Trump Files for Moral Bankruptcy
Over the weekend, Donald J. Trump did what he always does when things go south for him. He walked away. He announced he is not the man at 70 he had been at 59 when he had boasted of sexual assault, and he pledged "to be a better man tomorrow." With that, he effectively declared moral bankruptcy, paying about a dime on the dollar of sincerity.
It was, of course, what Trump had done six times in business, only this time the crisis was not about his finances, but his character. He had been caught talking trash about women. He has been caught boasting about committing the sort of sex crimes transit cops are always on the lookout for. He said he had hit on a married woman soon after he himself had been married. For all of that, he had "regret."
Then, like the angel he thinks he is, he took flight. He left his own body and, looking down, pronounced in his videotaped apology that the Donald J. Trump who said all those repugnant things, the Donald J. Trump who managed to break centuries of newspaper tradition against using certain words, the Donald J. Trump who issued a casting call for the alleged victims of Bill Clinton, the Donald J. Trump who often talked about women in the most despicable terms, the Donald J. Trump who listened to Howard Stern take apart his daughter's physique like she was a Lego creation, the Donald J. Trump who went vile on Megyn Kelly and who has called women "dogs" and "pigs" and who berated a former Miss Universe for gaining weight and who made a tabloid spectacle of his extramarital affair with Marla Maples, that that Donald J. Trump doesn't exist anymore. The man erased his own past.
Anderson Cooper, one of the two moderators at Sunday night's debate in St. Louis, begged to differ. "You bragged that you have sexually assaulted women. Do you understand that?"
"No, I didn't say that at all," Trump replied. "I don't think you understood what was -- this was locker room talk. I'm not proud of it. I apologize to my family. I apologize to the American people. Certainly I'm not proud of it. But this is locker room talk." And then, forsaking segues and showing contempt for his audience, he veered into the blood-soaked Middle East. "You know, when we have a world where you have ISIS chopping off heads, where you have -- and, frankly, drowning people in steel cages, where you have wars and horrible, horrible sights all over, where you have so many bad things happening, this is like medieval times. We haven't seen anything like this, the carnage all over the world."
Bill Clinton was in the audience. He smiled from time to time, but God only knows what he was thinking. It has been almost two decades since his affair with Monica Lewinsky was revealed and yet the scandal stalks him like a vagrant cat looking for a handout of milk. We have become inured to all this -- the sex, the lying, the slippery definitions of sex, the bouncing tenses -- is, is, was, was -- the tawdriness of it all, the erasure of the line between private and public. Two men in that debate room had much to account for.
Hillary Clinton had the chance to put away Trump. She failed. He was able to pivot, to move on to other subjects, some of which, like her emails, were awkward for her. She did not dwell on the odious tape, 11 years old and stinking with rancid sexism, a dialogue between morons, two men frozen in their adolescence, and she may not have done so because of those alleged Bill Clinton victims sitting in the audience and who had been all over TV just an hour or so earlier. They seemed so pleasant, middle-aged like Hillary. She could not possibly attack them. The whole subject must bring her pain. Best to talk about something else.
And so Trump's diversion worked. He lives to fight another day, to continue to bring embarrassment and shame to the Republican Party and the political careerists who would risk a debacle of a presidency rather than take a stand on principle. Lies spill from Trump's mouth and he exudes bigotry, yet he learned long ago that only suckers pay their debts and take responsibility for what they've done. He simply moves on. If he succeeds this time, then we are not his creditors, but as morally bankrupt as he is.
Trump Files for Moral Bankruptcy
Over the weekend, Donald J. Trump did what he always does when things go south for him. He walked away. He announced he is not the man at 70 he had been at 59 when he had boasted of sexual assault, and he pledged "to be a better man tomorrow." With that, he effectively declared moral bankruptcy, paying about a dime on the dollar of sincerity.
It was, of course, what Trump had done six times in business, only this time the crisis was not about his finances, but his character. He had been caught talking trash about women. He has been caught boasting about committing the sort of sex crimes transit cops are always on the lookout for. He said he had hit on a married woman soon after he himself had been married. For all of that, he had "regret."
Then, like the angel he thinks he is, he took flight. He left his own body and, looking down, pronounced in his videotaped apology that the Donald J. Trump who said all those repugnant things, the Donald J. Trump who managed to break centuries of newspaper tradition against using certain words, the Donald J. Trump who issued a casting call for the alleged victims of Bill Clinton, the Donald J. Trump who often talked about women in the most despicable terms, the Donald J. Trump who listened to Howard Stern take apart his daughter's physique like she was a Lego creation, the Donald J. Trump who went vile on Megyn Kelly and who has called women "dogs" and "pigs" and who berated a former Miss Universe for gaining weight and who made a tabloid spectacle of his extramarital affair with Marla Maples, that that Donald J. Trump doesn't exist anymore. The man erased his own past.
Anderson Cooper, one of the two moderators at Sunday night's debate in St. Louis, begged to differ. "You bragged that you have sexually assaulted women. Do you understand that?"
"No, I didn't say that at all," Trump replied. "I don't think you understood what was -- this was locker room talk. I'm not proud of it. I apologize to my family. I apologize to the American people. Certainly I'm not proud of it. But this is locker room talk." And then, forsaking segues and showing contempt for his audience, he veered into the blood-soaked Middle East. "You know, when we have a world where you have ISIS chopping off heads, where you have -- and, frankly, drowning people in steel cages, where you have wars and horrible, horrible sights all over, where you have so many bad things happening, this is like medieval times. We haven't seen anything like this, the carnage all over the world."
Bill Clinton was in the audience. He smiled from time to time, but God only knows what he was thinking. It has been almost two decades since his affair with Monica Lewinsky was revealed and yet the scandal stalks him like a vagrant cat looking for a handout of milk. We have become inured to all this -- the sex, the lying, the slippery definitions of sex, the bouncing tenses -- is, is, was, was -- the tawdriness of it all, the erasure of the line between private and public. Two men in that debate room had much to account for.
Hillary Clinton had the chance to put away Trump. She failed. He was able to pivot, to move on to other subjects, some of which, like her emails, were awkward for her. She did not dwell on the odious tape, 11 years old and stinking with rancid sexism, a dialogue between morons, two men frozen in their adolescence, and she may not have done so because of those alleged Bill Clinton victims sitting in the audience and who had been all over TV just an hour or so earlier. They seemed so pleasant, middle-aged like Hillary. She could not possibly attack them. The whole subject must bring her pain. Best to talk about something else.
And so Trump's diversion worked. He lives to fight another day, to continue to bring embarrassment and shame to the Republican Party and the political careerists who would risk a debacle of a presidency rather than take a stand on principle. Lies spill from Trump's mouth and he exudes bigotry, yet he learned long ago that only suckers pay their debts and take responsibility for what they've done. He simply moves on. If he succeeds this time, then we are not his creditors, but as morally bankrupt as he is.
Donald Trump’s Scandals and Insults: A Scorecard
Ironically, it is the insults that are likely to do more damage than the scandals.
It is hard to keep track of all of Donald Trump's almost daily legal and personal scandals as well as the many people and groups he's insulted. For those who like keeping score, I've provided a list. Both the scandals and the insults pose liabilities for Trump’s campaign, but perhaps ironically, it is the insults that are likely to do more damage than the scandals.
Supporters of Hillary Clinton seem to believe that each Trump scandal adds to voters’ negative assessment of his fitness to be president, like a snowball that gets bigger and bigger as it rolls downhill. But that doesn’t seem to be happening. Instead, each day’s scandal seems to push the previous one out of our collective memories. There are so many of them—and the details are so complicated and bizarre—that it is hard to keep track of them. The most recent scandal involves the Trump Foundation, which, according to an investigation by the Washington Post, Trump has illegally used to avoid taxes, pay business expenses, and create the misleading impression that he’s a generous philanthropist. Each day, the Post seems to discover yet another way that Trump has misused the foundation to feather his nest. But no sooner have we started to understand the magnitude of Trump’s misdeeds with his foundation than we are confronted with another scandal—his illegal business dealings with Cuba during the U.S. embargo, which Newsweek just uncovered.
Trying to remember the scandals surrounding the Trump Foundation and Trump’s dealings with Cuba leaves us little room in our brains to recall the U.S. Justice Department’s lawsuit against Trump for discriminating against blacks in his apartment buildings; or the illegal con job he foisted on the unwitting “students” of his bogus Trump University; or the many employees (waiters, dishwashers, and plumbers, among others) and contractors he stiffed in his business dealings by failing to pay them for services they rendered; or the several women who have charged Trump of raping them as well as many others who have accused Trump of being a sexual predator; or the many stories that have linked Trump to the mafia in his hotel and casino business activities; or his misuse of at least four business bankruptcies to avoid paying his creditors and his taxes; or Trump’s failure to pay federal income taxes despite his wealth; or his hiring of undocumented workers for one of his real estate projects and his failure, as a federal judge found, to pay them or to provide safe working conditions, as required by law; or Trump’s repeated fines for breaking rules related to his operation of his casinos; or the Federal Trade Commission’s $750,000 fine against Trump for failing to disclose his purchases of stock in two rival casino companies, which flouted the nation’s anti-trust laws; or Trump’s misuse of his $55,000 of campaign donations to purchase copies of his book, Crippled America: How to Make America Great Again, from which he receives royalties—a violation of Federal Election Commission rules; or the foreign models who worked for Trump Model Management in this country without having proper visas and permits. And this is just a partial list!
One might think that all these scandals would lead voters to view Trump as a corrupt, irresponsible law-breaker unfit to be president. But there are so many of them that it is difficult to keep Trump’s crimes and calumnies straight. Most of us only have a big enough attention span to remember the most recent scandal.
On the other hand, most Americans have a pretty good memory for names and faces, so it is easier to remember at least some of the long list of people whom Trump has insulted, in part because we can identify with these individuals. We are all aware of Trump’s steady use of mockery, bullying and belittlement against people with whom he disagrees, who have criticized him, or whose looks or handicaps he finds troubling.
So while Clinton’s supporters might not gain much ground reminding voters about Trump’s multiple business and personal scandals, they are on firmer ground calling attention to the people who have been targets of Trump’s demeaning insults. That’s why Hillary Clinton scored big in the first debate Monday night when she brought up Trump’s history of calling women “pigs,” “slobs,” and “dogs,” and, in particular, the insults he hurled at former Miss Universe Alicia Machado, including calling her “Miss Housekeeping” and “Miss Piggy.” Unable to let Clinton’s comments pass, Trump has spent the last few days continuing his defamation of Machado for having gained weight while she was Miss Universe.
But voters might have some difficulty retrieving the specific epithets that Trump has used against people over the years. So here is a very partial list of the people he’s insulted and the words he’s used to attack them.
Khizr and Ghazala Khan: After Khizr Khan—the father of Humayun, a U.S. Army captain who was killed in Iraq and was awarded the Bronze Star Medal and the Purple Heart—gave a speech at the Democratic convention condemning Trump for his comments about Muslims and pulled out a pocket-sized copy of the Constitution to asked if Trump knew about the right to equal protection, Trump struck back. Trump not only said that Khan had “viciously attacked” him but also erroneously claimed that Khan’s wife Ghazala was not allowed to speak because she was Muslim. “She probably, maybe she wasn’t allowed to have anything to say,” Trump said on ABC News.
Judge Gonzalo Curiel: Trump attacked Curiel, a judge who is presiding over a trial brought by people who were scammed by Trump University. Trump accused Curiel of having “an absolute conflict” that should prevent him from presiding over the Trump University case because Curiel, a United States citizen who was born in Indiana to immigrants from Mexico, is “of Mexican heritage.” Trump said that Curiel could not be fair because “I’m building a wall” on the U.S.-Mexican border. At a campaign rally, Trump claimed that “I have a judge who is a hater of Donald Trump, a hater. He’s a hater,” despite the fact that Curiel has ruled in favor of Trump on most of his lawyer’s requests.
The Central Park Five: In 1989 five teenage men, four African Americans and one Latino, were wrongfully convicted of raping a 28-year-old white woman who was jogging in New York City. The media quickly labeled them the “Central Park Five.” As soon as they were arrested, Trump led the charge against them. He paid a reported $85,000 to take out advertising space in four of the city’s newspapers, including the New York Times, under the headline “Bring Back The Death Penalty. Bring Back The Police!” In those ads, Trump wrote: “I want to hate these muggers and murderers. They should be forced to suffer and, when they kill, they should be executed for their crimes. They must serve as examples so that others will think long and hard before committing a crime or an act of violence.” Trump’s words were hardly subtle—he was calling for the boys to die. All five boys pleaded not guilty at the trial but despite the lack of DNA evidence linking any of them to the crime scene, the jury found all five boys guilty. The judge sentenced them to serve five to 15 years in prison. Michael Warren, a respected New York civil rights lawyer who later represented the Central Park Five, said that Trump’s ads “poisoned the minds of many people who lived in New York and who, rightfully, had a natural affinity for the victim. Notwithstanding the jurors’ assertions that they could be fair and impartial, some of them or their families, who naturally have influence, had to be affected by the inflammatory rhetoric in the ads.” In 2002, Matias Reyes, a violent serial rapist and murderer serving a life sentence, confessed to the Central Park rape, stating that he had acted by himself. When the DNA evidence was re-examined, it showed that Reyes’ semen alone was found on the rape victim’s body. That year, New York’s Supreme Court vacated the convictions against each member of the Central Park Five, whose lives had been shattered by their prison terms and who, had Trump had his way, would have been given the death sentence for a crime they did not commit.
Serge Kovaleski: At a campaign rally, Trump flailed his arms and mocked the disabled reporter Kovaleski, a New York Times reporter who suffers from a chronic condition that limits the movement of his arms. Kovaleski had challenged Trump’s claim that after 9/11 Muslims in New Jersey had celebrated the attacks.
Megyn Kelly: After the Fox News anchor asked Trump about his many anti-women comments over the years, Trump said: “You could see there was blood coming out of her eyes. Blood coming out of her wherever.”
Senator John McCain: At a candidate forum in Ohio, Trump mocked McCain, who spent more than five years as a prisoner in North Vietnam. “He’s a war hero
because he was captured. I like people that weren’t captured, OK? I hate to tell you. He’s a war hero because he was captured, OK?”
Carly Fiorina: “Look at that face!” Trump told a Rolling Stone reporter on his private plane when Fiorina, then his Republican rival for president, appeared on a television screen. “Would anyone vote for that? Can you imagine that, the face of our next president?
Pope Francis: After the pope criticized Trump’s proposal to build a wall on the U.S.-Mexican border, Trump said that the pope’s comments were “really not very nice.” But then he went further, claiming that that the Islamic State (ISIS) wanted viewed the Vatican as its “ultimate trophy” and that the pope would “would have only wished and prayed that Donald Trump would have been president because this would not have happened.”
This list doesn’t even include Trump’s wholesale insults against Muslims, Mexicans, and Jews, or his nasty and misinformed comments about rivals Hillary Clinton, Jeb Bush, Marco Rubio, Ted Cruz, John Kasich, and others.
Trump has spread his insults so far and wide that there are few Americans who are unaware of his penchant for impulsive rants and invective against powerless and innocent people as well as against his competitors in business and politics.
