Debate exposed Trump’s flaws

By Clarence Page

Saturday, Aug. 15, 2015 | 2 a.m.

As if we did not already know it before Fox News’ Republican presidential debate in Cleveland, Donald Trump can dish out barbs against other people, but he can’t take ’em.

“The questions to me were far tougher,” he told reporters after the debate. “I didn’t think they were appropriate. And I thought Megyn behaved very badly, personally.”

Right. Shame on Megyn Kelly and her fellow Fox News anchors Bret Baier and Chris Wallace for accurately quoting Trump’s own words back to him.

Apparently, everyone except Donald Trump expected Donald Trump to be the center of attention at last week’s debate.

In much the same way that President Barack Obama looked surprisingly ill-prepared for his first debate with Republican Mitt Romney in 2012, Trump appeared to be even less prepared to be held accountable for his own pronouncements.

For example, Kelly early on asked Trump about his propensity to call women “fat pigs, dogs, slobs and disgusting animals” and further asked, “Does that sound to you like the temperament of a man we should elect as president?”

If those sound like reasonable questions to ask a presidential candidate, well, you just don’t see the world as clearly as they do on Planet Trump. Anyone who thought Fox News anchors would go soft on the Republican candidates was in for a surprise. The trio showed how real journalism quite often breaks out at the famously conservatively leaning channel — and Trump didn’t like it one bit.

Trump said onstage that he is running against “political correctness,” which is a guaranteed applause line among conservatives who ignore their own conservative correctness.

“Wow,” he tweeted afterwards, “@megynkelly really bombed tonight.” He also described her as “totally overrated” and “angry.”

That’s Trump. Keep the trash talk flowing regardless of whatever is really going on. Wallace and Baier were chastised for asking about his flip-flops, particularly his past support for a single-payer health care system. They also asked about his contributions to Hillary Clinton and his involvement with four companies that went bankrupt.

But a particularly revealing moment came when Trump responded to Wallace’s request for evidence to back up his claim that the Mexican government was “sending” illegal immigrants across the border. This was the issue that helped to rocket him into first place among the 17 declared GOP candidates. But trash-talking Trump responded by dodging the point with braggadocio, empty charges and other hot air.

Wallace, to his credit, offered 30 more seconds for Trump to answer the question. Instead, Trump resumed his diatribe about how “our leaders are stupid, our politicians are stupid,” etc., etc.

With that, the great outsider populist candidate exposed himself as a narcissistic blowhard with an ego as large as his hairdo, judging by the reactions of Fox’s focus group of 23 Republican voters, conducted by GOP pollster Frank Luntz. In show-biz terms, the reality-show star laid an egg. After the debate, the number of voters on the panel who expressed a favorable view of Trump had dropped from 14 to three.

“You know, what happened, I liked him when I came in here because he wasn’t a politician,” one man told Luntz, while fellow group members nodded agreement. “But right now, he skirted around questions better than a lifelong politician ever had.”

Particularly aggravating for the Republican group was Trump’s refusal to pledge that he would back the eventual Republican nominee if he doesn’t win the nomination himself. That refusal sounded like a thinly veiled threat to run as a third-party candidate, which undoubtedly would be as harmful to the GOP nominee as Ross Perot’s maverick run in 1992 was to Republican President George H.W. Bush.

But the big irony here is that the party brought Trump upon themselves in many ways. The GOP’s rightward shifts have turned its primary process into a contest to see who can sound the most far-right, even when — as an old saying goes — deep down, he’s shallow. Democrats made similar mistakes with their leftward drift in the late 1960s, but to their credit they have largely gotten over it in recent decades, unless we see a late surge for avowed socialist Sen. Bernie Sanders’ challenge.

For now, the disappointment expressed by Trump supporters illustrates how many voters have yet to pay much attention to the 2016 contest. They’d better start soon.

Clarence Page is a columnist for the Chicago Tribune.