rhetoric. By shifting gears to the general election, he would need to pivot to the center to win over key demographics that could propel him to the White House in November. Don’t hold your breath for that shifting of gears.
Not only did he not tone down his rhetoric after clinching the nomination, he intensified it. Donald Trump has missed nearly every opportunity to take advantage of his Democratic opponent’s missteps over the past three weeks. On May 23, the Office of Inspector General (OIG) released its report regarding the former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s email practices. This report concluded that Secretary Clinton did not comply with the agency’s policies regarding the use of a personal email server. Not only did she violate State policy, there is not any documentation to strengthen her claims that she ever requested or was granted permission to do so. This is in direct conflict with her repeated statements that “it was allowed” and that she “complied with every rule.”
Any opponent would have certainly taken that report and run with it. Instead, Mr. Trump began intensifying the attacks in regards to his personal civil case involving Trump University and its “students.” On May 27, Trump began a tirade against the federal judge involved in that particular case. He claimed that the Indianan judge was “Mexican” and that he should be recused because his parents were born in Mexico. Let’s be clear -- Donald Trump is saying that an officer of the court cannot impartially administer justice and uphold the U.S. Constitution because of where his/her parents are from. He defended his statement by saying it was an “inherent conflict of interest” for the judge to preside over the case because he was building a wall on the border between the United States and Mexico.
This story immediately caught fire and spread. This statement enveloped many precious news cycles that Trump could have instead used to hit his opponent with the OIG report. A statement such as that, if delivered during the Republican primary, may have given him a small bump in his poll numbers. But in a general election campaign, it was completely idiotic for Mr. Trump to become so distracted with his civil case that has absolutely nothing to do with the presidential race. He was so engulfed in his own comments that he missed the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) May jobs report. The economy only added 38,000 jobs during the month of May—not the expected 162,000. Any other candidate running against what has essentially become the potential third term of the sitting President would have used this dismal jobs report to demonstrate any weaknesses, whether true or not, with the Obama administration’s economic growth plan. Not Donald Trump. His inability to properly pivot to the general election is because his entire campaign apparatus continues having to answer for Mr. Trump’s political missteps.
I liked former Congressman Joe Scarborough’s golf analogy about the differences between the primary and the general election. He said, ”You play one game when you're at Augusta and it's 65 degrees and it's a light breeze. And it's a completely different game when you're at the British Open and it's 40 miles an hour and the wind and the rain and the sleet is coming straight at your face. He should understand that, but he doesn't understand it, it seems.”Scarborough went further, "He's basically on a par 5 with a putter. It's going to take him a long time to get to the hole." A long time, indeed.
After the worst terrorist attack on U.S. soil since 9/11, Trump congratulated himself on Twitter for being “right” about “radical Islamic terrorism.” To be fair, he did offer his condolences to all of those affected by this attack. But, any person who could congratulate themselves after a terrorist attack does not have the character or temperament to be the President of the United States.
On top of all of this, he proceeded to imply that the sitting President of the United States is in cahoots with ISIS. This type of attack is completely unprecedented in modern politics. To accuse President Obama of harboring sympathies with terrorists is absolutely absurd, but unfortunately it was not met with that much outrage from many news outlets. We have become so accustomed to these continuous extreme statements and conspiracy theories that are either developed or, at least, disseminated by Donald Trump that many have grown numb to them. It has unfortunately become the norm.
So many news cycles have been lost to these self-inflicted wounds by Donald Trump. His refusal to pivot to a general election-style campaign is doing all of his opponent’s work for her. His campaign has no clear command structure. His campaign has no idea where it is going to raise its money. His campaign is wasting time in states that haven't gone Democratic in over a generation. His campaign has no idea how to stay on message and to keep their candidate off Twitter. All of the blame rests solely on Donald Trump and his campaign of distractions. His many ideas about banning Muslims, or that many undocumented immigrants from Mexico are rapists, or that President Obama wasn't born in the United States, or that women should be punished for having abortions, or that John McCain is a loser for being captured in Vietnam, or that Saudi Arabia, Japan, and South Korea should obtain nuclear weapons, or that the U.S. should murder the families of suspected terrorists may have worked in the Republican primary, but it sure isn't going to work in the general election.
If these past few weeks are indicative of the next five months until election day, the general election is going to be called before a single ballot is cast.
