Madi Thoele, 4th Period: Trump Being Inappropriate (Again)

Summary: Paul Solotroff, a reporter for The Rolling Stone, was sitting with Donald Trump watching a newscast when the video clip zoomed in on GOP candidate Carly Fiorina's face. Trump exclaimed, "Look at that face! Would anyone vote for that? Can you imagine that, the face of our next president? I mean, she's a woman, and I'm not s'posedta say bad things, but really, folks, come on. Are we serious?" On Friday, September 11th, he then tries to persuade a CNN reporter that he wasn't talking about her face, but rather her "persona", rambling on about her past mistakes and how she was fired from her CEO position. This isn't the first time he's insulted someone irrelevantly in public, though. He's retweeted a tweet calling Megyn Kelly a "bimbo", he's called Senator John McCain "not a war hero", Arianna Huffington a "liberal clown", Karl Rove a "total loser", and the list goes on. This is all a part of a tactic known as offensive politics. Neuroscientists think Americans like him so much because of conformation bias, a term that means people like someone who confirms what they already believe. As of Thursday, September 10th, he has the support of 32% of Republicans. While analysts debate on whether or not he's presidential enough to be president, Trump is winning the mass vote because he's flawed and offensive.

Analysis: The author of this article, Mel Robbins, CNN commentator, is biased because she obviously doesn't support Trump and she's writing a negative article. I'm inclined to agree with her that Trump is, overall, unprofessional. His behavior reminds me of the colonial propaganda used before the American Revolution depicting the Boston Massacre.

 

This picture depicts the colonists as innocent, when they were, in fact, the ones who started this particular conflict by throwing bottles and snowballs at the British soldiers. This picture hides the fact that the colonists were harassing them, therefore only showing one side of the story, an opinion. Trump does the same thing. He gave his opinion on the way Fiorina looks, not using actual facts to sway the Republican population. He says irrelevant comments and does everything he can to make sure people are on his side. Of course, every politician wants people on their side, but the way Trump is doing it seems weird. Why insult someone's appearance and look like an uneducated idiot, when he could insult someone's political views, plans, etc. and look like he knows what he's talking about? Also, he just dug himself a deeper hole when he tried to explain to the CNN reporter that he was talking about Fiorina's persona, not her face, when, as Solotroff reported it, he said the word "face". I think people like Trump because they're curious about what he'll do next, whether it's insulting yet another person publicly or saying something racist/sexist. People can't wait to hear what unbelievably inappropriate sentence comes out of his mouth.



Link: http://www.cnn.com/2015/09/10/opinions/robbins-trump-fiorina/index.html