Trumped Up Logic

I never gave much thought to Donald Trump, pro or con. I knew he was a very rich guy from Queens, New York, who owned casinos and lent his name to buildings for a licensing fee. He married very attractive women, got bored with them and then moved on to the next. Occasionally, he teetered toward bankruptcy but always seemed to bounce back.

He has a reality television show that I have never watched. In keeping with the theme of our current economy, his show apparently involves him going around firing people. It wasn’t until he recently grabbed the news media by its lapels for a possible run for president that I took notice of this man with the comb-over hairdo. (Hey, Donald, you're not fooling anyone. We all know you’re balding.)

Donald Trump and his traveling bad-hair day.

These days, it's difficult to miss Donald. That’s because when he opens his mouth, really strange stuff begins coming out of it. He's the Salvador Dali of rhetoric. He starts off making sense then wanders away like a crazy homeless man badly in need of psychotropic medications. Let me explain.

Let’s start with the perennial nonissue of abortion:
"I'm totally pro-choice."—Interview with Fox News Sunday, October 1999
"I want to see the abortion issue removed from politics. I believe it is a personal decision that should be left to the women and their doctors." —Remarks to reporters, December 1999
“No one is pro-abortion.” —CPAC conference, February 2011 (Okay. Fine. What does that mean?)

What are his views on healthcare?
"I'm very liberal when it comes to health care. I believe in universal health care." —Interview with CNN's Larry King, October 1999
"The Canadian plan also helps Canadians live longer and healthier than Americans... We need, as a nation, to reexamine the single-payer plan." —Writing in his book, The America We Deserve, January 2000
"They're all good men [the other Republican candidates], but you need somebody that is going to beat Barack Obama. You need somebody that's going to knock out Obamacare." —Fox News, March 17, 2011 (So, Donald, are you saying that Obama is not liberal enough for you?)

Then there’s his unflagging, long-standing loyalty to the Republican party:
"I probably identify more as Democrat." —Interview with CNN's Wolf Blitzer, March 2004
"I've been around for a long time. And it just seems that the economy does better under the Democrats than the Republicans." —Interview with CNN's Wolf Blitzer, March 2004
"Bush is probably the worst president in the history of the United States." —Interview with CNN's Wolf Blitzer, March 2007
"I think he [Obama] has a chance to go down as a great president." —Interview with NY1, November 2008
"I heard he [Obama] was a terrible student, terrible. How does a bad student go to Columbia and then to Harvard?"—The Associated Press interview, 2011. (Huh?)

So why should we vote for this bastion of humility?
"Part of the beauty of me is that I'm very rich." —Fox News, March 17,2011 (Hubba, hubba)
“Show me someone without an ego, and I'll show you a loser.” —Writing in his book, How to Get Rich, 2004
“If I run and win, our country will be great again.” —February 2011 (It’s... just... that... easy!)

What does his special counsel have to say about Trump’s buckshot viewpoints?
“People change their positions all the time, the way they change their wives,’’ says Michael Cohen, executive vice president of the Trump Organization and, founder, ShouldTrumpRun.com.

Well, that certainly explains it all.