The Trump apology
Political operatives, pundits, media and just plain citizens had spoken of the pivot and it was reported that Trump’s staff and the Republican Party were trying to get him to embrace it. He was losing percentage points in the polls faster than Ryan Lochte was losing respect around the world and a rout was in the offing.
Recent polls have Hillary Clinton not only up on him nationally by 47.2 percent to 41.2 percent, but leading in virtually every battleground state. In some key states, like Pennsylvania, he trails so badly it looks to be over, while even in Florida the gap grew wider than previously thought possible. To revive his moribund, mistake-riddled campaign, the pivot had to be done.
And so on Thursday in Charlotte, Virginia it came. Reading prepared remarks from a teleprompter, Trump mostly stayed to script and delivered remarks that are as close to contrite as he’s likely to get. It was an apology of sorts, though it sounded more like an excuse and it did not specify to whom he was apologizing to.
“Sometimes, in the heat of debate and speaking on a multitude of issues, you don’t choose the right words or you say the wrong thing,” Mr. Trump told his assembled supporters. “I have done that. And believe it or not, I regret it.
“And I do regret it, particularly where it may have caused personal pain,” Mr. Trump added. “Too much is at stake for us to be consumed with these issues.”
Saying sorry – to whom?
But to whom was the alleged apology, or expression of regret, directed at? Mexicans? Muslims? African-Americans? Every American? Women, who he calls all manner of names (Rosie O’Donnell’s a “fat pig” and Bette Midler is “grotesque”)? It could have been for ‘Crooked’ Hillary Clinton, whom he slyly threatened with physical harm and has denigrated beyond the pale of politics.
Maybe his words were for John McCain. Megyn Kelly? President Barack Obama, for leading that silly birther movement? Serge Kovaleski, the N.Y. Times reporter Trump physically mocked, making fun of his disability (arthrogryposis, a condition that causes Kovaleski’s right arm to remain bent).
Polls found that to be Trump at his most offensive.
Does he regret his trashing of the family of the slain U.S. soldier, the ‘Gold Star’ family? Or does he regret calling CNN “disgusting,” or regret having forever blamed his troubles on countless other media? Regret calling into question Judge Gonzalo Curiel’s impartiality? Were his words for GOP heavyweight Paul Ryan? Or the students from the defunct Trump University he ripped off?
The baby he tossed from his rally?
That list does not contain much in the way of examples where his offensive remarks had anything to do with saying the “wrong thing” while “in the heat of debate and speaking on a multitude of issues.” In the case of most, his offensiveness had everything to do with being an arrogant and insensitive megalomaniac. With childish name calling.
Trump campaign overhaul
The alleged pivot comes as his campaign is changing, again, losing Paul Manafort, who resigned as scandal began enveloping him. Trump added the chairman of the Breitbart News website, Steve Bannon as campaign manager.
Bannon is far less a journalist and far more a firebrand agitator for the extreme right of the GOP; indeed, he once called the Republican leadership “cunts.” Trump also promoted pollster Kellyanne Conway to the role of campaign manager.
In typical schizophrenic Trump campaign fashion, the very day before addressing the tired notion of a pivot in Charlotte, he had, in essence, totally denounced it. It was not going to happen, he said Wednesday. He said he knew what got him where he was and was going to ride that horse all the way to the end.
“I am who I am. It’s me. I don’t want to change. Everyone talks about, ‘Oh, well you’re going to pivot.’ I don’t want to pivot,” Trump said Tuesday on Wisconsin television station WKBT. “I mean, you have to be you. If you start pivoting, you’re not being honest with people.”
“I’ve gotten here in a landslide and we’ll see what happens,” he added. “I mean, in the end, don’t forget when I lost Wisconsin, it was over for Trump. Except for one problem, I then went on a very good run. But no, I am who I am.”
Finally then, what does him denouncing the idea of a pivot one day and yet pivoting the next day mean? It means he’s gonna pivot again, and again, and that his ‘apology’ was orchestrated and meaningless. And that there is a great deal of fun, macabre fun, left between now and November 8.
It also means a Hillary Clinton landslide.
