Against the wishes of his party – and most of his campaign staff – Donald Trump ordered his surrogates to intensify their attacks on federal judge Gonzalo Curiel on Monday afternoon. Trump had spent most of the past week defending his claim that Curiel’s “Mexican heritage” prevents him from fairly adjudicating the class-action lawsuits brought against Trump University. House Speaker Paul Ryan, along with most other literate humans, found Trump’s comments to be unambiguously racist. Republicans who were reluctant to use the R-word found them problematic, or, at the very least, unproductive. As he’s wont to do, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell voiced his party’s consensus in stark, unsubtle terms, telling Trump Tuesday to “get on message.”
Late Tuesday afternoon, the mogul agreed to do so. In a (ghost-) written statement, Trump explained that he wouldn’t have had any problem with the judge’s Mexican heritage if it weren’t for his many “unfair and mistaken rulings” against him. But, even though his comments were “misconstrued” and not at all racist, he does not “intend to comment on this matter any further.”
So, the GOP nominee should soon be back on the high road he was taking before the Trump University case crept into the headlines – accusing Bill Clinton of rape and Crooked Hillary of murdering Vince Foster.
