Two post-debate views: Demetra DeMonte is the Republican National Committeewoman from Illinois.
Clarence Page is a nationally syndicated columnist for the Chicago Tribune.
Dementa DeMonte:
Dear activists, leaders, voters of the great state of Illinois!
It has been a difficult election cycle and it has gotten even worse. If we allow words verses deeds to decide this election we will be stuck with Hillary Clinton! Trump may be flawed but Hillary is a criminal! Our nominee Donald Trump needs us to stand with him! Last night I send the following email to every member of the Republican National Committee – and I have had many, many positive responses from my fellow members! Please stand with Donald Trump – for our country – for our children – for our grandchildren!
Demetra DeMonte
Co-Chair Trump Illinois
Republican National Committeewoman for Illinois
RNC Secretary 2011-2015
Dear Fellow RNC members,
I believe it is now time for us to speak up about the swirling news over the last 24 hours.
First and foremost, Donald J Trump is not going to step down – nor should he. He is our lawfully elected nominee.
Yes – Donald Trump used some very inappropriate language. We can all agree on that. I certainly do not condone it. But one thing is sure – he is not the first – nor will he be the last to utter foul language in the privacy of their home or in their locker rooms.
What would be so amusing, if it wasn’t so disingenuous, is that Hillary is appalled and disgusted at Trump’s language. Right… just like Captain Renault, the character from Casablanca, is “shocked, shocked” that there is gambling going on in Rick’s Café, while at the same time he is accepting his ill-gotten gambling winnings!
Hillary, the consummate hypocrite, who while First Lady, barraged her own Secret Service detail with unspeakably foul language! The very same men who put their lives on the line for hers! Such hypocrisy!
But here is the real question – what I believe we should really focus on: When choosing a President what is more important – Words or Deeds?
Mr. Trump may be guilty of uttering foul language – but Hillary is guilty of committing foul deeds – deeds, if she were anyone else, would have resulted in prison time.
- She has deleted thousands of documents which she knew was illegal;
- She had an unsecured server in her home that jeopardized America ’s security and more than likely resulted in the deaths of some of our people;
- She refused multiple cries for help from our ambassador that resulted in his murder, along with 3 brave Americans!
- She mercilessly hounded and attacked numerous women Bill Clinton sexually assaulted;
- Hillary laughed when she got off a rapist of a 12 year old girl – while knowing all along her client was guilty of rape! That is on tape, too – why doesn’t the media play that audio?
- And now it comes out that Hillary DREAMS of open borders and open trade. Oh, really? That’s not what she’s been preaching! No wonder she didn’t want to release her speeches to her Wall Street backers – the same people who made her rich by taking millions of dollars from them.
Our choice is simple.
Although Donald Trump is not a perfect man – who among us is? – he is our lawfully elected nominee and if we all stand behind him NOW – he will win November 8th.
I ask all of my fellow RNC members to please stay the course, stay with Donald Trump, and let us do all that we can to elect him on November 8th. There is too much at stake – including, most of all, the Supreme Court.
Join me in affirming your support for our nominee Donald J. Trump!
Demetra DeMonte
Co-Chair Trump Illinois
Republican National Committeewoman for Illinois
RNC Secretary 2011-2015
Clarence Page 10/11/16
British politician Nigel Farage is a big fan of Donald Trump, although he chose an odd way to express it while chatting with reporters backstage after Sunday’s presidential debate in St. Louis.
A leader in Britain’s Brexit movement to leave the European Union, Farage praised Trump’s performance against Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton to “a silverback gorilla,” according to The Guardian.
“He looked like a big gorilla prowling the set,” Farage said, “and he is that big alpha male — that’s what he is, that’s what he is.”
He said that. I, as a nonfan of Trump, am more inclined to view Farage’s remark as an insult to gorillas. Gorilla behavior, unlike Trump’s, tends to make sense.
Since the New York real estate developer and reality-TV star has a grasp of important issues that is about as deep as a birdbath, he tried to make up for it with bizarre body language and other antics to look tough.
He prowled the stage. He did pushups on the back of a chair. He stalked Clinton. He walked toward her as she spoke and stood behind her, his eyes locked on the back of her head like a jewelry store security guard, waiting for her to steal something.
With his chin up in a silent Mussolini-like pose, cameras caught the video-savvy Trump looming over his opponent like an orange-topped chicken hawk, ready to pounce or, at least, ready to rattle her and the audience with childish distractions.
Al Gore was properly ridiculed for walking into George W. Bush’s space during Bush’s turn to speak during their first presidential debate in 2000. Sixteen years later, Trump seemed to think that cheap distraction had become a good idea.
He repeatedly interrupted Clinton like a hyperactive schoolboy. He boldly branded her as “a liar” and “the devil,” even as he praised his own temperament.
If he is elected, he said, throwing red meat to his base, he will direct his attorney general to appoint a special prosecutor aimed at putting Clinton “in jail.”
Excuse me? Are we Americans crying out to have our own Robert Mugabe or Kim Jong Un? Or was Trump’s admiration for Vladimir Putin spinning out of control?
His staff later said he was just joking with that jail thing. But the deeper truth is that Trump’s desperation was showing. His lack of preparation and abundance of missed opportunities in his first debate had put his poll numbers into a slide and his Grand Old Party’s leaders into a panic.
Worse, a 2005 video anonymously released a couple of days before the second presidential debate caught Trump bragging lewdly and crudely about using his fame to force himself on women. Suddenly dozens of prominent Republicans started withdrawing their support and looking for ways to force their nominee off the ticket, perhaps to replace Trump with Indiana Gov. Mike Pence, Trump’s more traditionally conservative and sane running mate.
So with less than 30 days to go to Election Day, a time when most nominees are turning their appeals to moderate undecided or uncommitted swing voters, Trump was pivoting back to shore up his hardcore Hillary-hating base.
Against that backdrop, Trump’s bombastic behavior begins to make a lot of sense, as Farage suggests, in a simian sort of way. A strikingly similar view was expressed by celebrated primatologist Jane Goodall.
In a pre-debate analysis by journalist James Fallows in the October issue of The Atlantic, he quotes Goodall as saying before Trump clinched the GOP nomination that, “In many ways, the performances of Donald Trump remind me of male chimpanzees and their dominance rituals.”
“In order to impress rivals, males seeking to rise in the dominance hierarchy perform spectacular displays — stamping, slapping the ground, dragging branches, throwing rocks,” she said, according to Fallows. “The more vigorous and imaginative the display, the faster the individual is likely to rise in the hierarchy, and the longer he is likely to maintain that position.”
Sound familiar?
Clinton’s supporters complain that she passed up opportunities to wash Trump away in a flood of facts. But with her lead in polls widening, she refused to take Trump’s bait. She preferred to follow the old advice often attributed to Napoleon: Never interfere with an enemy while he is in the process of destroying himself.
Clarence Page, a member of the Tribune Editorial Board, blogs at www.chicagotribune.com/pagespage.