RUTHFULLY YOURS

Case in point: the Iowa caucuses.  On election night Trump grudgingly congratulated Ted Cruz.  But now he’s saying that Cruz “stole” the Iowa caucuses by repeating a news report that Ben Carson was about to leave the presidential race (which, by the way, may well be true – how many candidates do you know right now who have flown all the way home to “pick up some more clothes“?).  Here’s what Trump tweeted:

Ted Cruz didn’t win Iowa, he stole it. That is why all of the polls were so wrong and why he got far more votes than anticipated.

And finally, Cruz strongly told thousands of caucusgoers (voters) that Trump was strongly in favor of ObamaCare and “choice” – a total lie!

Based on the fraud committed by Senator Ted Cruz during the Iowa Caucus, either a new election should take place or Cruz results nullified.

There are two responses to this, one legal and one temperamental.  The legal response is, of course, that fraud can be claimed only if ballots were falsified or not properly counted, which is not claimed here.  Is Trump so ignorant of the law that he doesn’t know this?

The emotional angle is that Trump is acting like a crybaby.  At first he said he was “honored” to be in second.  He even said he would buy a farm in Iowa.  Then he said he hadn’t really tried very hard in Iowa.  Now he’s saying that because Cruz supposedly said untrue things about him, the whole process wasn’t “fair.”  (Actually, Trump was in favor of single-payer and was long in favor of partial-birth abortion, so those statements were quite true.)

Meanwhile, Trump seems to disregard all the untrue things he himself has said.  As Mark Levin has noted, no one has dragged Ben Carson down with unfair attacks more than Donald Trump, with Trump’s extreme personal attacks on Ben Carson’s character.  Trump has also made equally extreme and untrue attacks on Ted Cruz, calling him a “Canadian” and a “maniac” “disliked by everybody” (which would surprise a large majority of voters in Texas, as well as the largest plurality of the Iowa caucuses).

What kind of president will Trump be if he throws temper tantrums every time something doesn’t go his way?  Will he react like a leader if Congress votes down a proposal?  Will he have another tantrum if a foreign leader snubs him?  Other candidates are starting to notice, with Ted Cruz raising the question of whether Trump has the proper temperament to have his finger on  the trigger our nuclear arsenal.  With all his nutty, mercurial tweeting, Trump reminds me a little of Anthony Weiner – not for the sexual component, although Trump is a serial insulter of women (and, according to his own bragging, a serial adulterer), but because of the nutty, out-of-control, instant-gratification-without-filter aspect to it.

A president is supposed to be a mature, thoughtful, even-tempered leader.  Every day Trump shows again how he is nothing like that.

This article was written by Ed Straker, senior writer of NewsMachete.com, the conservative news site.