Trump keeps trying to cross the line that the media keeps pulling back.
Jonathan Freedland@The New York Review Of Books (9/29/16): “Within weeks of the announcement of his candidacy in June 2015, seasoned observers of the political game were regularly declaring that the reality TV star had crossed the line that separates viability from oblivion, that he had broken this or that unbreakable rule and was therefore doomed. For some, it was Trump’s insistence that John McCain was not a war hero, a statement of astonishing chutzpah coming from a man who had evaded the draft five times—four through college deferments, the fifth thanks to a doctor’s note citing bone spurs in his feet—and who has elevated his determination not to catch a sexually transmitted disease, despite libertine levels of promiscuity, into his ‘personal Vietnam.’ For others, it was Trump’s promise to deport 11 million undocumented migrants from the US. Or his call for a temporary ban on all Muslims entering the United States. Or his mocking impersonation of a disabled reporter. Or his suggestion that a female TV anchor was hostile because she was menstruating. Any one of those actions could have been terminal for a previous presidential candidate, competing under the old rules. After all, the mere appearance of tears had been enough to finish off Ed Muskie in 1972, just as a few plagiarized lines destroyed Joe Biden in 1988. Yet somehow Trump kept on winning.”
