Editor’s Note: Dean Obeidallah, a former attorney, is the host of SiriusXM’s weekly program “The Dean Obeidallah Show,” a columnist for The Daily Beast and editor of the politics blog The Dean’s Report. Follow him on Twitter: @TheDeansreport. The opinions expressed in this commentary are his. (This article has been updated with the results of the Indiana primary.)
Story highlights
Dean Obeidallah: Presumptive GOP nominee Donald Trump is trying to make an issue of Hillary Clinton's judgment
But he's made some spectacularly bad judgments, including about Ted Cruz's father
Trump said elder Cruz was involved with JFK's assassin
Nothing says you have the “judgment” to be President of the United States of America better than accusing your political opponent’s father of being involved with JFK’s assassin.
Oh yeah, and note that the source for that accusation was the National Enquirer. Yes, the very same National Enquirer that recently claimed Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia was murdered by a $2,000 a night hooker recruited by the CIA who injected him with poison. (And I’m not kidding.)
Donald Trump on Donald Trump
Let’s put all partisan bickering aside (if that’s even possible.) What does it say about Trump’s judgment that on the very day of the Indiana primary where polls have him leading by double digits and on the verge of being dubbed by most as the presumptive GOP nominee, he felt compelled to declare on national TV that Ted Cruz’s father “was with Lee Harvey Oswald prior to Oswald’s being — you know, shot.” Adding, “What was he doing with Lee Harvey Oswald shortly before the death? Before the shooting? It’s horrible.”
Cruz unloads with epic takedown of ‘pathological liar,’ ‘narcissist’ Donald Trump
Someone better get Kevin Costner and Oliver Stone on the phone because it looks like we need a sequel to their hit film, “JFK.” Maybe next Trump will claim Bernie Sanders killed Tupac?
And now the person who made that remark is the GOP’s presumptive nominee after winning Indiana and seeing his rival Ted Cruz drop out of the race Tuesday night. Republican leaders must be thrilled.
The irony is that Trump’s bizarre statement comes only a day after he slammed Hillary Clinton’s “bad judgment.” Trump, pivoting from his attacks on Clinton for having the audacity to acknowledge she’s a woman (playing the “woman card”), then ticked off examples of Clinton’s so-called judgment issues: “Emails, bad judgment. Iraq, voted yes, bad judgment. Libya, bad judgment. All bad judgment.”
There probably were even some Trump supporters who winced when he raised the “judgment” issue given his own record. Saying Trump’s judgment has been frequently bad is not doing it justice. It’s been so horrible it actually veers into performance art.
I’m not even talking about issues from years ago such as Trump cheating on his first wife with Marla Maples or his four bankruptcies or calling women he didn’t like, “fat pigs, dogs, slobs and disgusting animals.” I’m talking numerous examples of Trump’s mind-blowing judgment in just the past two years. Here’s a sampling:
2014 Ebola outbreak
In what could be viewed as a preview of a Trump presidency handling a challenging issue, when the Ebola crisis was raging, he didn’t respond calmly. Instead he freaked out, claiming, “Ebola is much easier to transmit than the CDC and government representatives are admitting.” Trump then ratcheted up the fear factor (as he has done on many other issues) by declaring, “The U.S. must immediately stop all flights from EBOLA infected countries or the plague will start and spread inside our borders.”
He even wanted to leave behind in Africa all American health care workers who were there helping people: “The U.S. cannot allow EBOLA infected people back. People that go to faraway places to help out are great, but must suffer the consequences!” In reality, President Obama didn’t stop flights and there was never a massive Ebola outbreak in the United States as Trump warned.
Tweeting out white supremacists’ comments
Not once but several times in this campaign Trump shared the thoughts of white supremacists on his Twitter feed, such as one falsely claiming “Blacks Killed by Blacks - 97%.”
And in March Trump manually copied and sent out a tweet mocking Jeb Bush by a white supremacist with the Twitter handle “White Genocide” and who notes on his Twitter profile that he lives in “Jewmerica.” You would’ve thought the name “White genocide” would’ve been a tip-off the guy was a white supremacist.
Hesitating to condemn Klan leader David Duke
In February, CNN’s Jake Tapper asked Trump if he’d disavow the endorsement of former KKK wizard David Duke, who had stated voting against Trump “would be treason to your heritage.” It says a great deal about Trump’s judgment (and perhaps more) when he responded: “I don’t know anything about what you’re even talking about with white supremacy or white supremacists.” After the media firestorm Trump finally condemned Duke.
Inability to know the difference between a lie and the truth
There have been countless examples of this from Trump’s claim that “thousands” of Muslims cheered in New Jersey on 9/11 (no evidence) to Trump alleging Obama wants to bring in 200,000 Syrian refugees (real number 10,000) to his recent false claim that the 2016 federal spending bill funds “illegal immigrants coming through Phoenix.” In fact Politifact listed 25 of Trump’s recent statements as “Pants on fire.” (aka lies.)
And there you have the judgment of the GOP’s presumptive nominee on display for all to see. The bottom line is that Trump bringing up “judgment” is like Paula Deen bringing up race relations. It’s not going to help either of them.
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