JAMES TARANTO: Trump Goes To Mexico: Sometimes his foes make it easy for him.
In reality, Trump was completely in control. Peña did not insult or bait him, but what if he had? As long as Trump maintained the air of reasonable statesman, he would have benefited from the contrast.
The assumption underlying Marshall’s analysis is that Trump lacks the ability to maintain such an air—or, to put it another way, that the media/Democratic stereotype of Trump as an unstable crackpot not only has some basis in truth but is the whole truth. Marshall calls his heuristic “Trump’s razor”: the assumption of “the stupidest scenario possible that can be reconciled with the available facts.”
Marshall’s view found support across the putative aisle. “There are so many ways this can go wrong that it boggles the mind,” asserted Daniel Drezner in a Wednesday morning Washington Post blog post that favorably cited “Trump’s razor” twice. Back in March Drezner, who teaches international law at Tufts University, was among the signatories on a denunciative “Open Letter on Donald Trump From GOP National Security Leaders.”
Trump has, to be sure, done much to encourage the stereotype that underlay these faulty analyses, and it is a challenge he has to overcome lest Mrs. Clinton win by default. But that’s precisely what made Peña’s invitation so advantageous to him: It gave him an easy opportunity to counter it. . . .
The strangest comment from Team Clinton, though, came from Lanny Davis on CNN: “What you didn’t hear [Trump] do in Mexico in mutual respect is to apologize for challenging a federal judge, born in Indiana, that he can’t be objective because of his Mexican heritage.”
That was a reference to Gonzalo Curiel, the federal trial judge presiding over a civil case against Trump University. This column criticized Trump’s comments at the time, and we wouldn’t disagree that an apology is in order. (Don’t worry, we’re not holding our breath.)
But why in the world would anyone expect Trump to apologize to the Mexican president for insulting an American judge?
I guess Lanny thinks that Americans of Mexican descent are really Mexicans.