Aug 4^th Donald Trump

As everyone must know by now, Donald Trump has signed the required pledge not to run as an independent. The man has power; Reince Priebus, the RNC chairman came all the way from Washington D.C. to confer with Trump at the famous Trump Tower after which Trump held a press conference. He waved a copy of the unenforceable pledge he had signed in which he agreed to support whoever is nominated and not to run as a third party candidate.

Of course he did; why not? He is leading big time in all polls except Iowa where the fundamentalist retired neurosurgeon, Ben Carson, is tied with him. Being a fundamentalist in Iowa and not being a politician is worth several points. Some of these seriously church going folks may not have been willing to laugh off Trump’s comments about “not needing forgiveness because if I do something bad I fix it myself.” There was also this gem when Trump said of the Sacrament, “I take my little glass of wine…and eat my little cracker.” For devout Christians who believe that the wine symbolizes the blood of Christ and the wafer his flesh this skirts blasphemy but doesn’t skirt it by very much. Who should be surprised that Trump, in Iowa, is head to head with a man who claims that evolution is a myth?

Other than Iowa which might be close, Trump is ahead everywhere, Why not sign this pledge if it looks fairly certain that he’s going to win the nomination?  If he runs as an Independent he faces enormous challenge and much expense trying to get on the ballot in many states. On the other hand his appeal relies heavily on his thumbing his nose at convention and authority; signing this pledge like a good little boy doesn’t fit that image at all.  Even so I doubt that this move will damage his popularity. We’ll see when the next polls appear.

Yesterday on a radio show Trump was interviewed by a host, Hugh Hewitt, a conservative, who asked him if he was familiar with the names of some Middle Eastern leaders. The host then named the leader of Quod, Hassem Soleimani, and Trump was stumped. Then Hewitt explained that he was the leader of Quod and Trump thought he heard “Kurds” and responded accordingly. A fuming Trump later complained that it was a “gotcha” question and some intellectuals like Laura Ingalls heartily agreed.  Hewitt said that he has asked tough questions of all his interviewees; he is a graduate of the University of Michigan and of Harvard Law School so maybe he expects more from candidates who hope to be President of the United States.

So what constitutes a gotcha question? It is a question designed to make its target look foolish when they can’t answer it. If the target can’t answer a question, any question, then the target will label that a gotcha question, witness Katie Couric asking Sarah Palin what periodicals she read. When Palin blew it she labeled it a gotcha question. A candidate once asked himself what turned out to be a gotcha question. Governor Perry, running for President in 2012, said he would shut down three government cabinets; then, virtually asking himself the question, which ones, tried to name them and could only name two. His failure to answer his own question helped doom his candidacy.