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Hot air is once again on the rise

4 min read

“I think this is an experiment to see how stupid people really are.”

Internet poster, after a Donald Trump speech, on July 21st

Last Tuesday, McKees Rocks (Pa.) native, and current Ohio Governor, John Kasich, became the 16th Republican to declare his candidacy for president.

Kasich, who was a nine-term Ohio Congressman, and is in the second term as Ohio’s governor, is obviously qualified but nevermind, Donald Trump gave a speech on the same day.

Kasich’s announcement was drowned-out by another Donald Trump lecture on the shortcomings of anybody not Donald Trump.

He’d been roundly attacked in recent days, after he’d questioned the heroics of ex-POW, and current Arizona Sen. John McCain.

First, he claimed he didn’t say what he actually said about McCain. (“He’s not a war hero”)

Then, he decided to question McCain’s devotion to the nation’s veterans.

That set off a firestorm.

The Republican National Committee claimed, “There is no place in our party or our country for comments that disparage those who have served honorably.”

And two of Trump’s fellow Republican presidential hopefuls, former Texas Gov. Rick Perry and S.C. Sen. Lindsey Graham were beside themselves.

Perry claimed that, “His attack on veterans make him unfit to be Commander-in-Chief of the U.S. Armed Forces, and he should immediately withdraw from the race for president.”

Graham, a close ally of McCain’s, was even more pointed. He claimed that Trump is “becoming a jackass.”

But not a lot of attention has been paid to why Graham and Perry issued the strongest rebukes of the current Republican frontrunner.

Here’s why.

Before Perry became the 47th governor of Texas in 2000, he’d served in the United States Air Force between 1972 and 1977. He became an Air Force pilot and rose to the rank of captain.

Lindsey Graham retired from the Air Force Reserves this year, after serving for 33 total years, while rising to the rank of colonel.

It’s no wonder that Perry and Graham would bristle, and worse, when a man who’d avoided military service on a number of occasions (with draft deferments in July of 1964, January of 1966, December of 1966 and in January of 1968), and who had one questionable medical deferment (bone spurs on one of his feet. But he can’t remember which foot) – would question the heroics of a man whose life was in the hands of the enemies of the United States for five and a half years.

There’s a lot of media discussion about when Trump will finally “cross the line,” and spoil his hope of winning the Republican nomination.

When he implied that Mexicans coming across the border were “rapists,” his poll numbers rose.

The morning after he launched his tirade against John McCain, one poll indicated that he was the frontrunner – by double digits.

So, I don’t expect that many Republicans will abandon him, even after the cheapest of his cheap-shots – the reciting of Lindsey Graham’s cell phone number before a national TV audience, and for the purpose of embarrassing Sen. Graham during last Tuesday’s speech.

That’s what led to that internet poster claiming that Trump’s candidacy is nothing more than an “experiment to see how stupid people really are.”

While there’s been widespread condemnation of Trump’s motives and tactics, he’s still able to brag about his poll numbers.

There are many Republicans who actually believe that Trump’s loose-tongued personal attacks are some kind of an indication that he has the ability to cut through complex problems, and to magically solve them.

Trump’s remedy for keeping illegal aliens out of the country, is to build a big fence, and then to charge Mexico for building it.

Some people simply don’t question how he’d make good on that promise. They don’t see that it’s an example of the free world’s leader in spewing hot air.

I was amused a couple of weeks ago, after it appeared that he was climbing in the polls, and he told an audience, “I see that they don’t call me a clown anymore.”

I do.

Donald Trump, you’re a clown!

Edward A. Owens is a three-time Emmy Award winner and 20-year veteran of television news. E-mail him at freedoms@bellatlantic.net

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