The Wall Street Journal editorial board, representing the business-friendly wing of the Republican Party, thinks Donald Trump tanked in Thursday night’s GOP presidential primary debate.
Some commentators and unscientific polls, like the Drudge Report, showed Trump’s support remained strong among viewers, but the Journal’s opinion Saturday was that Trump “did not have a good night.”
“[T]he evening exposed how little he has thought about the main issues of the day,” wrote the Journal in an editorial posted online Friday. “His foreign-policy agenda amounts to building a wall on the southern U.S. border and negotiating better deals with adversaries. He offered no specifics on how to do the latter, and one reason may be that he doesn’t appear to know all that much about the world’s flash points. His appeal is attitude, not substance.”
The Journal said that Trump’s answers on healthcare, a policy issue he has shifted on, were unsatisfactory and that his refusal to commit to supporting the Republican nominee, whoever it is, was unbecoming of someone who says he wants to defeat the Democratic candidate.
“We’ve been wrong about Mr. Trump’s political staying power before, so perhaps his talk-radio-host admirers will keep promoting him,” said the Journal. “But the front-runner did not have a good night.”
The Journal has been critical of Trump in the past. “If Donald Trump becomes the voice of conservatives, conservatism will implode along with him,” the paper said on July 19.
