Here’s a full video of Republican presumptive Presidential nominee Donald Trump’s June 7, 2016 speech calling for GOP unity and attacking presumptive Democratic Presidential nominee Hillary Clinton. This came at the end of a terrible two days for Trump, who had been denounced by Republicans as well as Democrats for saying the judge in his Trump University case is biased because he’s “Mexican” (the judge was born in Indiana).
Note that Trump made this speech with a teleprompter, which he and other Republicans often point to as somehow representing weakness or a lack of authenticity when used by Democrats. The “teleprompter Trump” stays on message and is more low key. The non-teleprompter Trump tends to be more bombastic.
The Huffington Post put this into perspective in a must-read-in-full-report. Here’s part of it:
The Republican Party devolved into chaos on Tuesday as its presumptive presidential nominee, celebrity entertainer Donald Trump, defended his overtly racist tirade against a federal judge of Mexican descent, endangering the GOP’s already shaky standing with minorities and marking the most tumultuous launch of a general election campaign in modern political history.
With handlers no doubt desperate to rein him in, Trump read from a teleprompter on Tuesday night — something he has ripped other politicians for doing — after he swept the New Jersey primary, straying from his usual extemporaneous string of thoughts and delivering a more controlled, edited statement.
“Tonight we close one chapter in history and begin another,” he said, moments after Queen’s rock anthem, “We Are The Champions,” greeted him on stage. “Some people say I’m too much of a fighter. My preference is always peace, however. And I’ve shown that.”
But that was a far cry from the tone of his comments later in an interview with Fox News’ Sean Hannity, where he delivered a concise rebuttal to the GOP establishment he bested in the primary: “Get over it.”
If the latter is his attitude going forward, look for more and more GOP office goers to start to distance themselves from Trump to save themselves. Trump needs to expand his existing constituency, not definitively chase away groups.
There are few signs he’s ready to do that.
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.