{"id":10598,"date":"2015-08-18T13:53:48","date_gmt":"2015-08-18T13:53:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=10598"},"modified":"2015-08-18T13:53:48","modified_gmt":"2015-08-18T13:53:48","slug":"trump-continues-to-confound","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=10598","title":{"rendered":"Trump continues to confound"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<div class=\"twitter-share\"><a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?via=jkanelis\" class=\"twitter-share-button\">Tweet<\/a><\/div>\n<p>So help me,\u00a0I was certain that Donald Trump sank his presidential campaign when he made light of John McCain&#8217;s heroic service during the Vietnam War.<\/p>\n<p>It didn&#8217;t happen.<\/p>\n<p>I was certain that he would implode during that first Republican joint appearance with nine other &#8220;leading&#8221; GOP candidates.<\/p>\n<p>That didn&#8217;t happen, either.<\/p>\n<p>Then he got into that public feud with Fox News anchor Megyn Kelly over that\u00a0ghastly remark he made about the source of &#8220;the blood.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Hey, no problem.<\/p>\n<p>Trump said &#8220;I&#8217;ll build a wall&#8221; to keep illegal immigrants from entering the U.S. through its southern border. Yep, he&#8217;s going to do all this all by his ownself.<\/p>\n<p>I don&#8217;t pretend to be an expert on this stuff.<\/p>\n<p>The latest poll numbers show that Trump is putting some distance between himself and the rest of the GOP field &#8212; which comprises some serious, intelligent and accomplished individuals.<\/p>\n<p>What in the world is happening here? Have we become so celebrity conscious that we (meaning the Republican Party&#8217;s most faithful voters) place celebrity above actual knowledge of things, such as, say, the limits of the office at stake?<\/p>\n<p>Trump is sounding like someone who\u00a0wants to take singular control of the federal government. All those first-person singular references to all the action he intends to take suggest he doesn&#8217;t understand that the U.S. Constitution inhibits the power of the presidency.<\/p>\n<p>Checks and balances, Donald?<\/p>\n<p>The current president, Barack Obama, has used his own executive authority rationally and in accordance with the law &#8230; and yet we keep hearing from GOP leaders about the &#8220;lawlessness&#8221; they insist pervades the Obama administration.<\/p>\n<p>Just wait&#8217;ll they see what a President Trump might try &#8230; not that it&#8217;ll matter to them.<\/p>\n<p>And yet the man continues to set the pace in a field of highly qualified GOP contenders.<\/p>\n<p>What in the world gives?<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n<div class=\"twitter-share\"><a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?via=jkanelis\" class=\"twitter-share-button\">Tweet<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>So help me,\u00a0I was certain that Donald Trump sank his presidential campaign when he made light of John McCain&#8217;s heroic service during the Vietnam War. It didn&#8217;t happen. I was certain that he would implode during that first Republican joint appearance with nine other &#8220;leading&#8221; GOP candidates. That didn&#8217;t happen, either. Then he got into &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=10598\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Trump continues to confound<\/span> <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":10599,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[13,14],"tags":[540,1424,1788,1963,2546,2993,4954,5116],"class_list":["post-10598","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-national-news","category-political-news","tag-barack-obama","tag-donald-trump","tag-fox-news","tag-gop-primary","tag-john-mccain","tag-megyn-kelly","tag-u-s-constitution","tag-vietnam-war"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10598","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=10598"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10598\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10600,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10598\/revisions\/10600"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/10599"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10598"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10598"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10598"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}