Dennis Prager writes May 3, 2011:
The following comments were made in a public speech last week by a man considering running for president of the United States.
On gas prices: “We have nobody in Washington that sits back and says, ‘You’re not going to raise that f***ing price.’”
On what he would say as president to China: “Listen, you mother f***ers, we’re going to tax you 25 percent.”
On Iraq: “We build a school, we build a road, they blow up the school, we build another school, we build another road, they blow them up, we build again. In the meantime we can’t get a f***ing school in Brooklyn.”
The man is Donald Trump. And the words render him unfit to be a presidential candidate, let alone president. They also evidence a need for some Republican-party soul-searching as to how a group of Republican women could laugh and cheer at such language coming from a would-be presidential candidate.
…Last week, Donald Trump may have made his one contribution to American history. His recent speech was the first of a person seeking the presidential nomination of a major party to use such language. Had he used the F-word once and apologized, I would not have written this column. But, and this important, he used it once, and upon seeing the enthusiastic reaction, felt encouraged to use it again and again.
The audience’s reaction is even more important — and more distressing — than Trump’s use of the word. Had there been booing, or had someone who invited him arisen to ask that he not use such language, or had some of the women walked out, the good name of the Republican party and of conservative values would have been preserved. But if Republican women — and I emphasize both the party and the gender — find the use of the F-word by a potential presidential candidate amusing, America is more coarsened than I had imagined. If we cannot count on Republicans and conservatives to maintain standards of public decency and civility, to whom shall we look?
