Response to Number Nineteen

(See: Just Above Sunset: Number Nineteen)

The good news about a possible President Trump might be that, when that famous 3:00 AM call comes in, he’ll already be awake for it. Of course, the bad news is, he’ll be too busy sending out his snarky tweets to take the call.

Donald Trump hates it when people ask what his plans are, such as his plans for defeating ISIS, since that lets the other guy know what to watch out for, but he’d have nothing to worry about if ISIS turns out to have the attention span that he does.

In fact, I’d been worried about what would happen if Trump were to actually listen to all these pundits on TV advising him to not take Hillary’s bait, since her campaign had telegraphed their intention to try to “get under his skin”, but I know now that there was nothing to worry about. We now can assume he hears all these warnings, but just ignores them!

No need anymore to talk behind his back! Why bother, since he obviously never takes advice from people who give it to him to his face! The man listens only to himself!

You heard the latest, from an interview he gave to The New York Times?

Donald J. Trump unleashed a slashing new attack on Hillary Clinton over Bill Clinton’s sexual indiscretions on Friday as he sought to put the Clintons’ relationship at the center of his political argument against her before their next debate.

Yay!!! Go for it!

(Donald, pay no attention to me, assuming you’re reading this.)

He said he was bringing up Mr. Clinton’s infidelities because he thought they would repulse female voters and turn them away from the Clintons, and because he was eager to unsettle Mrs. Clinton in their next two debates and on the campaign trail.

I wonder if it occurs to him that, if he really knew what it is that “would repulse female voters and turn them away from the Clintons,” he would probably already have their vote. But he doesn’t. My advice would be, he really needs to give this more thought — but then, why would I expect him to take my advice? I could tell him this stuff right to his face and it would be the same as telling it to Henry, my cat!

But when asked if he had ever cheated on his wives, Mr. Trump said: “No — I never discuss it. I never discuss it. It was never a problem.” 

Asked specifically about his affair with Ms. Maples when he was married to Ivana Trump, Mr. Trump said: “I don’t talk about it."

He thinks nobody knows about these things? What is the matter with this guy?

But it turns out, he wasn’t making up being distracted by some problem with the microphone:

Mr. Trump said he did not think he needed to prepare more rigorously for the next debate than he did for the first one, because any shortcomings on Monday, he argued, were because of a problem with the microphone at his lectern, which he “spent 50 percent of my thought process” dealing with. The Commission on Presidential Debates, which sponsors the events, said on Friday that there were “issues” with Mr. Trump’s audio.

And apparently, the problem only effected how he was heard inside the hall, not how he was heard on TV. Still, speaking of getting rattled while making a speech, remember this?

...in a speech Clinton gave to Congress on 22 September 1993 detailing the Clinton health care plan, the teleprompter was loaded with the wrong speech. Specifically, the one he gave to a joint session of Congress shortly after he was sworn-in in 1993. Teleprompter operators practiced with the old speech and it was accidentally left in, forcing Clinton to ad-lib for almost ten minutes.

And the president handled it so deftly that nobody was the wiser, at least not until the screwup was revealed after the speech. To my memory, Clinton neither lost his cool, nor complained about it. But maybe that’s because some people are just that good.

But back to that Times interview:

“She’s nasty, but I can be nastier than she ever can be,” Mr. Trump said.

Precisely! Do it! Then make sure you brag about it afterward! Let Trump be Trump!

And whatever you do, Donald, don’t go check your odds of winning at 538.com, which, as I’m writing this, show you’ve dropped over 12% since the debate.