Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump points to the audience after addressing the Faith and Freedom Coalition's Road to Majority Conference in Washington on Friday (AP Photo/Cliff Owen)The presumptive Republican Party nominee is playing the Fear Card.
He has to, because - other than ignorance and a dyed blonde comb-over - it's all he's got.
That's not to say Trump's exploitation of fear is inconsequential. On the contrary, Comb-over's use of fear to stoke political support isn't just dangerous - it's plain evil.
A New York Times editorial Tuesday pegged it: "If there is anyone who might try to turn one of the worst atrocities in modern American history to his own warped ends, who could draw all the wrong lessons from the horror of what happened in Orlando, it is Donald Trump."
Unfortunately, the fear-card tactic has been working for the candidate who's been married three times, filed four bankruptcies, refuses to open his tax filings for voters and mocks women, minorities and the disabled - all things that should automatically disqualify most candidates.
"Whenever there's a tragedy, everything goes up, my numbers go way up," Trump bragged after the shootings in San Bernardino, Calif.
Now he's at it again - congratulating himself via Twitter for predicting the assault, calling again for Muslim bans and talking out of his hat on Fox News to sprinkle doubt on President Obama - stopping just short of pulling out the Kenyan birther theory again:
"Look, we're led by a man that either is not tough, not smart, or he's got something else in mind," Trump said Monday. "And the something else in mind - you know, people can't believe it. People cannot, they cannot believe that President Obama is acting the way he acts and can't even mention the words 'radical Islamic terrorism.' There's something going on. It's inconceivable. There's something going on. He doesn't get it or he gets it better than anybody understands - it's one or the other, and either one is unacceptable."
Other Republicans, even some who should and do know better, are picking lint from their navels rather than call their nominee on his shameful sleaze as the reality TV star blusters forward looking for ways to take back all the nation's headlines.
Later, Monday, the just-turned 70-year-old GOP standard-bearer accused Hillary Clinton - falsely - of wanting to increase the admission of Muslim immigrants and Syrian refugees "without a screening plan."
"This could be a better, bigger more horrible version than the legendary Trojan horse ever was," he claimed, waving his little hands.
As The New York Times points out, the United States is nowhere near being on target with our national goal of resettling 10,000 Syrian refugees here. Canada has resettled more than 27,000.
Never mind that the shooter in Orlando, San Bernardino (one, at least), Fort Hood and Chattanooga were all born in America. Comb-over said incorrectly that Omar Mateen, the Orlando shooter, was born in "Afghan." He apparently meant Afghanistan. Even had he known the right country name, he would still be wrong. New York City is not in "Afghan."
But where other leaders try to build unity and reassurance, Trump blows the embers of fear.
After 911, President George W. Bush visited a mosque to help Americans feel safe and come together against our attackers.
Not Trump. He sought to multiply the Orlando horror, noting that a single gunman massacred people in Orlando: "Can you image what they'll do in large groups, which we're allowing now to come here?"
In the dearth of Republican leaders to school Comb-over and his groupies, President Obama used his own righteous indignation on Tuesday.
"If there's anyone out there who thinks we're confused about who our enemies are, that would come as a surprise to the thousands of terrorists who we've taken off the battlefield," the president said.
And he took on Comb-over's and other Republicans' criticism that he refuses to use the term "radical Islam" to describe ISIS or ISIL: "What exactly would using this label change? Would it make ISIL less committed to try to kill Americans? Would it bring in more allies?
"There's no magic to the phrase 'radical Islam.' It's a political talking point, it's not a strategy. If we fall into the trap of painting all Muslims with a broad brush and imply that we are at war with an entire religion, then we are doing the terrorists' work for them," Obama said.
Donald Trump is the worst kind of radical, home-grown extremist, and Americans should be afraid of him. Very afraid.