Even if you accept Donald Trump's own notions about what constitutes an excellent campaign move, this makes no sense:
President Obama’s Kenyan-born, half-brother Malik will be in the audience in Las Vegas Wednesday night when Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton square off in their third and final debate.
Malik -- an American citizen who lives in Washington, DC, when he’s not in Kenya -- says he will be a guest of Trump....
Malik agrees with Trump that the mainstream media is biased, and he dismisses the women who claim Trump kissed or groped them without their permission....
Malik also blasted Clinton’s performance as secretary of the State Department for exacerbating the chaos and violence in the Mideast. Malik said ousted Libyan leader Moammar Khadafy had been a good friend. “Check out the situation in Libya now,” he said.
Trump, obviously, has done a godawful job of running a general election campaign. But let's give him the benefit of the doubt and assume that there's some value in continually motivating the base with nasty insults and conspiracy theories. Let's accept his logic when he concluded that inviting women who've accused Bill Clinton of sexual assault to Debate #2 would rattle Hillary, or that he'd get under her skin by describing her as frail and sickly. Obviously, none of this has actually worked for him, but it's kept some voters loyal to him at least, and the debate stunt and some of the insults must have been somewhat unsettling to Clinton (although she's managed the chaos like a Zen master).
But what the hell is the point of this? Malik is the brother of the current president, not (let's just say it) the next one. I didn't know until I read the link that he'd criticized Clinton at all. It's infantile to keep looking for psych-outs, but this won't even work as a psych-out. It's just a nod to the Breitbart base -- the only people who probably have any idea who Malik is -- and it works for them only because all of their hatreds are eternally present, so seeing an Obama (even an Obama who's critical of the better-known one) hits a hate pleasure center as surely as yelling "Bill Clinton's a rapist!" at a Democratic rally does.
At this point, Trump, presumably under Steve Bannon's influence, is just rummaging through the wingnut anger archives and pulling out random bits and pieces. Maybe at the debate he'll forget who his opponent is and start ranting about golf and returned Winston Churchill busts -- or reach back in time and attack Jimmy Carter or Ted Kennedy or Sean Penn or the Dixie Chicks. It's all one big Antichrist, after all, isn't it?
Crossposted at No More Mr. Nice Blog
