Posted on 08/07/2015 9:59:39 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
The first GOP 2016 presidential debate was substantive, fast-paced, informative and fun, of all things. A big reason for the fun was that TV celebrity and businessman Donald Trump was on stage. He brought his normal Trump persona to the stage and was brash and occasionally funny. He started off strong, in his own way. But he followed up these flashes with some amazingly tone-deaf, illogical, stupid and bizarre statements. Here are 10 of the worst.
1) Didn’t rule out a third-party run Bret Baier asked the candidates, “Is there anyone on stage, and can I see hands, who is unwilling tonight to pledge your support to the eventual nominee of the Republican party and pledge to not run an independent campaign against that person?”
Donald Trump was the only person to raise his hand. Baier noted that experts say a third-party run from a prominent candidate would kill the GOP’s chances of winning the election.
Trump made it clear that if the GOP wouldn’t nominate him, he was strongly considering a third-party run. “If I’m the nominee, I will pledge I will not run as an independent. But — and I am discussing it with everybody, but I’m, you know, talking about a lot of leverage.”
2) Refused to support eventual GOP nominee unless it was himself He also said, with what would become a pattern of semi-illiterate syntax, “I cannot say. I have to respect the person that, if it’s not me, the person that wins, if I do win, and I’m leading by quite a bit, that’s what I want to do. I can totally make that pledge.”
3) Said he loves the single payer healthcare system He was asked why, if he now says he opposes Obamacare, he supported single payer systems years ago. He said, “As far as single payer, it works in Canada. It works incredibly well in Scotland. It could have worked in a different age, which is the age you’re talking about here.” He went on to mention some stuff about a private system and about insurance companies and politicians working together (all of which might have been salient or worthwhile in the hands of someone who knew health policy in any way). When Rand Paul told him he was wrong to support single payer, Trump attempted to insult him by saying he had trouble hearing.
4) Said calling women disgusting fat pigs is just keeping it real Megyn Kelly pointed out that he speaks his mind but that he speaks very poorly of women. He responded by making a joke about Rosie O’Donnell, which kind of worked, as they spar a great deal. Kelly noted that the problem was with more women than O’Donnell, and he tried to defend himself on the grounds that the country is too politically correct.
Indeed it is! But not every instance of being an asshole is about being politically incorrect.
5) Admitted to buying off politicians When asked about his many contributions to Democrats, considering he’s running for a Republican nomination, Trump admitted “When I need something from them two years later, three years later, I call them, they are there for me.”
6) Admitted to having to pay people to attend his wedding Perhaps the saddest thing about admitting to buying off politicians for personal favors was that he called in a favor to get someone to come to his wedding!
“Well, I’ll tell you what, with Hillary Clinton, I said be at my wedding and she came to my wedding. You know why? She didn’t have a choice because I gave.” I know I’m not the expert on weddings that Trump is, as I’ve only had one and he’s had three, but I didn’t pay anyone to come to my wedding! That’s the saddest thing I’ve ever heard!
7) Was unable to substantiate his outlandish claims about the Mexican government Say what you want about Trump, he has brought a real diversity of thought to the immigration debate. At a time when there’s very little daylight between Republican and Democratic establishment figures on the immigration debate, many voters support Trump because he does present a different view. Pinning him down on that view, however, is almost impossible.
And when Chris Wallace asked him if he had any evidence for his claim that the Mexican government was sending criminals to the United States, Trump was unable or unwilling to answer. So Wallace gave him another 30 seconds to answer. He claimed he had conversations with unnamed Border Patrol agents and suggested that something they said led him to believe these claims about the Mexican government.
What’s sad about this is that there are candidates who could force better debates on the issues of their choosing, but Trump’s lack of substantive rhetoric will not actually effect any real change in policy.
8) Who better to help manage a bankrupt country than, uh, a guy who’s had a bunch of bankruptcies Yeah, he said that.
9) Couldn’t explain if or when he had become a Republican Trump was asked when he became a Republican. Here’s what he said:
As far as being a Republican is concerned, I come from a place, New York City, which is virtually, I mean, it is almost exclusively Democrat. And I have really started to see some of the negatives — as an example, and I have a lot of liking for this man, but the last number of months of his brother’s administration were a catastrophe. And unfortunately, those few months gave us President Obama. And you can’t be happy about that. 10) 24 hours? Closer to a month, Donald Asked how he would respond to a top Iranian general traveling to Moscow to meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin, Trump offered this word salad:
TRUMP: I would be so different from what you have right now. Like, the polar opposite. We have a president who doesn’t have a clue. I would say he’s incompetent, but I don’t want to do that because that’s not nice.
(LAUGHTER)
TRUMP: But if you look at the deals we make, whether it’s the nuclear deal with 24 hour periods — and by the way, before you get to the 24 hours, you have to go through a system. You look at Sgt. Bergdahl, we get Bergdahl, a traitor, and they get five of the big, great killers leaders that they want. We have people in Washington that don’t know what they’re doing. Now… If you understand what he’s saying beyond the joke about Obama, you speak Trump better than most. But his confusion about the terms of the deal — it’s 24 days, not 24 hours — aren’t the problem so much as the complete inability to form a coherent thought that can be communicated in any meaningful way to people not already a fan of the Trump celebrity.
History says that third parties hurt the incumbent party.
Not sure what’s with these people who demand a loyalty oath to the GOP. Seems so ridiculous. “You MUST support Jeb Bush if he becomes the nominee, even though we’d do everything to SABOTAGE YOU if you won it, just like we did with Sarah Palin.”
There isn’t any reason for Trump to let go of his leverage when the RNC is quite likely to use dirty tricks to disenfranchise Trump and his supporters at any moment.
I believe the nomination of Jeb Bush will produce the worst Republican rout in 2 generations, and I apologize if I’ve said that ten times, because I have. There is not the slightest smidgen of appeal to Jeb Bush. If apathy towards ROmney caused people to sit out the election, Jeb will quadruple those numbers. With the electoral math in place, the election will be a catastrophe and HRC (or *any* Dem) will walk away with it in an embarrassing, Mondale-grade landslide. The GOP will be finished, done, dead.
There were too many candidates on stage, and too little time to get to know them. They should have split it into two or more debates with luck of the draw to see which one a particular candidate would be in........................
READ MY LIPS: NO MORE BUSHES!.....
I hate lists.
They better be careful what they wish for. After all, all is fair in love and war. And if they sabotage his campaign and efforts to win the nomination enough, he may just tell them to take a hike and run as a third party candidate out of spite to hurt the establishment GOP. And I don't blame him. If they just leave him alone to live or die on his own, everybody wins. As it is, I think the GOP establishment is the problem, not Trump.
Hurts the party the 3rd party runner emerges from.
History says that third parties hurt the incumbent party.
_____________________________
Nahh. Thy just hurt the Republican Party.
George Wallace hurt Humphrey more than he hurt Nixon.
John Anderson hurt Carter.
Ralph Nader hurt Gore.
The record is that they hurt the party in power.
So who here raised their hand to support Jeb Bush as the nominated GOP candidate?
...Yeah that’s what I thought. Virtually none.
Again, not true of John Anderson, was it? (Even if Phil Crane did call Anderson “the classiest Democrat running” — in a Republican debate.)
http://thefederalist.com/author/mzhemingway/
Mollie Ziegler Hemingway is a senior editor at The Federalist. A longtime journalist, her work has appeared in the Wall Street Journal, USA Today, the Los Angeles Times, the Guardian, the Washington Post, CNN, National Review, GetReligion, Ricochet, Christianity Today, Federal Times, Radio & Records and many other publications.
1) They tried to get him to throw away the option of a third party run, not that he needs it since he is winning. They failed.
2) They tried to get him to pledge his support to an unnamed candidate. They failed.
3) He supported private healthcare, increasing insurance competition and a separate system to pay for indigents. Neither this author nor Rand Paul listened. They are both having a hard time.
4) He bashed Rosie and political correctness in one shot.
5) He is a business man and that’s the way the system works right now. He called the system broken twice.
6) He demonstrated that Clinton’s favors could be bought.
7) He probably made money at his wedding by having Clinton attend. And this author is jealous.
8) Somebody does have to get us out of bankruptcy or help us avoid it. Trump is the man. Not because 4 out of hundreds of deals needed to use the bankruptcy laws, but because Trump understands international trade issues and can bring jobs back to America.
9) He might not even be a Republican now, but we need him. If a Republican means being a Democrat lite like the GOPe, there are few freepers that are Republican.
10) It’s the art of the deal. And you don’t have to be an interpreter to understand we are making bad deals. And that Trump would make much much better deals.
Ralph Nader hurt Gore.
If not for Nader, Gore would have won Florida, and thus the Presidency...
The record is that they hurt the party in power.
As they say ‘right as rain’...
They should have all raised their hands. That would have changed the whole tenor of the evening.
What a pile of who gives a crap.
Didn't he even indicate that he had donated to every candidate on the stage? Then, didn't he go on to describe his donation(s) to the Clinton Foundation?
PLEASE - correct me if I am "mis-remembering" these things. LOL
“History says that third parties hurt the incumbent party.”
This is 100% true.
But a Jeb candidacy elects the Dem opponent just as certainly, IMO. Any Dem, named or unnamed. I really believe Jeb will be as embarrassing as he looks. The one thing about Jeb one can say is that he is very consistent/coherent (and I don’t mean his explication of his positions) I mean, he is a putz, he looks like a putz, he talks like a putz, he thinks like a putz, and he will deliver results like a putz. He is a sub-mediocre piece of nothing and should take his millions and go away.
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