Front-Running Trump Is Playing by his Own Rules

Originally published August 8, 2015.

 

Donald Trump was unimpressed. Megyn Kelly might as well have been reading off the luncheon specials at a Denny's.  

 

"You've called women you don't like fat pigs, dogs, slobs and disgusting animals," charged Kelly, a sharp former litigator and now Fox News host at the Cleveland Republican debate.

 

In a response that could only have been outdone in its inappropriateness by Trump unfurling a confederate flag tablecloth and eating Cecil the lion right there in front of everybody, the Republican frontrunner parlayed the accusation into an insult missile and launched it at an old foe — "Only Rosie O'Donnell."

 

It was mean. It was crude. The crowd roared with laughter.  

 

When Kelly shot back, "For the record it was well beyond Rosie O'Donnell," Trump, in the style of someone filing his nails in an RMV waiting room, muttered, "Yes, I'm sure it was."

 

She was boring him. As does much of what happens in modern politics, and he has no time for it. He finds the game too slow and inefficient and he's more than willing to step over or redirect any question put to him or bull rush any questioner.

 

When Chris Wallace pressed him on accusing the Mexican government of sending rapists and drug dealers over the border, Trump sidestepped the question and went right back at Wallace. 

 

"If it weren't for me, you wouldn't even be talking about illegal immigration, Chris."

 

Trump gets away with this because he truly does not care what any of the players in the political game think and that's a problem for his opponents, because the others care too much, and it manifests itself in the kind of political personality that Americans have grown to hate.

 

So the Donald is empowered to play by his own rules and it's beginning to throw the system off its axis. No one else on that stage could answer any question in the manner he did and expect to continue a career in national politics.

 

What's the playbook against a candidate who may just as soon call you a jerk as answer your question? Consultants and political strategists have been rendered impotent when it comes to this man.  

 

GOP voters love him. They imagine him in that debate with Barack Obama in which Candy Crowley ran cover for the President during a Benghazi answer in 2012.  Look at the second sentence of this column — you see what he is capable of.  Forget "micro-aggressions."  The world would witness a nuclear aggression detonated on that stage.

 

That is why he excites people. "Binders full of women" would be the most benign of the mountain of offensive rhetorical flourishes to shoot out of Trump's mouth and there would be no subsequent apologies.

Summer popularity may devolve into Autumn fatigue but as of now, validated by the huge ratings Thursday night, Donald Trump is the greatest show on Earth.