“I’ve been treated very unfairly” by the RNC, Donald Trump told CNN’s Anderson Cooper, in a townhall forum that Trump threatened to boycott because he complained that CNN treated him unfairly. What did CNN do to treat Trump unfairly? They had commentators on panels that criticized him. What did the RNC do to treat Trump unfairly, and thus negate his pledge to support the party’s nominee whoever it turned out to be? Er … Mitt Romney criticized him.
No, really:
Let’s face it — The Pledge has been a joke for some time. It served a purpose until the primaries started, which was to keep Trump from bailing out of the GOP process and launching a third-party bid. Over the last couple of months, though, it’s been clear that Trump is too self-absorbed to rally troops on behalf of someone else, and too thin-skinned to accept criticism, let alone defeat. No one who has paid any attention to Trump’s antics over the past year could possibly have thought that Trump would campaign for someone else, or even have anything nice to say about someone who beat him to the nomination.
If Trump thought Cooper would be sympathetic to this kind of argument, he got a surprise tonight. Cooper dressed him down for acting like a child when it came to the War Of The Wives:
Cooper asked Trump about his ongoing feud with rival Ted Cruz, which started after an anti-Trump super PAC circulated a racy image of Trump’s wife, Melania. Trump later retweeted an image of Melania next to Cruz’s wife, Heidi, in what Cooper called an “unflattering” pose. Trump said he thought the photo of Heidi was “nice,” and when pressed by Cooper, said, “I didn’t start it.”
Cooper responded by telling the Republican frontrunner “with all due respect, that’s the argument of a 5-year-old,” adding that “every parent knows that.” “That’s the problem,” Trump retorted. “Exactly that thinking is the problem this country has. I didn’t start this, he started this.”
If Trump believes that the RNC staged Mitt Romney’s criticism to make him look bad, does anyone think for a moment that Trump would take a loss at the convention as just the breaks of a well-fought contest? Puh-leeeeeeze. Trump either spikes the ball, or he takes it and goes home. There is no room in his world for another quarterback, and anything but cheerleading is all the evidence Trump needs to claim victimhood.
I never considered the pledge worth the paper it was written on (and that's true of all the candidates btw). What struck me as revealing during the town hall was Trump again revealed himself to be just another NY liberal .A questioner asked him what the 3 top priorities of the Federal Government was . His answer :
1. Security (no real issue there )
2. Healthcare
3. Education. That is not an answer that a constitutional limited government conservative would give . When asked to elaborate by Anderson Cooper ,he went into one of his typical incoherent spewing of pablum demonstrating he had no grasp of any of the issues.
All he really needs to do is memorize the Preamble to the Constitution. That would be a good start .(to “form a more perfect union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquillity, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity.”) .
Or he could look into the text to find the few powers designated to the Federal Government . Article I, Sec. 8; Articles II-V; Amendments XIII- XVI, XIX-XX, XXIII-XXVI. All can be catagorized as :
1) Defense, war prosecution, peace, foreign relations, foreign commerce, and interstate commerce 2) The protection of citizens’ constitutional rights , and ensuring that slavery remains illegal 3) Establishing federal courts inferior to SCOTUS 4) Copyright protection 5) Coining money 6) Establishing post offices and post roads 7) Establishing a national set of universal weights and measures 8 ) Taxation needed to raise revenue to perform these functions. Beyond that he can quote James Madison Federalist #45 “The powers delegated by the proposed Constitution to the federal government are few and defined. Those which are to remain in the State governments are numerous and indefinite.” But Trump doesn't believe in small government that has it's powers limited and enumerated in the Constitution . He believes in a big expansive government with powers defined by the Executive . A typical lib.
