CULTURE
Donald Trump Follows Up His Presidential Debate Loss with a Week of Lunacy
AD
And yet no number of political mistakes can ruin him.
Published on October 5, 2016

While much of America spent the campaign until this past week waiting for Donald Trump to mess up his chances at winning the white house, we are now left to wonder if anything can. He might not, as he has claimed, be able to shoot someone on 5th Avenue and still become president, but like it or not, this man will earn electoral votes in November. That’s a fact that once we’ve brushed back fascism for another few years we’ll have to take the time to seriously consider.

As current polls have it, 40 percent of our country will pull the voting lever for Trump on Election Day—meanwhile, in the past week he’s continued a debate-night feud about a former Miss Universe, accused PTSD-suffering vets of being weak, bizarrely accused Hillary Clinton of possible insanity and infidelity in a pot/kettle moment for the ages, had his famously dodgy charity shut down by the New York Attorney General’s office, and as the glorious cherry on top of the schadenfreude cake, woke up one morning to find the whole world suddenly privy to the fact that his “genius” tax evasion was actually the result of a single-year showing in 1995—more than $915,000,000 in the red—so dismal it opened up untold loopholes in the tax system.

The above list is a sampling of the ways in which the Donald’s repellent character has bubbled up to the surface in just a single week of campaigning, and yet 40 percent of America is likely to waste its right to vote on a man who would gladly take it away for a few dollars.

The Alicia Machado story goes back two decades, to when Trump’s 20-year-old Miss Universe crown went to the Latina woman. Trump went on to call her “Miss Housekeeping” because of her heritage and later “Miss Piggy” because of what he saw as an unacceptable weight gain. When Hillary Clinton made her a talking point in the first debate, Donald had a small conniption that has yet to fully abate. The hateful way the reality TV host and future failed presidential candidate has treated Ms. Machado has been well documented, and his misogyny should come as a surprise to no one. I don’t think it does, which is just another reason why it’s absolutely unbelievable to me that anyone could actually vote for him and think they’re doing America any favors.

To wit, Trump continued his hostile campaign week when he tried to enumerate the “So many ways” he’ll fix the VA, beginning (and ending, as it turned out) on the question of veteran suicide. “When people come back from war and combat and they see things that maybe a lot of folks in this room have seen many times over and you're strong and you can handle it but a lot of people can't handle it,” said Trump, sparking a righteous shitstorm of response. This came just a day after the New York attorney general—after weeks of reporting on the Trump Foundation’s allegedly shady practices—suspended the foundation’s operation. Maybe to draw attention away, he strangely accused Hillary Clinton of cheating on Bill, a move even Bill O’Reilly had to disavow.

Attention was going to be Trump’s anyway thanks to a reporter at the New York Times who came to work to find Trump’s tax returns in her inbox. According to her report, Trump may indeed be hiding a level of business failure that should seriously undermine his claims of being able to run the country like a business. If your businesses lose a billion dollars in a single year, there is zero chance you should be trusted with an economy-size chunk of change.

BUSINESS
POLITICS
WOMEN
ELECTION 2016
MORE...
Tim Baker
FOLLOW
Tim Baker is a New York-based writer and sometimes editor whose work has appeared in Newsweek, TV Guide, CBS and Discovery Special Editions, and can regularly be found at thrillist.com. He has an MFA in creative writing from The New School and also attended Hunter College of the City University of New York.
Share this article with your friends!
AD
By using our site you agree to our use of cookies to deliver a better experience.
Accept
Decline
MORE FROM MERRY JANE