2016 May 4^th

There is no end of news today, but none of it is surprising. Donald Trump’s “Victory Speech” after winning Indiana suggested that he wanted to bring the party together while at the same time he accused Cruz’ father of some complicity in the Kennedy assassination. That’s not a good start but Trump doesn’t care.

 Cruz, finally seeing the inevitable, has “suspended his campaign” which is political talk for “I’m outta here, although contributions are still welcome.” Trump commended Cruz as a great fighter. That probably isn’t enough to make Cruz decide to support Trump. Indeed, in his suspension speech Cruz called Trump a pathological liar, a serial philanderer and some other equally unpleasant names. Trump has not decided to reject any of the Cruz’ accusations. Do you suppose that Cruz’ answer to Chuck Todd’s “Meet the Press” Sunday question about voting for Donald Trump has changed? For Cruz I guess a serial philanderer and a pathological liar as a President is probably better than a Democrat. Even so, I’ll bet Cruz and friends will not be out trying to get votes for the Donald.

Now Kasich has dropped out as well, leaving the Donald all alone with no one to challenge him. Kasich never got any traction in this endeavor; maybe because he was seen as part of the establishment, which he was, and maybe because he came across as a colorless technocrat, very efficient but not very likeable. Whatever his problems were, it’s back to dealing with Ohio’s difficulties for him.

I wonder what Trump will do for publicity and airtime now that he has wrapped up his party’s nomination. I would bet that he will make absurd statements about Hillary Clinton, Bill Clinton, Chelsea Clinton and Hillary’s granddaughter just to get noticed. Public notice for Trump is worth whatever he has to do to get it and there is no limit to what he will do to get it. He has proven that.

Hillary Clinton sat for an extended interview by Anderson Cooper. She claimed that she couldn’t wait to ask Trump about some of his policies, from demonizing Muslims to his comments about women. It was obvious that Secretary Clinton was not at all intimidated by the prospect of confronting Donald Trump with some of the things he has said, things that are on the record. She was quite specific that the media, when interviewing Trump,  had not really asked him to explain how he would carry out his plans. For example how would he round up the 11 million people he plans to deport… and how would he deal with the constitutional issues of deporting children many of whom are American citizens.

Later when various members of the commentariate had the opportunity to comment on the interview, Dana Bash jumped right in saying that she was very upset with Clinton’s claim that the press had been too easy on Trump because Bash claimed that she had indeed asked him over an over about his plans. She is right; the interviewers have asked Trump to explain himself but Trump doesn’t answer the interviewer’s questions and makes it quite clear that he wants to hear no more on that topic, so the questioner meekly moves on. Cruz tried that same evasive tactic with Chuck Todd on Meet the Press about whether or not he would vote for Trump in the general election and Todd made Cruz’ seven evasive answers quite clear to his audience.

While Trump can blow off the likes of Bash and others who must be careful not to irritate The Donald, lest he refuse to give them future interviews, Hillary Clinton will be a whole other matter.