The dustup over charges that Donald Trump insinuated in an interview after the first presidential debate that Foxnews moderator Megyn Kelly was on her menstrual cycle during questioning points out precisely what is wrong with the Republican Party. There was a quick rush to condemn Trump, but it was too quick.
These are a few comments Trump made during the CNN interview when asked if he thought Foxneww had an agenda:
She came out there…trying to be…tough, and to be sharp….She’s not very tough and not very sharp….I don’t respect her as a journalist…. You could see there was blood coming out of her eyes, blood coming out of her wherever (video).
Certainly Kelly, and Foxnews, failed miserably to provide voters with an opportunity to hear Trump’s position on important issues facing the nation. The ‘questions’ directed a Trump were actually personal attacks. Further, with ten candidates to examine, the moderators took up over 30% of the air time. Clearly they were full of themselves, and Trump’s criticism was warranted; Kelly drew first blood. But can the inference to a feminine issue be drawn from Trumps comments?
Upon examining the video from the interview where the inference was purportedly made, it is very, very, easy to see that the comment Trump made is neither restricted to gender or remotely indicative of any feminine issue. The word “wherever” was used in a weak transitional sense; trailing off without identifying “nose” (which Trump clarified would have completed his thought) as Trump was moving on to a different subject. Instead, the interviewer redirects Trump’s attention back to the moderators, and the phrase comes up shortly thereafter when Trump comments that Chris Wallace, also, had “blood pouring out of his eyes too.” The phrase denotes a person’s intense animosity towards another person in an encounter.
Obviously, to any who would have first viewed the interview, the menstrual cycle rendering comes not by exegesis, but by eisegesis (reading into the text what isn’t there).
Now, there are some good folks in the fray that rushed to condemn Trump, along with the usual incompetents, but the rush to judgement shows that even the good ones are either a part of, or are unwittingly playing to, the MSM and Republican establishment.
For some it’s fear. Jeb Bush responded to the purported inference: “Do we want to insult 53% of all voters? What Donald Trump said is wrong.” Notice the point was fear of losing the women vote (Bush is, by the way, one of the incompetents).
Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker typed on Twitter “there’s no excuse for Trump’s comments.” Walker, a seemingly intelligent man of good intentions, got sucked into the vortex of error too.
But in Walker’s defense, it’s easy to imagine the scene prior to his slip. A campaign aid runs into his office, screams that Trump just accused Kelly of being a terrible moderator because she was on her minstrel cycle, and the other candidates are condemning him for it, and Walker better get a statement out there fast (53% of the votes at stake). This was probably the pattern that played out for many of the other candidates as well.
Mike Huckabee is a man of honor, and his first inclination was to come to the defense of his Foxnews colleague. He got sucked into the vortex too.
Even if candidates view the interview after their statements, their conscious has been swayed to hear this interpretation that was planted in their minds, and that everyone else so obviously sees. What’s worse, even if they do come to the right conclusion afterwards, they can’t retract their statements, and can only hope the controversy dies down soon (a retraction would make them appear reactionary and incompetent).
With the exception of Ted Cruz, and Marco Rubio, all of the Republican candidates got sucked into the vortex, or used the opportunity to criticize Trump. This implies that, wanting to or not, there are presently dominos in the same collection of dominos easily felled in a predetermined direction. This is precisely why there is also another, different vortex that can be heard. And that sound the MSM and Republican establishment is hearing is the rush of disenfranchised voters tired of being lied to and taken advantage of rushing over to Donald Trump.
Republican Establishment Hearing the Rush of Disenfranchised Voters
