Nov. 13--Donald Trump cannot be shamed. We know that by now.
Nothing he says is incorrect or unjustified. The people he insults -- immigrants, fellow presidential candidates and now the entire state of Iowa -- deserve, in his mind, every bit of his rage.
You simply cannot shame a man who is never wrong.
So perhaps it's time to start shaming the people who support Trump.
I say this on the heels of a bizarre Trump rant delivered last night in Iowa, a 90-minute stream-of-consciousness speech (stream-of-bile is more like it) during which he mercilessly tore into Ben Carson, the candidate closest to Trump in the polls. The real estate mogul suggested Carson's self-described "pathological temper" during his childhood is an incurable disease and went on to equate it to being a child molester.
Trump proceeded to pantomime Carson's claim that he nearly stabbed someone when he was young, then said to the audience: "Anybody have a knife? You want to try it on me?"
He mused over how Carson could be running so high in the polls, criticizing his own audience by saying: "How stupid are the people of Iowa? How stupid are the people of the country to believe this crap?"
During the speech, Trump demonstrated a drunk-guy-at-the-end-of-the-bar approach to foreign policy, saying of the terrorist group ISIS: "I'd bomb the s--- out of 'em."
He referred to GOP presidential candidate Carly Fiorina as "Carly whatever-the-hell-her-name-is," said Sen. Marco Rubio is "weak like a baby" and described journalists as "scum" and "garbage."
This bizarre rant would be bad enough on its own, but when you combine it with Trump's Tuesday night debate performance -- during which he lauded a brutal Eisenhower administration deportation program, one that he may or may not have known was named Operation Wetback -- you see a presidential primary candidate who is behaving like an unhinged bully.
And yet people laud him. They come to his campaign events in droves, they buy his books, they proselytize that he's the only one who can fix this country because he talks tough and doesn't take any guff.
Enough.
