Donald Trump hits back - again.

One of the hallmarks of Donald Trump's campaign has been the undertone of personal violence he cultivates, exhorts and advocates through his continual insults of other candidates, media members and so many others who incur his wrath.
Last April on Fox News, Greta Von Susteren asked Trump if he would change his tone and become “more presidential” if he won the Presidency.  This was his response.

“Tone to me matters. Being presidential matters," “If somebody hits me, I have to hit them back. I have to. I’m not going to sit there and say, ‘I’m wonderful, I’m a president.’ I want to win. I will be so presidential you won’t believe it.”

Van Susteren asked him to expound on being “presidential.”

Trump responded, “It means maybe not be so aggressive, maybe not get so personal. But when people get personal with me, they say, oh, they don’t like my hair, okay? If I ever said I don’t like their hair it would be a headline. They’re allowed to say whatever they want to about me. My hair is not that bad is it? And it is my hair. But you know what happens? What happens is they hit me and I hit them back harder and, usually in all cases, they do it first. But they hit me and I hit them back harder and they disappear. That’s what we want to lead the country.”

He then added, “I will be so presidential, Greta, you will be so proud of me.”

Now that he is the nominee, some may have held out hope that his tone would soften during the campaign and as the general election approaches, afford us a glimpse of how he would conduct himself in the event he is elected President.

Today, following the third night of the Democratic conventions that featured as speakers, President Obama, Vice-President Biden, Vice-Presidential nominee, Tim Kaine, and the former Mayor of New York, Independent Michael Bloomberg all of whom spoke forcefully against the Republican, none of whom evoked violence, Trump responded. This is what he said.

"I wanted to hit a couple of those speakers so hard. "I would have hit them. No, no. I was going to hit them, I was all set and then I got a call from a highly respected governor....’ ‘I was gonna hit one guy in particular, a very little guy," he said. "I was gonna hit this guy so hard his head would spin and he wouldn't know what the hell happened."

A reasonable surmise is that the person he threatened most directly was Bloomberg, the shortest in stature and therefore, a classic target of the typical school yard bully. 

A sage once said that some (men) grow into the Presidency. That wise man could never have contemplated a candidate who would have to grow so far just to climb out of the gutter and escape his own venal nature.   

July 28, 2016