On Tuesday’s broadcast of the Fox News Channel’s “Special Report,” columnist Charles Krauthammer stated that it’s “peculiar” GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump’s only criterion for judging people is whether they were nice to him, but it’s a “mistake” for conservatives to run a third-party candidate.
Krauthammer said that Trump’s attack on the press for his donations to veterans groups [relevant remarks begin around 5:10] were effective and “distracts from the fact that the AP is now reporting that half of the donations were given after the Washington Post began to look into the story, which indicates that the press, not only was doing its job, but it actually stimulated the execution of these donations.”
He continued, “It’s not that people don’t like seeing attacks on the press, but it is a sense of Trump’s character. Is this what you want in the White House? He was asked, is this how you’re going to be behaving in the White House? He says, yes. I think at one point he was asked about the attack on [New Mexico Governor] Susana Martinez (R), which he had said was because the economy was bad in New Mexico. But in this press conference, he said, well, she wasn’t very nice to me. Now is that going to be the criteria but which a president decides whether to attack, or praise or just ignore anybody else, either a politician or foreign leader, another country, by the criterion of how good are they to me? That is a peculiar criteria, and it appears to be the only one that applies to Trump.”
Krauthammer further stated, “I think it’s a mistake for conservatives to run another candidate, with the explicit intent essentially of blocking Trump from winning. either he’s going to win, — he is the nominee of the GOP, chosen by the people, he’s either going to win or not. And if he doesn’t win, he should not be able to claim he was stabbed in the back. that would be a terrible mistake in the future.”
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