{"id":15235,"date":"2016-06-13T18:47:06","date_gmt":"2016-06-13T18:47:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=15235"},"modified":"2016-06-13T18:47:06","modified_gmt":"2016-06-13T18:47:06","slug":"can-donald-trump-really-change-his-ways","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=15235","title":{"rendered":"Can Donald Trump really &#8216;change&#8217; his ways?"},"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><a href=\"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/05\/trump.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-medium wp-image-14604\" src=\"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/05\/trump-300x163.jpg\" alt=\"trump\" width=\"300\" height=\"163\" srcset=\"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/05\/trump-300x163.jpg 300w, https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/05\/trump-768x416.jpg 768w, https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/05\/trump-1024x555.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/05\/trump.jpg 1160w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;m trying to understand an admonition that&#8217;s coming from leading Republican officeholders, strategists and assorted loyalist as it pertains to the party&#8217;s presumed presidential nominee, Donald J. Trump.<\/p>\n<p>They want him to &#8220;change.&#8221; They dislike the name-calling, the insults, the innuendo, the reckless riffs that pour forth whenever he takes the podium as he campaigns for the presidency.<\/p>\n<p>If he changes, they say, they might be able to endorse him. They might actually campaign for him. They&#8217;ll support the candidate more than in name only.<\/p>\n<p>I keep wondering: How does a man who&#8217;s nearly 70 years of age do that?<\/p>\n<p>What&#8217;s more, how do Americans who&#8217;ve heard the astonishing things that he&#8217;s said ignore them if &#8212; and this remains a <em>y-u-u-u-u-g-e<\/em> stretch &#8212; Trump actually becomes a more presentable candidate for president?<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s like the judge in a trial who tells a jury to &#8220;disregard what you&#8217;ve just heard&#8221; from a criminal defendant or from a prosecuting attorney. Sure thing, Your Honor. We&#8217;ll just blot that out of our memory.<\/p>\n<p>House Speaker Paul Ryan has endorsed Trump, but with reservations. He dislikes intensely the candidate&#8217;s racist views on U.S. District Judge Gonzalo Curiel and his assertion that Curiel&#8217;s heritage disqualifies him from presiding over a lawsuit brought against Trump over his defunct &#8220;university.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Ryan has called Trump&#8217;s assertions &#8220;racist&#8221; in nature, but he&#8217;s going to support him.<\/p>\n<p>A lot of Americans &#8212; millions of them, in fact &#8212; aren&#8217;t going to forget those comments. They won&#8217;t forget the insults Trump has hurled at women, or his mocking of a reporter&#8217;s physical disability, or his assertion that Sen. John McCain is a war hero &#8220;because he got captured&#8221; by the North Vietnamese.<\/p>\n<p>They won&#8217;t forget his plan to ban all Muslims from entering the United States, or his claim that illegal immigrants are coming here to commit crimes.<\/p>\n<p>And then we have the lies, such as when he said he witnessed &#8220;thousands upon thousands of Muslims&#8221; cheering when the Twin Towers tumbled down on 9\/11.<\/p>\n<p>So, he&#8217;s supposed to &#8220;change&#8221; the way he campaigns to make himself more suitable to voters.<\/p>\n<p>How does that happen?<\/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>I&#8217;m trying to understand an admonition that&#8217;s coming from leading Republican officeholders, strategists and assorted loyalist as it pertains to the party&#8217;s presumed presidential nominee, Donald J. Trump. They want him to &#8220;change.&#8221; They dislike the name-calling, the insults, the innuendo, the reckless riffs that pour forth whenever he takes the podium as he campaigns &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=15235\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Can Donald Trump really &#8216;change&#8217; his ways?<\/span> <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"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":[95,1424,6280,1941,2245,2546,3524,5116],"class_list":["post-15235","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-national-news","category-political-news","tag-95","tag-donald-trump","tag-gonzalo-curiel","tag-gop","tag-immigration","tag-john-mccain","tag-paul-ryan","tag-vietnam-war"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15235","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=15235"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15235\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15237,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15235\/revisions\/15237"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=15235"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=15235"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=15235"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}