Let us review.
Donald Trump on former prisoner of war John McCain:
“He’s not a war hero. He was a war hero because he was captured. I like people who weren’t captured.”
Donald Trump on Mexican immigrants:
“When Mexico sends its people, they’re not sending their best. … They’re sending people that have lots of problems, and they’re bringing those problems with us. They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists.”
Donald Trump, after learning that two of his supporters beat up a Latino man in his name:
“I will say that people who are following me are very passionate. They love this country and they want this country to be great again. They are passionate.”
Donald Trump on Muslims, reading his own press release to a cheering crowd of supporters:
“Donald J. Trump is calling for a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States until our country’s representatives can figure out what the hell is going on.”
Donald Trump on Rosie O’Donnell:
“If I were running ‘The View,’ I’d fire Rosie O’Donnell. I mean, I’d look at her right in that fat, ugly face of hers, I’d say, ‘Rosie, you’re fired.'”
Donald Trump on Arianna Huffington, via Twitter:
“(Arianna Huffington) is unattractive both inside and out. I fully understand why her former husband left her for a man- he made a good decision.”
Donald Trump on Megyn Kelly (after she reminded him during the first Republican debate that he has called women he doesn’t like “fat pigs,” “dogs,” “slobs” and “disgusting animals”): Kelly had “blood coming out of her wherever.” Later, via Twitter, he called Kelly a “bimbo.”
Donald Trump on President Obama, via Twitter: “Our great African American President hasn’t exactly had a positive impact on the thugs who are so happily and openly destroying Baltimore!”
And this, from Trump’s victory speech this week in Nevada, where he won 45.9 percent of the votes:
“We won with young. We won with old. We won with highly educated. We won with poorly educated. I love the poorly educated.”
This man, who wants to be our president, celebrating one of the causes of poverty in America.
We in the media helped to create this monster.
Sure, Donald Trump is the inevitable outcome of years of Republican pandering to the far right, but we gave him wings.
Not all of us, but too many of us, cast his hateful rhetoric as entertaining. It was “wacky.”
“Outrageous.” “Crazy.” I found all of these descriptions with a quick Google search. They sound like reviews of a skit from “Saturday Night Live” — which Trump has hosted, of course, because he’s just so entertaining.
The day after Trump won Nevada, the latest Quinnipiac poll showed him beating Ohio’s Gov. John Kasich by five points — in Ohio.
This poll came out the day after Kasich, the GOP candidate the media has painted as a moderate, told a crowd in Virginia that he owed his victory in 1978 to “women, who left their kitchens” to go knock on doors for him. Unbeknownst to Kasich, apparently, many women were pursuing careers by ’78, and those still at home were doing plenty of work that had nothing to do with food preparation.
Kasich’s depiction of women came as no surprise to those of us here in Ohio who remember his public claim that political wives are “doing the laundry” while guys like him chase their dreams. John Kasich sees women as enablers of male ambition, and his political pawns. And so last weekend he signed a bill to defund Planned Parenthood, which means a loss of state money for breast-cancer screenings, STD testing and other health care that has nothing to do with abortion.
What a moderate, that guy Kasich.
And now he’s losing to Trump, in his own state. Donald Trump on his popularity:
“I could stand in the middle of 5th Avenue and shoot somebody, and I wouldn’t lose voters.”
Pundits, one after another, complain, “He’s not funny anymore.”
With a straight face, they say this.
Connie Schultz is a Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist and professional in residence at Kent State University’s school of journalism. She is the author of two books, including “…and His Lovely Wife,” which chronicled the successful race of her husband, Sherrod Brown, for the U.S. Senate. To find out more about Connie Schultz (con.schultz@yahoo.com) and read her past columns, please visit the Creators Syndicate Web page at www.creators.com.
COPYRIGHT 2016 CREATORS.COM
Photo: Donald Trump flexes his muscles as he talks with caucus participants while visiting a Nevada Republican caucus site at Palo Verde High School in Las Vegas. REUTERS/Jim Young
