By now everyone has heard of Donald Trump’s run-in with Univision reporter Jorge Ramos at his press conference yesterday. But just because it was so entertaining, I’m going to quote conservative blogger Leon Wolf at length about the whole affair:
Donald Trump just held a press conference prior to a speech in Iowa which was — and I say this without exaggeration — the most bizarre thing I have seen in a lifetime of following politics. It was at once an illustration of why the media fixates on him, and also why the other candidates in the race cannot deal with him.
He opened the conference by yelling at Univision anchor Jorge Ramos, who he claimed asked a question without being called on. He continued to yell at Ramos at some length about being out of turn, then turned to one of his campaign staffers, nodded, and pointed at Ramos, whereupon the staffer removed Ramos from the conference. (Note: I would have zero problem on principle with throwing Ramos out of a press conference on the merits).
The next reporter’s question, naturally, was, “Why did you have him thrown out?” Amazingly, Trump responded to this question, I’m not kidding, by answering, “I didn’t have him thrown out, you’ll have to ask security, whoever they are.” When reporters pressed him with the obvious fact that the person who had him removed was on his staff (he appeared to be wearing a Trump button even, but I can’t swear to that), he immediately changed his tune to say that it was because the reporter was a “highly emotional person,” with no mention of the fact that 30 seconds earlier he had been denying that he had Ramos thrown out at all.
….When a politician goofs once, it’s easy for that to get stuck in the feedback loop of the media and other candidates.
Watching Donald Trump speak and answer questions, though, is like watching a billion targets appear in the sky all at once, for a political opponent. Each thing he says is so bizarre, or ill informed, or demonstrably false, or un presidential in tone or character, that it becomes impossible to know which target to lock on to or focus on. And to the extent that he makes a policy statement, it is so hopelessly vague and ludicrous that it’s impossible to know where to begin, at least within the context of the 30-second soundbite that the modern political consumer requires (and chances are, he will say something diametrically opposed to it before the press conference is over anyway).
Donald Trump is the political equivalent of chaff, a billion shiny objects all floating through the sky at once, ephemeral, practically without substance, serving almost exclusively to distract from more important things — yet nonetheless completely impossible to ignore.
I have only one point to make here: Ramos was being a jerk and a bully, but in the end, he was only doing to Trump what Trump does to everyone else. And that made the whole thing worthwhile because we learned what happened when Trump is faced with someone willing to be as much of a bully as he is: he couldn’t handle it, so he had the guy thrown out and then lied about doing it.
Needless to say, he can’t have the Secret Service toss Vladimir Putin or Xi Jinping out of the room if he gets annoyed at them. So what does he think he’s going to do? If he can’t even handle Jorge Ramos, how is he going to handle Enrique Peña Nieto?
And then there’s the inevitable question: will this episode hurt or help Trump? Answer: It will hurt him with Hispanics, of course, but Trump doesn’t care. He’s playing entirely for the Republican base right now, and they’re going to love this. If he has the guts to toss out Jorge Ramos, maybe that means he’ll have the guts to deport 11 million illegal immigrants too. Vote Trump!
