Donald Trump was having a great Tuesday. The morning before, he’d delivered a stick-to-the-script speech about taxes and the economy. Then he got a gift: It turned out the homophobe father of a mass-murdering terrorist had turned up at one of Hillary Clinton’s rallies, and endorsed her.
Things were going so well, especially given Trump’s troubles last week.
But then it all fell apart. In a speech in North Carolina this afternoon, Trump thought of a little throwaway comment, maybe an offhand thing, and kicked it around for maybe a second or two before deciding — why the hell not? — to just say it.
“If she gets to pick her judges, nothing you can do, folks,” Trump said. “Although the Second Amendment people — maybe there is, I don’t know.”
How did that go over? Watch the reaction from the gentleman with the white beard — a man who presumably likes Trump, since he’s, you know, at a Trump rally:
https://vine.co/v/5bezz2QJp2w
When you’ve gone too far for Papa Smurf Steve Carell, you’ve gone too far.
Trump’s campaign quickly issued a statement clarifying that he doesn’t want anyone to shoot Hillary Clinton — so don’t go saying campaign decorum is dead.
But it was already too late: CNN, which had devoted much of the morning to a negative Clinton story, after weeks of picking apart Trump errors, quickly bailed out on the Democrat’s toxic endorsement from homophobic terror-dad Seddique Mateen to instead talk about Trump and his “Second Amendment” comment.
Let’s take Trump’s campaign at its word and assume he doesn’t actually think/hope gun enthusiasts will kill anyone. The “Second Amendment” remark is still a sloppy belly flop because it proves, once again, what Democrats spent their whole convention infomercial trying to sell: the argument that the guy doesn’t think carefully before he speaks.
Here’s how the dryly hilarious New York Times explained it:
Mr. Trump’s remark came a day after his campaign expressed satisfaction with his delivery of a prepared economic speech in Detroit and called it evidence of a new level of discipline.
There’s always tomorrow.