Agreed, Trump damaged himself,
First, he was for the lives of babies being snuffed out like nothing, now, he says he is not for it. Praises Planned Parenthood.
But he went into Truther territory.
There could be some longterm damage, I think he stands to lose 5% at least of the SC vote, that may not be much but it could continue to grow.
He needs to get 51% or more of the delegates, otherwise, it can be a brokered convention.
What's bizarre about this is that we had this same debate during the 1st or 2nd debate the last time Trump brought it up. Didn't actually hurt him either, and not sure why something he said for weeks will hurt him now.
That said, it wasn't Trutherism. It's a fact that the Bush administration was warned about incoming terrorist attacks but ignored the warnings.
He never went into Truther territory. I just checked the transcript and it confirms what I remember from the debate.
He did say “he lied,” however, then quickly corrected it to “it was based on lies.” I’m willing to give him the benefit of the doubt on that one. Many people believe the decision was based on a British intelligence report that was later “proved” to be false, so somebody lied, but if the falsity of that intelligence report is still accepted, then it wasn’t us who lied, and it wasn’t George W. Bush.
I never liked DJT, but if people voted him in that was the way of things.
After hearing him call GWB a deliberate liar insinuate (for the second time ) that GWB allowed 911, after all of that it is evident to me that DJT is just a rotten SOB, who should stay on TV and away from politics.
It is also evident that DJT believes these terrible things about GWB, which, in my opinion, makes him extremely gullible - that alone disqualifies him for any political office ... The man is a character without character ... a chameleon at best.
“Praises Planned Parenthood.”
No, he was referring back in time, and trying to explain why he had said what he said about PP helping women’s health, statements he made before the hideous abortion tapes came out. No one knew that was going on.
Of course, you probably understand that, just like Jeb! or whoever it was that tried to tag him with it.
“But he went into Truther territory.”
I suppose the transcripts of that debate will come out and it will reveal that he definitely did not go into truther territory.
And that's where Trump lost me.
Here's the reality:
- While it's true that 9-11 happened on Bush's watch, the intelligence failures that allowed it to happen began long before Bush took office. They happened under the Clinton Administration and came to fruition during Bush's watch.
- The Clinton Administration, at Jamie Gorelik's urging, prevented the FBI and CIA from sharing intelligence that would've exposed the terrorist plot being executed in our own country by muslim terrorists that were attending commercial airline flight training schools, paying cash for that training, then leaving (not completing the classes) after learning how to fly -- but not take off or land.
- Trump ignored the 17 worthless U.N. resolutions passed during the Clinton and Bush years which declared Saddam Hussein a threat to the middle east, and the world. Same resolutions acknowledged Hussein was either developing or already had weapons of mass destruction (an ambiguous term at best, which could've meant everything from biological to chemical to nuclear weapons) and had in fact, already used them against the Kurds in northern Iraq. We also had satellite photo's showing the movement of those WMD's exiting Iraq and heading towards Syria. It was a two and a half mile long convoy of Iraqi military trucks. I still remember those photo's.
- In the context of 9-11 and the country experiencing its worst attack on homeland soil since Pearl Harbor, a President has to make the best decision he can with the best information available. With all the information on the table for all to see, George W. Bush made the best decision he could. It is fact that Saddam Hussein directly threatened the United States of America in the wake of 9-11, and it is a fact that Saddam Hussein celebrated the terrorist attacks against this country. It would've been foolish for this country to not respond to Saddam Hussein. I personally believe that going into Afghanistan was 100% justified. That's where Osama Bin Laden was and by God he needed to be held accountable for what he did.
I've always had reservations about Iraq but we had to take that threat seriously too. Judging Iraq and whether or not it was the right thing to do in hindsight serves no useful purpose IMO. Bush was "damn'ed if he did, damn'ed if he didn't" on Iraq. At the end of the day, there were a HANDFUL of voices saying "don't go." The consensus - INCLUDING EVERY SINGLE DEMOCRAT LEADER (Hillary Clinton, Harry Reid, John Kerry and more..) was TO GO, and we did.
If there were any single piece of VALUABLE hindsight in all of this, it's that as soon as Saddam Hussein was dead, we should've left Iraq as soon as possible. We were CHEERED when we rolled into Baghdad and chased Hussein out. We were CHEERED AGAIN when Hussein was caught and turned over to the Iraqi's for justice. At that point, we should've turned the country back over to the Iraqi's and left. It was THEIR country to defend, not ours and we should've forced them to stand up and do it.
Coddling them and getting into nation building based on the "once we broke it, we had to fix it" was complete bullshit IMO. Iraq was already broke. Fixing it BEGAN with getting rid of Saddam Hussein. The rest of the job was the Iraqi's. Not ours. Not to the tune of thousands of American's deaths and not to the tune of $5.2T.
The single biggest mistake of Iraq was leaving ANYONE and ANYTHING behind in Iraq for Obama to finish the job with. Clearly Obama had no intentions of Iraq being a success story for the American military or American foreign policy. I think many people (myself, others here on FR, foreign policy and military experts outside FR)) either suspected or KNEW Obama would f' up Iraq, and he did. That's the single biggest mistake, which BTW isn't Bush's fault --- that's on Obama! Every President inherits the problems of the previous President. That was certainly true in Bush's case with all the Clinton Administration intelligence failures, and we didn't hear Bush blame Clinton a single time did we? The Obama mantra for over seven years has been "Bush's fault!"
I don't accept Iraq was Bush's fault, and certainly not Bush's fault alone.
And THAT is why Donald Trump lost my support last night. He acted worse than a petulant child when he went on his "9-11 truther" rant last night against George W. Bush. Clearly Donald Trump isn't capable of acting Presidential, and he's not going to develop that capability. I said way back in the beginning that at some point Trump needed to start "acting Presidential" and that if he didn't, sooner or later he'd start losing support.
Last night was his opportunity and he BLEW IT BIG TIME. I suspect I'm not the only (former) Trump supporter who watched that and was horrified at his behavior.
Not sure who I'm going to support going forward (likely Cruz, my second choice) but it looks like I'm going to have to figure that as it now appears the Republican Race just went completely up for grabs and my primary vote might actually matter this time when the race comes to Illinois.