Trump, a political hurricane, still rages
If GOP isn’t nice, he says he’ll run as an independent
WASHINGTON The political hurricane that is Donald Trump didn’t recede over the weekend, even in the face of a rising tide of criticism from Republican rivals about his attack on Fox News anchor Megyn Kelly.
Instead, the celebrity billionaire insisted in a string of Sunday TV interviews that he had done nothing wrong, that “only a deviant” would interpret his words in an offensive way, and that he is leaving open the possibility of running an independent campaign for the White House if the GOP doesn’t treat him “fairly.”
“I do have leverage, and I like having leverage,” Trump declared on CBS’ Face the Nation on a morning that also included interviews with ABC’s This Week, CNN’s State of the Union and NBC’s Meet the Press.
Some Republicans are hoping his meteoric rise may be peaking, in part because of his refusal to promise to support the Republican nominee in the general election if it’s not him. Opponents also have focused on his past support of liberal policies and contributions to Democratic candidates, including likely 2016 nominee Hillary Clinton.
His latest comments — widely interpreted as attributing Kelly’s tough questioning in Thursday’s debate to female hormones — were “completely beyond the pale,” said Republican strategist Liz Mair, who attended the conservative Red State Gathering in Atlanta over the weekend. She said an increasing number of Republicans have soured on Trump. “Hopefully, we’re at the point where he is only hurting himself.”
For a conventional presidential contender, Trump’s latest burst of inflammatory language would be a political catastrophe.
That said, the real-estate mogul and reality-TV star has been defying the conventional wisdom since he announced his bid for the Republican nomination in June, exceeded everyone’s expectations except perhaps his own. Over the past week, he has posted a double-digit lead in the RealClearPolitics average of nationwide surveys and has led statewide polls taken in Florida, South Carolina, Georgia, New Hampshire and Iowa.
And he has done that during his first foray into electoral politics without having bought a TV ad or built much of a campaign organization. Over the weekend, one long-time adviser, Roger Stone, either quit (according to Stone) or was fired (according to Trump).
Trump continues to dominate the debate, which is now centered on his comments on CNN on Friday night. Criticizing Kelly’s aggressive questioning of him, he said: “You could see there was blood coming out of her eyes, blood coming out of her (pause) wherever.”
That was widely seen as a reference to menstruation, though Trump insisted in subsequent in- terviews that he had been referring to her “nose or ears.”
Carly Fiorina, the former CEO and the only woman in the GOP field, called Trump’s comments “completely inappropriate and offensive.”
Former Florida governor Jeb Bush said Trump should apologize.
“Give me a break,” Bush told the Red State Gathering, where the organizer revoked Trump’s invitation to speak to the group. “Do we want to win? Do we want to insult 53% of all voters? What Donald Trump said is wrong. That is not how we win elections.”
But Florida Sen. Marco Rubio said he had decided to stop reacting to Trump.
“If I comment on everything he says, my whole campaign will be consumed by it,” he said on NBC. “At this point, I mean, we’ve got to focus on our message. Otherwise my whole campaign will be: ‘How do you feel about what Donald Trump said about something?’ He says something every day.”
For Republicans, the conundrum is this: Trump has tapped into an unexpectedly powerful vein of political discontent. The first Republican debate drew 24 million viewers, the biggest audience for any non-sports event in cable TV history.
In the process, however, he has offended some Hispanics by declaring that many undocumented immigrants from Mexico were rapists and criminals; said he doesn’t believe that Arizona Sen. John McCain, who spent more than five years in a Vietnamese POW camp, is a hero “because he was captured;” and now provided new fodder for the Democrats’ refrain that Republicans are waging a “war on women.”
And the threat that he might run a third-party campaign sparks memories of the 1992 race. Then, a Democratic candidate named Clinton (Bill) won the White House over a Republican candidate named Bush (George H.W.) in part because of votes drained off by a wealthy businessman running as an independent (H. Ross Perot).
To be sure, mounting a thirdparty campaign wouldn’t be easy. Since each state has its own bal- lot-access rules, a candidate would have to run a grassroots effort in every state to collect enough valid signatures to qualify. In many states, he or she also would face legal challenges from the Republican and Democratic establishments.
“It would have to be a very organized effort, and it would take a lot of work,” said Gary Johnson, a former Republican governor of New Mexico who was the Libertarian nominee for president in 2012. Even so, he didn’t dismiss Trump’s chances if he decided to do it. “The main factor in a vote is name familiarity and the main ingredient to name familiarity is money, and Trump has both.”
At the Red State Gathering, Holly Gardner, a retired educator from Atlanta, suggested Trump’s comments about Kelly were the beginning of the end for him and expressed hope that he doesn’t launch an independent bid.
“But with Trump,” she added, “you never know what he might do.”
“You could see there was blood coming out of her eyes, blood coming out of her (pause) wherever.” Billionaire Donald Trump on GOP primary debate moderator Megyn Kelly’s tough questioning Thursday,