Donald Trump walked into the final GOP debate of 2015 trailing Ted Cruz in Iowa but leading the field in New Hampshire and national polls. It seems unlikely that anything that happened in Las Vegas will change that dynamic.
Trump has slumped after previous debates–most notably after Carly Fiorina attacked him in in the second GOP debate–only to regain whatever was lost and rise even higher as Trump inevitably dominates the media discussion once again.
But on Tuesday night, the only candidate to land a substantive blow against Trump was Jeb Bush, who pointed out that Trump said in September that the United States should stay out of the fight against ISIS. Trump denied he’d ever said such a thing, but that was a lie.
“Syria’s a mess. You look at what’s going on with ISIS in there, now think of this: we’re fighting ISIS. ISIS wants to fight Syria. Why are we fighting ISIS in Syria? Let them fight each other and pick up the remnants,” Trump said in the September 16 GOP debate.
A frontrunner’s flip-flopping on war against genocidal Islamist terrorists ought to have a big impact following ISIS-allied terrorist attacks in Paris and San Bernardino. But it’s not clear that Bush’s hit on Trump will have much effect because the other candidates didn’t pile on, and the media will likely take little interest in the issue. As Matthew Continetti writes at the Washington Free Beacon, most of the GOP candidates are simply too afraid to attack Trump:
Fear of Trump is also why the media don’t attack him the way they swarm other candidates. During the 2012 race, when Rick Perry could only remember two out of the three departments he wanted to cut (“oops”), it was a campaign-ending gaffe. When Trump can’t remember his own immigration plan, concocts conspiracy theories about the 9/11 attacks, or displays ignorance of America’s nuclear weapons capabilities, these gaffes are met with a shrug at best on many TV and radio news programs.
One reason for that may be that journalists think Trump’s supporters don’t care about the accuracy of anything he says, and that’s certainly true of a faction of his supporters. But surely another reason many in the media treat Trump with kid gloves is that they’re afraid of losing access to Trump and the ratings that come with it.
