CNN Townhall: Two Steps Forward
“The problem with Rondesanctimonious is that he needs a personality transplant, and those are not yet available.”: One Step Back
Why? Why does Trump insist on this junior high rhetoric?
It’s embarrassing. He’s only impressing his base with these silly attacks. It doesn’t persuade anybody to move their support to him.
He’s negotiating.
It has gotten him this far in life and he hasn't really seen it blow up in his face yet is the easiest way to explain it.
I'm not a fan of the childish name calling, but the electoral landscape of 2015-2016 was desperate for someone to break the mystique of Hillary, and looking at the Republican candidates of that cycle, everyone else was going to lose to her, some of them happily. Trump was great at attracting eyeballs to news channels at the time, and the verbal abuse was effective at clearing the table in the primary, most prominently with Jeb Bush and Marco Rubio, who were really knocked out of national prominence for years... all because of petty name calling.
Is the electoral landscape of 2023-2024 as hungry for what Trump offers? Time will tell.