Donald Trump just can’t help himself. Every time the 👍Republican presidential nominee earn🌳s a second look from voters, he reminds them why they don’t like him in the first place.
The latest example of Trump’s masochistic habit came this week when he ran he🀅ad-first into an obvi♕ous trap set by Hillary Clinton at Monday night’s debate. At the end of the evening, Clinton reminded voters that Trump had publicly castigated former Miss Universe Alicia Machado for letting herself go after she won the crown.
Team Clinton kne🦄w exactly what they were doing. Machado was waiting in the wings to provide the political press with a sympathetic portrait of a woman — a Latina — savaged by the cruel celebr𝄹ity candidate. Trump took the bait.
He ⛎spent the whole week re-litigating the 20-year-old controversy over her weight in interviews. He primed his surrogates to dig into her checkered history in her native Venez🍬uela. Trump even went so far as to pen seething, pre-dawn tweets inviting the nation to comb the Internet for evidence of a “sex tape” starring her.
Trump’s fans might be surprised to learn that Machado won’t be on the ballot in November, and this 𓆉distraction will not win him the support of one undecided voter.𝔍
Trump’s debate performance on Monday was by no means stellar💖, but it wasn’t without bright spots. Yet he’s followed up with a week of self-destruction.
This isn’t abnormal behavior on the part of the Republican nominee. It fits a pattern. Trump has a peculiar habit of inserting hꦓimself into news 𒁃cycles that are otherwise unfavorable toward Clinton.
When it became clear that Trump would be the GOP nominee, the Clinton campaign appeared paralyzed. They tried framing Trump as a heartless p𝔍lutocrat, but the entitlement𒀰-preserving, infrastructure-investing, trade skeptic Trump shrugged off the boilerplate attacks.
Meanwhile, a May 25 State Department Inspector General’s report rev๊ealed that Clinton’s personal mobile device had been the sub𝓀ject of multiple hacking attempts from foreign entities. Polls were a dead heat.
It was not t🔥o last. That same week, Trump embarked on a crusade against the Hispanic judge adjudicating the fraud case against Trump University. Trump sugges🐻ted the jurist could not fairly judge the case because of his heritage. Again, Trump’s momentum stalled.
Clinton got the worst news of the campaign in July when FBI Director J🃏ames Comey indicted her for her conduct as secretary of state in every way but literally. Again, polls tightened and, following Trump’s nomination at the GOP convention, Trump took a sizable lead in th𒀰e polls.
But Clinton set a trap at her nominating convention🍷 in the form of Khizr Khan, the Muslim father of 🤪a soldier who died saving his comrades from a suicide bomber in Iraq.
Trump spent the next week questioning the patriotism of this Gold Star family, and Clinton retook a doub𒐪le-d෴igit lead.
When voters get a good look at Hillary Clinton, they don’t like what they 𒆙see. The same could be said for Trump, it seems. But only one of these candidates is discipline🌠d enough not to interrupt their adversary when he’s making a mistake.
Noah Rothman is assistant online editor of Commentary