On Thursday night, though, the real Donald Trump stood up.
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“Give me a break”, he said, arguing that a knife could easily circumvent a buckle.
Trump denied that he singled out Fiorina for interrupting other candidates.
And the “self-funded campaign” jab was an apparent reference to criticism that Trump’s campaign has received for downplaying its millions of dollars in donations. The problem is that his chief rival for the Republican nomination is working the same angle.
“What he said about Dr. Carson – if Dr. Carson was ever going to hit anybody with a hammer, it’d be Donald Trump after all the things he said”, Graham quipped.
It’s plainly caught the billionaire wrong-footed, and he’s still trying to find his balance.
There has always been an aura of unreality around the Trump phenomenon – the unreality of reality TV. In a approach Trump’s rambling monologue amounts to an indictment of the elemental stupidity & arbitrariness of American politics usually. “I’m hopeful that maybe his advisors will help him understand the word “pathological” and recognize that does not denote “incurable” – it’s not the same”.
Among all Republicans – not simply likely primary voters -Trump holds a substantial edge over Carson, at 34 percent to about 20 percent, according to the Reuters/Ipsos poll. Trump told the audience about Graham’s recent comments on how he’s a tough guy.
Between Tuesday’s debate and Thursday, though, something changed, and Trump the killer reemerged.
“If you’re a child molester, a sick puppy, you’re a child molester”.
Hours later, in a rambling appearance in Iowa, Trump again repeated the child molester comparison.
At the Iowa rally, Trump also said U.S. Sen. “Don’t be fools… We’re gonna put somebody in office who considers himself to have pathological disease?”
He then made reference to his comments made early by saying if you are a child molester that there is not cure for that either. There’s only one cure, we don’t want to talk about that cure – that’s the ultimate cure. That’s the ultimate cure.
During the debate, Carson said of Syria: “You know, the Chinese are there, as well as the Russians, and you have all kinds of factions there”. Actually, I think they kill you…. There’s no cure for it. ‘Pathological, ‘ there’s no cure for that.
At one point, Trump flipped his belt buckle over to try to cast doubt on a frequently cited anecdote from Carson, that he tried to stab someone as a child but the person’s belt buckle prevented injury.
“How stupid are the people of Iowa?” declared Trump during a rally at Iowa Central Community College on Thursday night. “How stupid are the people of the country to believe that crap?”
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On Friday afternoon, Trump launched a multipronged response on Twitter. But challenging Carson, who remains the most trusted and admired candidate in the GOP field, on those terms is a gambit that will nearly certainly backfire. A bit less Trumpian. The one who is on the 2nd spot is his closest competitor, Ben Carson, with only less than 25%. Trump, once the undisputed poll leader, is now running neck-and-neck with Carson in many opinion surveys. And that’s right: I’d blow up the pipes, I’d blow up the refineries.
