As Trump’s prospects for victory dim, the candidate is becoming more and more unhinged.
To illustrate: Here’s an early-morning tweet that provokes alarm about the mental state of the candidate.
Watched Saturday Night Live hit job on me.Time to retire the boring and unfunny show. Alec Baldwin portrayal stinks. Media rigging election!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 16, 2016
Is there a thinner-skinned politician in American history?
The media is not “rigging” the election. There is no media conspiracy to deny him the presidency. There are no clandestine meetings by media execs plotting the downfall of Mr.Trump.
To be sure, there is group think that has shown universal contempt and disgust at Trump’s candidacy. The overwhelming majority of reporters, columnists, editors, and publishers agree that Trump is unfit to be president. That does not constitute a “conspiracy.” And that disgust is not confined to the left side of the equation. Trump has not received a single endorsement from a major publication, left or right, this entire election cycle. Republican papers who haven’t endorsed a Democrat for decades have shunned Trump.
The media doesn’t need to conspire to destroy Trump. Trump is doing a fine job of that all on his own.
As CNNMoney’s Brian Stelter noted, Trump sang quite a different tune 11 months ago, when he hosted the show. It was the second time he appeared on the show — he also hosted in 2004, though he has been impersonated dozens of times.
Amazing evening at Saturday Night Live!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 8, 2015
Trump has been increasingly targeting the media as the culprit of his poor polling numbers. He has repeated the refrain of a “rigged” election since the virtually tied race started to slip away from him following the first debate on September 26. Since then, Clinton has led most polls by a comfortable margin.
Though attacks on the press from political candidates are nothing new (Clinton has expressed her fair share of gripes), Stelter notes that Trump’s position is far more extreme than his predecessors.
The skit would not appear in a top ten list of political parodies the show has done over the years. But Baldwin captured the essence of Trump perfectly:
The sketch was flattering to neither candidate, but Trump — who opened the debate by bringing up Bill Clinton’s accusers — bore the brunt of the derision.
“Martha, she is trying to silence these women, but they need to be respected. They need their voices heard,” Baldwin’s Trump told faux Martha Raddatz, played by “SNL” cast member Cecily Strong.
“What about all the women accusing you of sexual assault?” Strong’s Raddatz asked.
“They need to shut the hell up,” Baldwin replied as Trump.
Baldwin’s Trump also touched on a narrative that emerged in news coverage immediately after the real second debate: camera shots that seemed to show Trump looming awkwardly behind Clinton. At one point, as the fake Democratic nominee tried to answer a question about health care, Baldwin’s Trump meandered behind McKinnon’s Clinton — while the theme song from “Jaws” played.
The real Clinton told talk show host Ellen DeGeneres on Friday that Trump had stalked her on stage.
“[H]e was really all wrought up, and you could just sense how much anger he had, and so he was really trying to dominate and then literally stalk me around the stage,” Clinton said. “And I would just feel this presence behind me, and I, you know, I thought, ‘Whoa, this is really weird.’”
Trump has disputed that, blaming Clinton for invading his personal space and in one instance even suggesting he was checking out her posterior.
“I’m standing at my podium and she walks in front of me, right,” Trump said during a rally Friday in North Carolina. “She walks in front of me, you know. And when she walked in front of me, believe me, I wasn’t impressed.”
Donald Trump has done more to advance the cause of feminism than anyone in the last 50 years. He has validated everything that feminists have been saying about men for two generations: that men objectify women, that they judge a woman based on her looks, that “no” means “yes” to many men and that leering at a woman is perfectly acceptable.
And it isn’t just Trump who is giving a huge boost to feminism. It is the millions of men in America who are enabling this sort of behavior by refusing to condemn Trump’s words and past actions, giving him a pass when he needs to be shunned by men and women alike.
Trump needs an intervention — and a mental examination.
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