It's still #NeverTrump

Byron York at Townhall assumes an oh-so-journalistic tone to tell us so, but his basic explanation of why Squirrel-Hair attacked Governor Susana Martinez in her home state of New Mexico boils down to a one-sentence truth. Granted, she's been pretty public about not supporting him, but a whole lot of S-H supporters, particularly those whose support is lukewarm, would like to see him give some indication of being interested in party unity. And Martinez is popular in NM, has the demographic creds that count for a lot in post-America (woman, Latina), and is head of the Republican Governors Association.

So why light into her at a rally? Because he's a thug:

To Trump, there was something more important at work. "(Martinez) continues to attack him publicly and privately," one person in TrumpWorld told me recently. Trump has made a principle of hitting back harder than he is hit. And he has been so effective that many Republicans, elected and not, have decided the smart thing is to refrain from taking on Trump, even if they oppose him.

Or let's let S-H confirm it with his own words:

Trump spurned an opportunity to be reassuring, saying Tuesday: "You think I'm going to change? I'm not changing."

"If I have a Republican that's not on my side, I'm not going to — why should I be particularly nice to the person?" Trump added, during a news conference. "Now, politically I may be right, I may be wrong, but that's who I am. I'm a very honest person … If somebody it's going to say a little bit negative or a lot negative about me and if they happen to be a Republican, I may choose to hit them back."

He's also, as we know, vulgar and bombastic and plays fast and loose with his own supposed achievements. The latest demonstration of that came at his presser yesterday. He called one reporter "a real beauty [as in humdinger, or piece of work]" and another "a sleaze," because they deigned to ask him about his fundraising for military veterans. But they had good reason to ask:

Let's review the bidding: Trump chickened out of a televised debate because he was scared of Megyn Kelly. He loudly announced, as an effort to hurt the television ratings of the other candidates, that he was going to hold a simultaneous rally to benefit veterans. During the course of this rally, he boasted that they had raised $6M for veterans groups, and that he had donated $1M of his own money.

Now keep in mind, no one asked Donald Trump to do any of this. No one asked him to do a rally that was ostensibly for the benefit of vets, no one asked him to donate his own money, no one asked him, how much are you going to raise. He boasted of all these things of his own accord, and did so repeatedly, in a shameless and naked ploy to get votes. It was his own campaign that engaged in serial dishonesty and goalpost shifting about what had happened to the money and specifically what became of the $1M of Trump's own money that he allegedly donated. This all came about because of Trump's incessant bragging (which he did on television, repeatedly) and his specific and transparent attempt to get people to watch his "veterans" rally on television instead of the Fox News debate.

Which is why it was so stomach-turning to see Trump pull his offensive bull***t routine today where he repeatedly said that he "didn't want any credit" for giving to vets and wanted to do it "in private." Trump invited this scrutiny on himself by being a loudmouth braggart about how great he is for veterans and veterans groups, and he is mad at the media for forcing him to actually do what he bragged that he'd already done.

Make no mistake: if Fahrenthold and the WaPo had not continually pressured Trump's campaign for months about this, almost none of the groups Trump boasted about giving to today would have gotten a red cent. Definitely, Trump would never have given a penny of his own money, as he promised he had already done back in January.

If you did not fall off the turnip truck yesterday, a few things ought to be clear to you by now: 1) Trump, who boasts about being worth "billions" and one of the wealthiest men in the world, wanted very much to claim credit for having given $1M of his own money to vets. 2) On the other hand, Trump had no intention of actually parting with any of this money. 3) He and his campaign repeatedly lied about what happened with the money and told the press information that was not true. 4) Only repeated hounding by the same press finally shamed Trump into donating his own money, and into reaching out to his new donors to make up the shortfall between what he promised and what he had actually given. 5) The fact that Trump had to actually donate his own money is the real reason that he was frothing-at-the-mouth pissed off at the press today.

I just don't know what else you are supposed to call someone who clearly had the intent of claiming false credit for donating to veterans charities, other than an absolute scumbag. Just to be clear, Trump can either donate to charities or not, and no one has the right to say anything about it; it's his money after all. But for him to take political credit for being some kind of philanthropist with a group that really is mistreated by the government, without any intent of following through... that's inexcusable.

In that spirit, I will leave you with this observation from Jonah Goldberg, in a great NRO piece in which he responds to a piece Fred Barnes wrote at The Weekly Standard the other day. I won't digress much here, because the following paragraph is what is really pertinent to the gist of this post. I will recommend that you read Goldberg's entire essay. (Actually, I saw a similar piece somewhere else yesterday that made the same point, and also made it well. In fact, that author examined several of the same quotes from the Barnes piece that Goldberg has used.) Goldberg says that Barnes's attempt to trot out an array of rightie intellectuals who support Squirrel-Hair is actually pretty weak tea when you look at the tepid nature of their "support."

Anyway, here's the relevant paragraph:

Fair enough, but think of it this way: If one wrote a similar piece about “Reagan’s intellectuals,” or “Nixon’s intellectuals,” at similar moments in their quests for the presidency, you’d be able to find dozens of serious thinkers and journalists willing to give full-throated endorsements of their candidate and his philosophy. Moreover, Reagan and Nixon (and the Bushes) could talk intelligently about what their intellectuals believed and have written. Does anyone think Trump has any clue who Charles Kesler or McClay even are?

Of course not, because they aren't Squirrel-Hair, and Squirrel-Hair has a "very good brain."

Another example of an obtuse endorsement comes from Bernie Marcus, founder of Home Depot. His main point is that of the figures cited above, that S-H is not Hillionaire. The closest he comes to discussion any actual qualifications is to argue that S-H would immediately, upon taking office, set about dismantling the regulatory stranglehold that the Most Equal Comrade and his nomenklatura have imposed on small business. Now, Bernie is a hero in the fight for economic liberty, but like anyone else who has signed on to the S-H phenomenon, methinks he places way too much hope in S-H actually following through with any kind of consistency on this undertaking. He is, after all, a lover of eminent domain, and, in the realm of health care, "taking care of everybody."

Nope. It's still #NeverTrump if you love freedom and want to see post-America restored to its former identity as the United States of America.