2016 Sept 30^th

Today’s paper has a column by Cal Thomas who offers “A little advice for the second presidential debate.” The advice is not for Hillary Clinton but for Donald Trump whom Thomas declares scored a gentleman’s “C” in the recent debate. Scoring Trump as a “gentleman” anything means Thomas has a very low bar for the use of that term. If Thomas grades Clinton higher than a “C” he is in trouble with his conservative base; if he doesn’t he loses what little credibility he has. He wisely doesn’t grade her at all.

Thomas spends several paragraphs assuring us that he is a very knowledgeable debater. He “has taken on professors and liberal thinkers from Harvard, Yale and Dartmouth to U.C. Davis. I think I can say without too much hubris that that I know how to destroy a bad argument.” If you aren’t certain Cal, just replay Clinton’s responses to Donald Trump.

A particular favorite was Clinton’s goading Trump on his income tax returns suggesting that perhaps he was withholding the returns because he hadn’t paid any taxes. Trump finally couldn’t resist and admitted that “not paying taxes makes me smart.”  What a blunder! Cal, if you are planning to help Trump you have to convince him that what he views as “smart” is seen by many voters as simply selfish. When he makes comments like that, he provides Clinton with a wonderful series of ads in which he will not look good.

Thomas continues to insist that “real racism is refusing to let minority children… escape faiing public schools in favor of better ones…” That is nonsense because those decisions are made by each individual state. The federal government has contributed money to incentivize charter schools but much of it has been wasted by greedy “entrepreneurs” doing studies that result in nothing.

Toward the end of the debate, Clinton brought up Trump’s difficulty being civil to women. There was ample evidence, from Meghan Kelly to Carly Fiorina. He has called women fat pigs, dogs, and disgusting animals. Clinton cited the case of Alicia Machado who became Miss Universe at age 18 and subsequently gained more weight than Trump, the pageant owner, thought was appropriate. Trump appeared shocked that Ms. Machado had been found and was unhappy about Trump’s “fat shaming” her. He had even brought TV cameras into a gym to show her working out. Trump was most unhappy about Clinton bringing this episode into the news.

You would suppose that Trump would want to minimize this debate and everything about it that made him look bad. Not so. At 5:14, again at 5:19 and once more at 5:30 this morning Trump is on twitter tweeting more insults about Ms. Muchado. The debate was Monday so on Friday morning Trump takes pains to keep this issue alive. Why would he do that?

That Trump would deliberately do this gives support to Clinton’s suggestion that Trump is “unhinged.” The DSM-5, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders 5^th edition probably does not carry “unhinged,” but then Donald Trump is surely unique, at least we can hope so. Maybe “unhinged” will appear in the next edition.