Today, Donald Trump “explained” how he came to tell Jake Tapper that he couldn’t condemn David Duke, white supremacists, or the Klu Klux Klan without some research.
What he said:
“I’m sitting in a house in Florida with a very bad earpiece that they gave me, and you could hardly hear what he was saying. But what I heard was various groups, and I don’t mind disavowing anybody, and I disavowed David Duke and I disavowed him the day before at a major news conference, which is surprising because he was at the major news conference, CNN was at the major news conference, and they heard me very easily disavow David Duke…. Now, I go, and I sit down again, I have a lousy earpiece that is provided by them, and frankly, he talked about groups…. He also talked about groups. And I have no problem with disavowing groups, but I’d at least like to know who they are. It would be very unfair to disavow a group, Matt, if the group shouldn’t be disavowed. I have to know who the groups are. But I disavowed David Duke…. Now, if you look on Facebook, right after that, I also disavowed David Duke. When we looked at it, and looked at the question, I disavowed David Duke. So I disavowed David Duke all weekend long, on Facebook, on Twitter and obviously, it’s never enough. Ridiculous.”
Why it’s unethical:
- Trump claims to be honest and strong, but in fact he flunks a basic test of integrity and strength of character. He won’t admit when he is wrong, even when, in this case, it is obvious that he is. This is cowardice
- Trump, like fellow narcissist Barack Obama, refuses to be accountable for his own actions, failures and mistakes, and reflexively blames others. This time he is blaming technology and CNN, but the nothing in his response (I reviewed that here) suggests he couldn’t hear what Tapper was saying. (“Duke? Yes, I like Duke. Great college. Is KKK a fraternity there? I’m sorry, I’m having a little trouble hearing you…”)
- He is lying about the earpiece having anything to do with his answer. It was apparently bothering him, so Trump seized on that to be able to point to the video to bolster his alibi. This is practiced deceit—he never actually says he misunderstood the questions, but says he had a “bad earpiece” CNN gave him, and that he could hardly hear what Tapper was saying. He wants his loyal deniers assume that that he couldn’t hear.
- We now know that Trump did know about Duke, and spoke about him, on the record, years ago.
Summary: Trump lied, ducked responsibility, blamed an earpiece and CNN for his own poor response, and refused to own up to his gaffe, while insulting the intelligence of everyone who heard him.
Ethics Alarms 
Jack,
I think you’ll appreciate this. 🙂
Earpiece? Trump is just a lying POS!
Pleistocene Otter Stalker?
Perfect Ovine Simulator?
Pungent Offal Sauce?
What are you trying to say?
Force of habit. Piece of Shit!
Pony on snake, didn’t you read Via Angus’ latest on popehat?
I don’t think analogies like that are helpful, when the reality is both obvious and clearer—and without little bits of bias thrown in.
http://www.lifezette.com/polizette/the-suicide-of-the-gop-establishment/
Well, Jack, here’s someone’s reason for voting for Trump. Doesn’t strike me as terribly rational, but at least it’s a little coherent. I had no idea there was an apocalyptic wing of the GOP.
Laura is a very smart and educated woman, but she has always been a pure ideologue. The argument she makes doesn’t support Trump in any way. He’s just a vessel for anger by hard right extremists who want revenge on the Republican party for trying to actually govern. There’s no argument for Trump in that piece at all, and it is indeed death cult logic. Unbelievably irresponsible. Ingraham is a lawyer and doesn’t suffer fools gladly…it is incredible that she would support a non-conservative, non-thinking, unethical, unqulaified and unstable fraud like Trump and inflict him on the United States and its public, as well as the world, to show contempt for a party and a culture that won’t see things her way. Incredible.
The crux of this insanity was in evidence way back in the Bush administration, when Ingraham and other hard right talk show hosts labelled a prgamatic effort to deal with illegal immigrants as amnesty. They want the illgeals punished, even if it means acting like the Third Reich to do it. They really think the US can deport 12 million people. This is the problem with ideologues, and always has been. I wish we could prevent long-time immigration cheaters from benefiting from their illegal conduct, including stealing citizenship benefits for their kids, but once the problem has been allowed to continue so long without serious government enforcement, the cure is worse than the disease. Never mind: Ingraham and her pals killed the best chance of bi-partisan, rational illegal immigration policy, and demonstrated why she and the hard right, never give in, never surrender Right are too irresponsible and doctrinaire to lead. She’s virtually a single-issue voter, and all single issue voters are inherently reckless and selfish citizens.
But Ingraham is worse than that. She knows Trump is an ass and a fool, but she’s willing to make him President anyway, give him immense power to terrible damage to her country and he fellow citizens because it won’t adopt her extreme ideological policies.
Good point. She doesn’t really say anything positive about Trump, or anything at all about him, for that matter. This is kind of the obverse of the liberal Democrat guy saying in the Boston Globe he’s going to vote for Trump to help the Hillary prevail. A reason, but not supportive of Trump.
I find “apocalyptic” a handy term these days. It covers a frightening amount of ground.