Donald Trump, the Republican Party's presidential nominee, gives a thumbs-up Wednesday as he poses on stage with his running mate, Indiana Gov. Mike Pence, at the Republican National Convention in Cleveland.
Story highlights
- The Republican Party convention is taking place this week in Cleveland
- David Gregory: Donald Trump's calling card is that he's a straight shooter
David Gregory is a CNN political analyst, author of "How's Your Faith?" and host of "The David Gregory Show" podcast. The views expressed are his own.
(CNN)Hypocrisy
hurts. Donald Trump's team has spent the first two nights of its
convention making the case that voters should reject Hillary Clinton
because she lies. At the same time, though, the Trump team hasn't looked
like it has been upfront about the fact that some of Melania Trump's
comments were lifted from Michele Obama's 2008 convention speech.
Interviewed
by CNN's Chris Cuomo Tuesday and Wednesday mornings, Trump campaign
chief strategist Paul Manafort denied what seemed clear to everyone's
eyes. On Wednesday morning, he was still criticizing Cuomo and CNN for
obsessing about the issue to the exclusion of other matters at the
convention. By early Wednesday afternoon, seeing the damage this was
doing, the campaign came clean, admitting that a writer in the Trump organization was the guilty party.
Critics
have already pointed to what they say is a pattern: Trump and his team
failing to level with the American people when faced with distracting or
damaging revelations.
All
politicians do it, some may be tempted to argue. Maybe. But the problem
for Trump's team in relying on this argument is that his calling card is
that he's a straight shooter. As a result, his case against Hillary
Clinton just got weaker. What's more, campaigns teach voters something
about what kind of president a candidate would be in the face of
scrutiny or crisis. So what have they learned about Trump and his team
this week?
CNN Opinion commentators on the RNC
Worse
still, this could have been dealt with swiftly by copping to it, taking
the lumps and moving on. After all, what Michele Obama and Melania
Trump spoke about are widely held sentiments.
More
broadly, the handling of the issue may also have raised questions about
campaign management. Who was this writer working on a speech for the
candidate's spouse? Why weren't her remarks more carefully vetted? These
are reasonable questions that are being asked, and it's hard not to
view this as indicative of the limitations of insurgent campaigns; they
simply haven't emphasized or had time to put in place the elements of a
professional presidential campaign that might have caught this.
Voters
notice these kinds of things. And they won't necessarily dismiss it as
just process. The danger for Trump is that they will see it as raising
questions over how well Trump the businessman runs a big organization
and therefore how he might run the federal government.
CNN's
David Axelrod is fond of saying that presidential campaigns are an MRI
of the soul. Trump will have to show that this week's uncertainties are
not a sign of a serious ailment.
The good news for team Trump? What really matters this week is still ahead: Donald Trump's keynote speech Thursday night.
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