In a rally this morning intended to mark his moment of triumph, Donald Trump once again implicated the father of Ted Cruz in the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, even suggesting that the National Enquirer should win a Pulitzer. (The text of Trump's drive-by character assassination is below).
An astonished Brit Hume then tweeted:
Why indeed? Why, on the first day of his general election campaign to try to win undecided voters and reassure the world that he has the stability to serve as president, would Trump do such a stupid thing?
We have two possible answers to Hume's question.
CHOICE ONE : Donald Trump is an amoral nutcase, driven by inner demons to lash out against opponents in the most irrational of ways, at the most irrational of times, without regard to the consequences because throughout his spoiled, pampered life, there have been no consequences.
CHOICE TWO: Rafael Cruz really did conspire with Lee Harvey Oswald to assassinate Kennedy, a fact that the FBI, CIA, Warren Commission, congressional investigations and uncounted journalists and authors have all covered up until the National Enquirer revealed the truth, and until Trump broke through that wall of silence to tell us the truth.
As far as I can tell, that pretty much exhausts the universe of possible explanations, but if someone would like to propose a third explanation, I'm certainly open to hearing it. Until then, and after weighing the evidence carefully, I'm putting my money firmly on Choice One: Donald Trump is an amoral nutcase.
Which leads me to a more important question: Why has the Republican Party nominated an amoral nutcase driven by inner demons to serve as president of the United States of America, in charge of the nuclear football? Why would they want to invest the full powers of the federal government in such an irrationally vindictive human being?
And no, I have no possible answers to that one. It has me as stumped as I can possibly be. It's not that they can't see it -- any eight-year-old can see it. And surely it's not that they just don't care, that like Trump they have been sucked into a vortex of self-delusion and self-destruction and no longer give a good damn about the consequences.
That couldn't be it either. Could it?
The promised transcript is below:
TRUMP: "His father. I don't know his father, I met him once. I think he's a lovely guy. I think he's a lovely guy. All I did was point out that on the cover of the National Enquirer there was a picture of him and crazy Lee Harvey Oswald having breakfast. Now, Ted never denied that it was his father. Instead he said, "Donald Trump!" — I had nothing to do with it!
"This was a magazine that frankly, in many respects, should be very respected. They got OJ, they got Edwards. If that was the New York Times, they would've gotten Pulitzer Prizes for their reporting. I've always said, "Why didn't the National Enquirer get the Pulitzer Prize for Edwards, and OJ Simpson, and all of these things?"
"But anyway, so they have a picture, an old picture, having breakfast with Lee Harvey Oswald. Now, I'm not saying anything. Here's how the press takes that story. This had nothing to do with me. Except I might have pointed it out, but it had nothing to do with me, I have no control over anything. I might have pointed it out. But nobody ever denied — did anyone ever deny that it was his father? It's a little hard to do, because it looks like him.
"So here's the story, they say, "Donald Trump and his conspiracy theories, he went out and said his father was with Lee Harvey Oswald, and he assassinated the president." What'd I do?
"…I know nothing about his father, I know nothing about Lee Harvey Oswald. But there was a picture on the front page of the National Enquirer which does have credibility, and they're not going to do pictures like that because they get sued for a lot of money if things are wrong. There's a picture, and that's the only thing I know."
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