Every pundit on the left and right have universally declared Trumps' 3 am Twitter attack on Alicia Machado to be stupid and harmful.
They're wrong. Here's why...
The Machado narrative was a coordinated attack. The Clinton campaign planted the stories of Trump's abuse with major media outlets, then Clinton delivered the obscure assertion of Trumps boorishness at the debate. This media offensive was intended to dominate the news cycle till the next debate. The idea that it would've "gone away" if he'd have ignored it is to be purposefully ignorant of a long history of media offensives against conservatives.
George Allen tried to downplay the ridiculous assertion that uttering the non-word "macaca" was proof of his inherent racism - it dominated the news for weeks. It destroyed his campaign. In 2012 George Stephanopoulos planted the "contraceptive issue" in the first debate, then for weeks the media and democrats played out the coordinated "anti-woman" theme as the defining aspect of the Romney campaign. Romney never completely recovered. The list goes on. All "ignored" as trite and foolish - all pounded relentlessly by the media into the public conscience until it became the accepted "truth."
The Machado story was clearly set up to have legs and to dominate the news until the next debate. But Trump got down in the gutter, went toe to toe bringing up criminal charges, porn videos, and made it clear he was about to go nuclear on Clinton sex scandals. Trumps' tweets went directly to the TMZ and ETV crowd that has no idea that there is an AM band on the radio. Not surprisingly, the entertainment networks found the Machado story to messy for even them to cover. Make no mistake - if it weren't for Trumps' distasteful twitter attack - Machado would STILL be dominating the news cycle. But.. suddenly, Machado is gone.
Stolen tax returns are up.
Sorry, but this seems like the Democrats are off stride. The tax return story is so weak it's ridiculous. It's so weak that they have to make up half of it. They simply say he lost money, and that means he MIGHT have not paid much in taxes. I have to believe that this story was intended to be held till the week before the election - a la the GW Bush DUI incident.
The election is five weeks out. The Democrats have already dropped two major oppo research October Surprises - and Trump is barely phased. Democrats have become accustomed to Republicans being stoic and silent in the face of gutter level false attacks, adhering to the flawed conventional wisdom that "it will pass," and that people will admire their restraint.
Not so with Trump. You go into the gutter to attack him. He'll go into the gutter and fight - and he may well hurt you. It remains to be seen if this strategy will ultimately prevail - but it if Democrats feared this level of counter attack from other Republicans, there might be a few less gutter level attacks in the future.