When I heard that Pat Buchanan is backing Donald Trump, I couldn't believe it. Pat Buchanan is still alive?
Apparently so because he wrote a column called "Why Trump Must Not Apologize." I gather he means for anything, even when he's wrong. There are people who believe that never admitting you're wrong is the same thing as being right.
And speaking of being wrong, I think Buchanan is wrong in that piece when he says…
…in rejecting demands that he apologize for his remarks about the La Raza judge presiding over the class-action suit against Trump University, the Donald is instinctively correct.
Assume, as we must, that Trump believes what he said.
Why, then, should he apologize for speaking the truth, as he sees it?
I don't know why we must assume Trump believes what he said. I rarely think any politician believes everything he or she says. One of the few might be Pat Buchanan, who ran for president three times and got zero electoral votes. There's a guy you want to listen to if you're interested in winning.
Frankly, I can't think of an actual presidential candidate who impresses me less than Trump does in the category of Believing What You're Saying. Those who want to do a wee bit better than Buchanan did all pander to some extent to the crowds before their podiums. This whole thing with the judge seems pretty simple: Trump's reputation is being sullied by this Trump University lawsuit and he stands a good chance of losing it so he needs an explanation for why it's rigged. Blaming a Mexican sits very well indeed with Trump's base.
Hey, I just Googled Buchanan's name to find out something I was going to write about here and I discovered that Ed Kilgore just wrote a terrific response to Buchanan's column. I don't have a strong finish for this so I'll just suggest you read him.