Sex, lies and videotape --- means Donald Trump will never be president of America.
Sex because the attempt to drag Heidi Cruz, wife of candidate Ted Cruz, into the mud by publishing unflattering pictures of her, the increasing assault on women like Megyn Kelly and Carly Fiorina, will mean for sure he loses the female vote overwhelmingly.
Polls are already showing that in the general election match-ups.
Lies because a recent POLITICO survey of 4.6 hours of Trump speeches revealed 60 false statements. No he doesn't own a winery, No, he wasn't first to condemn the original iraq invasion or anything like it, yes he does take campaign contributions despite saying he does not, etc. This is the guy who labels Cruz, "Lying Ted Cruz."
Videotape because every rallly where violence breaks out, every time Trump predicts there will be bloood will come back to haunt him in the Autumn. Already latest polling shows Hillary Clinton leading 54 per cent to 38 per cent
We recently ran a story here about a small island off Galway offering homes to those who would flee a Trump presidency. To date it has earned over 232,000 Facebook likes among our most ever.
What does that tell you?
It says one thing to me, as much as I love the idea of a few hundred thousand Americans decamping the US for a small Irish island come November, I feel compelled to say this:
Donald Trump will never be president of the United States.
How do I know this, especially at a time when so many pundits say he looks unstoppable?
Because of the sex, lies and videotape and he has made a fatal, far reaching political miscalculation. And since it's a mistake that's central to his campaign, it's worth discussing.
He has mistaken contempt for courage. It's an easy mistake to make. People who have never really needed to be courageous in their lives make it all the time. Politicians make it all the time. Misreading the national mood has a long and consequential political history.
Some politicians stoke anger at a time when it's anxiety that is really driving the nation.
Some politicians blame minorities for pulling the economy down when what voters really want is an economic plan to raise them up.
Some politicians think they can divide and conquer, at a time when all the public really wants is for all those angry divisions to quieten and heal.
It's too late for Trump to walk his inflammatory comments back now, because his comments have been made on national television, and they have included shocking attacks on minorities, attacks on world faith traditions, attacks on women, attacks that have been so ugly they are unprecedented in a modern American presidential race.
Karl Rove warned Trump to "change his tone" recently, but it's much too late for that because that genie is already out of the bottle.
Emboldened by Trump’s extremist rhetoric, people across the nation who are assaulted for their ethnicity have said their attackers shouted Trump at them.
His very name is a verb that not only means to best, outdo, and triumph - but more recently it's become a rallying cry for horrifying racist attacks.
That development has, to put it mildly, been noticed in the higher echelons of the party he hopes to represent in the general election this fall. So has the fact that he is making text out of decades of carefully concealed GOP subtext.
For over two decades the conservative cable-talk radio-blogosphere have lit a wild fire under the base, convincing them that their birthright (the ability to lord it over everyone else) was under threat where it is not being eradicated.
But the message was sent to them in a genteel code that Trump has deciphered and thrown back at them now: with every day that passes, “Make America Great Again” is sounding less like a promise and more like a call to arms.
Here is a candidate who is openly enthusiastic about torturing people, who advocates killing entire families to combat individual militants, and who wants to build national walls rather than bridges. It's the same old us versus them framework that has guided GOP policy for years, but Trump has really let the mask slip. That's bad politics. Bad politics doesn’t win the White House.
It’s bad politics to have white supremacists phone bank for you. It’s bad politics to have former members of the Klu Klux Klan ardently support your run.
Last week PBS broadcast a family of white supremacists, with tattoos that celebrate Adolf Hitler, phone banking for their preferred candidate.
Last week David Duke, the former Ku Klux Klan grand wizard and Louisiana state senator, claimed that Trump’s popularity is restoring Hitler’s reputation.
Duke claimed on his radio show that comparisons between the Republican front-runner and the Nazi dictator would actually be "rehabilitating that fellow with the mustache back there in Germany."
In what world do we now live, in what world has Trump created, that his supporters can speak encouragingly of rehabilitating Hitler?
Duke continued: “I saw a commercial against Donald Trump, a really vicious commercial, comparing what Donald Trump said about preserving America and making America great again to Hitler in Germany preserving Germany and making Germany great again and free again and not beholden to these Communists on one side, politically who were trying to destroy their land and their freedom, and the Jewish capitalists on the other, who were ripping off the nation through the banking system."
Trump is Duke's man in the 2016 election. Think about that.
Threatening "riots" if the party blocks him and he's denied the GOP nomination, Trump - who claims to be a uniquely skilled business negotiator - has really proved that his main skill is not really “The Art of the Deal,” but actually “How To Lose Friends And Alienate People.”
I wager we'll see the proof of that on November 8.
Do you think Donald Trump stands a chance at being elected? Share your thoughts in the comment section, below.
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