Donald Trump wants you to know he is not a serious presidential candidate.
For months he has been sending you signals.
First he praised dictators Saddam Hussein and Kim Jong-un. Then he started a bromance with Vladimir Putin.
When that didn’t work he said American POW’s are not heroes because “they got captured.” He then took on a Gold Star family without any empathy.
Then, remarkably, he claimed he could go out on 5th Avenue in New York City, shoot somebody, and voters wouldn’t care.
Does this sound like a man who wants to be president, or a billionaire reality TV host who is anxious to get back to his golf courses and the 2017 season of The Apprentice?
Locked into the GOP nomination, with just 90 days to go until the election, Trump today ditched his newly purchased teleprompter and again went off script.
Speaking of his rival Hillary Clinton on the issue of guns, he told a crowd, “Hillary wants to abolish, essentially abolish, the Second Amendment.”
It is a charge he has been making for weeks. But then Trump added this:
“By the way, if she gets to pick her judges, nothing you can do, folks. Although the Second Amendment people, maybe there is, I don’t know. But I’ll tell you what, that will be a horrible day.”
Many watching the speech interpreted Trump’s remarks to mean that gun owners could assassinate Clinton before she ever makes a judicial appointment.
After jaws hit the floor, the reaction to his comment was swift. A supporter of Trump, sitting behind him in the audience, turned to his companion with a look of disbelief when the statement was made.
Democratic Senator Chris Murphy said Trump’s comment was “disgusting and embarrassing and sad.” The Clinton campaign responded, “What Trump is saying is dangerous.”
Senator Elizabeth Warren hit him even harder with a couple of tweets.
.@realDonaldTrump makes death threats because he’s a pathetic coward who can’t handle the fact that he’s losing to a girl.
— Elizabeth Warren (@elizabethforma) August 9, 2016
Your reckless comments sound like a two-bit dictator, @realDonaldTrump. Not a man who wants to lead the greatest democracy on the planet.
— Elizabeth Warren (@elizabethforma) August 9, 2016
Trump later said that isn’t what he meant. But of course he knew what he was saying. He always knows what he is saying.
The billionaire regularly employs a psychological trick to suggest something, and then when called out, place the blame elsewhere or claim it’s not what he meant. We have watched him do it over and over again for the past year.
When you start hinting to gun owners that your opponent is so seriously dangerous that she should be taken out with a bullet, that’s a place no serious presidential candidate should go.
Unless you’re trying to tell everybody you are not a serious candidate.