Two of Donald Trump’s most prominent endorsers, Ben Carson and Sarah Palin, haven’t been doing a very good job convincing voters to support him. The pair have spent much of their time since endorsing Trump either publicly regretting the choice or passing off verbal streams of consciousness as speeches.
Take Ben Carson’s constant wavering between building up Trump and resuscitating his own newly-damaged reputation.
Here’s Carson on The View with Whoopi Goldberg, who harangued him for his Trump endorsement. Carson stood firm on his belief that Trump’s sexist and racist remarks were exactly the sort of thing his party needed. “When you’re very nice, you’re very respectful, you talk about the real issues and not get into all these issues, where does it get you? It gets you where it got me: nowhere, okay?” he said.
That wasn’t the first time Carson was somewhat ambivalent about his endorsement. In an interview with Newsmax, a conservative online publication, he said, “Is there another scenario that I would have preferred? Yes. But that scenario isn’t available.” He went on to insinuate that Trump promised him some sort of position of influence in return his endorsement, resulting in an ethics complaint against Trump.
Carson’s every line is a gem: “Even if Donald Trump turns out not to be such a great president, which I don’t think is the case, I think he’s going to surround himself with really good people,” he explains. “But even if he didn’t, we’re only looking at four years.”
And just yesterday, Carson appeared on The Cats Roundtable, a radio program, to say that Trump “has some major defects, there’s no question about it — just like the rest of us.”
Carson could very well end up having the last laugh, having feigned defeat by endorsing Trump only to sabotage his campaign from the inside. Or, equally likely, he’s being dead serious and is completely unaware of how bad of a surrogate he really is.
Sarah Palin is a different story, as she was incredibly enthusiastic in endorsing Trump when he first marched her out during a campaign event in Iowa in January. She most recently appeared in Wisconsin to speak on Trump’s behalf, a poor choice on his part, especially in light of the substantial lead Ted Cruz is commanding in the state.
“What the heck are you thinking candidates?” Palin said. “What are you thinking when you go ahead and you’re actually asking for more immigrants, even illegal immigrants, welcoming them in, even inducing and seducing them with gift baskets. Come on over the border and there’s a gift basket with teddy bears and soccer balls. What are you thinking? It’s just inviting more. Yeah. Candidates they can say anything they want to about immigration, amnesty.”
Once again, the media were forced to let out a collective “huh?”
This was not Palin’s only screw up on Trump’s behalf, obviously. During the run up to the Iowa primaries, Palin joined Trump in casually insulting the state, namely the popular Republican congressman Steve King, while Trump just went for the throat and told Iowan Republicans that they were “stupid.” Below is a segment of that incident, after which conservative news site RedState described the crowd as “dead silent.”
This week has not been a good one for Trump. He faces a crucial primary in Wisconsin tomorrow, where polls show him trailing Cruz. The handiwork of his two most important campaign surrogates has done little to change that.
