Has Trump reached his Daffy Duck moment?
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 solely those of the author.
(CNN) Donald Trump has one “yuge” problem standing in the way of winning the GOP presidential nomination: Donald Trump. What do I mean? Well the key to Trump’s success so far has been his inflammatory comments and outlandish proposals that have garnered him tons of free media coverage and translated into great poll numbers.
But Trump knows — just as his kindred spirits Miley Cyrus and Justin Bieber do — that if you want to keep people talking about you, then you need to outdo your last stunt. In Trump’s case, however, how much more provocative can he get given what we have already seen from him?
The Donald kicked off his presidential campaign calling Mexican immigrants “rapists” and vowing to force Mexico to pay to build a massive wall along our nation’s southern border. Trump then vowed to deport about 11 million undocumented immigrants in the country despite experts noting it would be logistically impossible and cost north of $100 billion.
Trump went on to mock prisoners of war such as John McCain for getting caught by the enemy and even defended his white supporters beating up a black activist at a recent campaign event.
Recently, Trump unleashed his jihad on Muslims that started out with vowing to close mosques and slowly built to a crescendo with his declaration to ban all Muslims from entering the United States. The result has been Trump grabbing headlines worldwide and seeing a bump in the GOP polls.
And this week, Trump gave voice to a “disgusting” account of Hillary Clinton’s Democratic debate bathroom break and her defeat at the hands of Barack Obama in 2008.
Daffy Duck makes a 2004 publicity appearance, joined by Tweety, Sylvester and Bugs Bunny.
Seriously, how does Trump top that craziness to keep our attention?! I actually shudder to think. But given Trump’s track record, we know that nothing is off-limits.
Will Trump take on another minority group? (Are there any left he hasn’t offended?) Well, I guess no American politician has ever really bad-mouthed Buddhists before so he can always give that a shot.
Or maybe he will go back to his favorite targets: Latino immigrants and Muslims. (I know Latinos who are Muslim so they get a double barrel of Trump.)
Could we see Trump create a piñata in the shape of an undocumented immigrant and beat it with a stick? Maybe Trump will suggest internment camps for Muslim Americans? Or possibly at the next GOP debate Trump will burn a Quran. Again it’s all in the realm of possibility given his track record so far. (And frankly he would likely see a bump in the GOP polls if he did any of these things.)
Or will Trump mimic some of the tactics utilized by other celebrities desperately trying to stay in the public eye? Maybe Trump will give us a Miley Cyrus and come out at the next debate topless except for pasties or even do some twerking? (And, yes, I apologize for putting that mental image in your head.)
Does Trump get into a fistfight with a member of the media? After all Trump has already trashed numerous reporters, even mocking the disability of a New York Times reporter. Punching a reporter isn’t really that much of a stretch. (Plus I bet it would give him a spike in the GOP polls given Republicans’ collective disdain for the media.)
But what if Trump really starts falling in the polls? Desperate times call for desperate measures. Could we see Trump go full Kardashian? Yes, I’m talking leaking a sex tape. (Again, sorry for the mental image.)
When I think of Trump’s desperation to get media coverage over his fellow GOP candidates, it conjures up a cartoon from my youth where Daffy Duck was pitted against Bugs Bunny for the audience’s applause. When it became apparent to Daffy that his normal bag of tricks wasn’t cutting it, he resorted to a “special trick” that required him to drink gasoline, nitroglycerin, gunpowder, etc., and then swallow a lit match.
What happened next? Boom! And then the crowd went crazy with applause at the spectacle of Daffy blowing himself up. No one had ever seen anything like that. The audience then began demanding an encore, but as Daffy’s ghost began floating up to heaven, he stated, “But I can only do that trick once.”
Source: www.cnn.com