Whatever self-discipline and human decency Donald Trump may have had seems now to have evaporated. Maybe it is the pressure of unremittingly negative press. Maybe he freaks out when polls show him losing. ("Something phony," he says, describing the same polling outlets he lauded last week showing him ahead). Maybe he never wanted to be president (this would be the self-sabotage theory). Maybe he knows come November he will be one more "loser."
Whatever the cause, the dam has burst and from his mouth flows one egregious, cringeworthy remark after another. There is no turning off the spigot now. Today, it was about a Purple Heart. He recounted that a veteran gave him his Purple Heart. Trump then told a crowd in Virginia, "I said, 'Man, that's big stuff.' I always wanted to get the Purple Heart. This was much easier."
Think about that. This was a guy who got four deferments before using bone spurs as a medical excuse to relieve his military service obligation. To get a Purple Heart, one must fight. Trump never had the will or the character to do so.
Moreover, who says "I wanted to get injured so I'd get recognition"? But, of course, Trump would not have wanted to lose an eye or leg or suffer traumatic brain injury or any of the hundreds of other horrible injuries brave men and women have endured to fight for their country. He maybe just wanted to get, you know, a little bit injured so he could get a pretty medal. Glory without real sacrifice seems to be his desire.
[Trump steps up criticism of Khans and GOP leaders]
We repeatedly see that when Trump is confronted with someone of superior character (the Purple Heart recipient) or a more sympathetic figure (the Gold Star family), he insists he is just as worthy, just as willing to sacrifice. But he's not. He never has been. He's spent his whole life making himself rich and famous, going through wives, bullying people with less money. And now, forced to compare himself to men and women who dwarf his accomplishments and character, he is at a loss. Well, if I say I wanted to get a Purple Heart, that'll make me close to the real recipient, right? If I worked hard to get rich, that's a sacrifice like losing a son, don't you think? No and no.
Trump must trivialize others' tragedies and achievements while he finds bizarre ways to elevate himself. Even if you thought in these terms (Hey, I could have been injured, too), the vast majority of people would know that saying so makes one sound crass, obnoxious and maybe a little sick. Trump has no such ability. People are things, props in his play. Others' feelings and worthiness are of no consequence to him. Everything gets viewed through the prism of making him seem braver, smarter, more courageous and more accomplished than he is. The Orlando mass murder thereby becomes a data point for him to tweet that he first understood what was going on. (I have no idea what he imagines he understood that others missed.). He was right, he brags.
Moreover, no one is in a position to compel him to apologize about anything. Not his children, whom everyone fawned over at the convention. To the contrary, Eric Trump got in on the act. He falsely insisted his father had apologized and could not bring himself to say his father was wrong for attacking a Gold Star family. Hey, the apple does not fall from the tree.
Call it what you will — rotten character, narcissism, tone-deafness — but this is the real Donald Trump. He has no place in elected office, let alone the White House. If Republicans who endorsed him had an ounce of common sense and a sense of responsibility, they'd be pulling their support and urging him to get out of the race. But they won't. And for that there is no good explanation or excuse other than blind partisanship and cowardice.