Apropos of Donald Trump’s temper tantrum in Fort Dodge last night, a number of people have hastened to make the point that you can’t blame it on the fact that Trump is now losing to Ben Carson. He’s not losing. He’s just not as far ahead as he used to be. That’s true enough, on a national level. But in Iowa—which is where Trump was speaking—he really is losing. The Iowa GOP is heavily dominated by evangelicals, and they love them some of that old time Ben Carson. Trump, by contrast, apparently doesn’t understand evangelicals even slightly. I suppose he doesn’t run into them much in New York developer circles. For example, here’s part of yesterday’s attack on Ben Carson:
“He goes into the bathroom for a couple of hours and he comes out and now he’s religious,” Trump said. “And the people of Iowa believe him. Give me a break. Give me a break. It doesn’t happen that way. It doesn’t happen that way….Don’t be fools, okay?”
But this is precisely how evangelicals think it happens. Trump is bluntly insulting every evangelical in the audience with this show of temper. He just doesn’t get it, and it’s driving him nuts.
