Maggie Haberman and Ben Smith wrap up a "what's really up with Trump?" thumbsucker with the following testimony:“I don’t see Donald Trump trudging around in the snows of Iowa wearing ear flaps and trudging around the country fair,” said a top official at the Southern Baptist Convention, Richard Land. “But look, we live in the celebrity age. He is a celebrity. He's got the name recognition. He’s got the money. He certainly appears to have the moxie. So maybe Americans are ready for a brash New Yorker.”
I'd speculated that Trump's longtime friend and adviser, former Nixon-Reagan operative Roger Stone, was the one who'd nudged him into the swamp of birtherism, where many a 2012 GOP prospect risks getting irretrievably mired. But Haberman and Smith report that Stone denies any direct involvement with Trump's current political activities. That could be because it's true. It also could be because the always controversial Stone doesn't want to end up as a stumbling block for the sufficiently controversial Trump.
2 comments:
Awhile back, in an effort to get my sanity back in the face of all the drivel on TV, I determined that the problem is mine. I was hearing a lot of what I would characterize as hare-brained stuff and I couldn't bring myself to believe that the speaker(s) actually believed what they were saying; that they were saying stuff to get noticed. So, I decided to start taking people at face value and not ascribing to them dark motivations for their speech. And then Trump came along with this birther nonsense. Hard for me to believe that HE actually believes that tripe. I'm back to square one.
Your comment hit home; many thanks. I too have resolved to get out of the business of questioning people's motives, and I'll think again about my post in view of your comment.
My intention was to leave open both possibilities, sincerity and opportunism. While I find it hard to accept that anyone believes that the president's not a citizen, many people evidently sincerely do. But the phenomenon of three prospective candidates taking the pledge as polls harden on the subject deserved, I think, to be noted.
Thanks again.
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