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It's Time To Face Facts: Trump Can Win the GOP Nomination

Bernard Goldberg

By Bernard Goldberg

Published Dec. 1, 2015

 It's Time To Face Facts: Trump Can Win the GOP Nomination

Donald Trump is making waves again on the campaign trail and stirring up another ugly controversy, which is like saying the sun rises in the east.

The scene of the crime this time was a rally in South Carolina, a rally where Trump jerked his body and contorted his arms like a man with a physical disability. To just about everybody, Trump was making fun of a New York Times reporter who said something Trump didn't like. The reporter has a physical disability.

More than a few called Trump's latest childish stunt "despicable." Trump responded with a straight face, saying, "I would never mock a person that has difficulty. I would never do that. I'm telling you, I would never do it.

You have to hand it to Donald Trump. Everyone saw what he did, and still he's got the audacity to ask if we're going to believe him or our lying eyes?

Trump doesn't apologize. He doesn't say, "I went too far this time and I'm sorry." Humility is not in his DNA. Instead he says you're the one who got it wrong, thinking he would ever say or do what he just said or did.

Remember when he took a cheap shot at John McCain, saying he was only "a war hero because he was captured. I like people who weren't captured." It didn't take long for Trump to say anyone who thinks he said what he actually said, got it wrong.

And you remember when he mocked Carly Fiorina, "Look at that face," he said. "Would anyone vote for that? Can you imagine that, the face of our next president?" Two seconds later he told the world how much he admires women and blamed any misrepresentation of his remarks on … you!

Now he's making fun of a man with a physical disability and some are wondering if he finally has gone too far, if this latest crude insult will not only hurt him but finally do him in.

It won't. Nothing he says, no matter how nasty, hurts him. Every time he calls somebody a loser or a moron or a dummy, his poll numbers go up. Every time he says something that even he, at some level, must know he shouldn't have said, he denies saying what you think he said.

Brit Hume, the savvy Fox News analyst, got it right when he noted that Trump proves Lincoln's dictum that "You can fool some of the people all of the time."

Along with everyone else in the commentary business, I said Trump wouldn't run. I said he was just teasing as usual. After he got into the race, I said he wouldn't catch on. After he caught on, I said he jumped the shark when he mocked a genuine war hero. I said family values conservatives would desert him when he made fun of a woman's appearance. Now I am throwing in the towel and at long last coming to the realization that Donald Trump can actually win the Republican Party nomination for president.

I was wrong about everything else I said about Trump until now. With a little luck I'll be wrong about my latest prediction.

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