From the Thursday edition of the Morning Jolt:
‘Look at That Face! Would Anyone Vote for That?’
Oh, I see. Donald Trump thinks Carly Fiorina isn’t physically attractive enough to hold the office of Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon, William H. Taft, Grover Cleveland, and Rutherford B. Hayes.
With his blue tie loosened and slung over his shoulder, Trump sits back to digest his meal and provide a running byplay to the news. Onscreen, they’ve cut away to a spot with Scott Walker, the creaky-robot governor of Wisconsin. Praised by the anchor for his “slow but steady” style, Walker is about to respond when Trump chimes in, “Yeah, he’s slow, all right! That’s what we got already: slowwww.” His staffers at the conference table howl and hoot; their man, though, is just getting warm. When the anchor throws to Carly Fiorina for her reaction to Trump’s momentum, Trump’s expression sours in schoolboy disgust as the camera bores in on Fiorina. “Look at that face!” he cries. “Would anyone vote for that? Can you imagine that, the face of our next president?!” The laughter grows halting and faint behind him. “I mean, she’s a woman, and I’m not s’posedta say bad things, but really, folks, come on. Are we serious?”
This morning, Trump insisted he was talking about Fiorina’s “persona,” which would make more sense if he hadn’t said, “Can you imagine that, the face of our next president.”
With Trump, no particular statement does much damage. The Carly comment will be forgotten within a day, maybe two, because he’ll have said something else that everyone will be discussing.
Meanwhile, Trump-mentum continues:
Donald Trump has become the first Republican presidential candidate to top 30% support in the race for the Republican nomination, according to a new CNN/ORC poll, which finds the businessman pulling well away from the rest of the GOP field.
Trump gained 8 points since August to land at 32% support, and has nearly tripled his support since just after he launched his campaign in June. The new poll finds former neurosurgeon Ben Carson rising 10 points to land in second place with 19%. Together, these two non-politicians now hold the support of a majority of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents, and separately, both are significantly ahead of all other competitors.
Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush stands in third place with 9%, down 4 points since August, and Texas Sen. Ted Cruz holds fourth place with 7%. Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee and Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker follow at 5%, with all other candidates at 3% or less, including Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, who notched the only other statistically significant shift in the poll by falling 5 points since August.
UPDATE: See, the Fiorina line may not even be the most controversial thing Trump said in a twelve-hour period:
“Ben Carson, you look at his faith, and I think you’re not going to find so much, and you look at his views on abortion, which were horrendous, and that’s I think, why I’m leading with all the evangelicals — as you know in your poll, number one, I‘m leading Ben Carson by a lot. You know, you said Ben Carson’s surging, I’m almost double his numbers.”
“He was a doctor, perhaps, you know, an okay doctor, by the way, you can check that out too, we’re not talking about a great — he was an okay doctor. . . . Because he’s a doctor and he hired one nurse, he’s gonna end up being president of the United States? For him to criticize me on my faith is absolutely — for him to read the Bible in his memory, it looked like he memorized it about two minutes before he went onstage — Ben Carson is not going to be your next president, that I can tell you.”