The Donald Trump & Pastor Drama Aftermath: The Trump Flint Speech Debacle Again Shows Trump Can’t Stay On Target

As reported by NBC News, during a speech on Thursday, Donald Trump once again demonstrated his inability to stay on message when he referenced the Trump Flint speech debacle of the previous day. In discussing the event, in which a pastor at the predominantly black Flint church to which he had been invited interrupted Trump, Trump chose to totally rewrite the incident and essentially lie – there’s no other word for it – about what took place.

Rev. Faith Timmons #RevNotAMess
Trump Mocks Flint Pastor Who Interrupted His Speech, Says She Was A 'Nervous Mess' https://t.co/qy1qhh4c5f

— Julia (@JuliaPersonally) September 15, 2016

Trump’s willingness to spin fabrications out of whole cloth – regardless of video footage from Flint contradicting him – is one of the most astonishing things about the blustering Republican nominee. In recent days, the Trump campaign has attempted to channel the candidate’s message into something more mainstream and less obviously offensive. But Trump’s natural tendency toward going off the rails and saying any outrageous thing that pops into his head makes this virtually impossible.

According to the Detroit Free Press, during the actual Flint event, Pastor Faith Green Timmons – who originally invited Trump to speak at the church – stepped in to interrupt Trump when he deviated from the agreed-upon discussion of local matters and began attacking Hillary Clinton. In the real life version of events, Trump quickly agreed to leave that topic and focus on Flint.

#Trump speech at Flint church backfires; gets interrupted, heckled, lasts 6 minutes https://t.co/JkhrS8djP6

— KTVU (@KTVU) September 15, 2016

In fact, when members of the congregation began heckling Trump for his past positions and statements, Pastor Timmons stepped in and insisted they allow Trump to speak. But in Donald Trump’s Thursday speech referencing the incident in Flint and Pastor Timmons – he chose to invent an entirely new narrative of what took place.

Trump rejected the reality offered by the video evidence and substituted his own reality in which it was the pastor herself who was attacking Trump and the parishioners who insisted that he be allowed to speak. According to Trump, the people of this predominantly black Flint church just loved him. Following this outrageous – and laughable assertion – Trump even suggested that the pastor had clearly been planning a sneak attack on him all along.

It’s difficult to understand what it is about Donald Trump that allowed him to think he could say anything he wished about the incident with the Flint pastor without being contradicted later. It’s almost as though he assumes nobody’s filming him at these events. Or perhaps he simply doesn’t care if people catch him in a lie.

Situations like this have to be a nightmare for Donald Trump’s handlers. The new team that’s been brought in to redirect the course of his stumbling, gaffe-riddled campaign must cringe every time he opens his mouth and says something off script. Just look at his foreign policy statements.

But this is the candidate the Republicans are stuck with. They put forward a man whose natural tendencies and first instinct is always to insinuate, threaten and flat out lie. But as the old saying goes – you “dance with the one that brung you.” So the Republicans are stuck dancing with Trump, whether they like it or not.

Unfortunately for them, Trump – like the bully he so often is – keeps stepping on their feet and blaming them for it. Every time they think they’ve finally brought Trump to the infamous “pivot” point, they find themselves forced to pry Trump’s foot out of his mouth again. Trump’s initial speech in Flint and his follow-up tall tale speech about Flint later are both perfect examples of this.

This is why all the spin doctoring and biased polling in the world – as well as all the king’s horses and all the king’s men – won’t be able to put Donald Trump on a course for actually winning the White House. However much the campaign may try to present him as the new “kinder, gentler Trump,” Trump’s essential nature will always come out in the end. This is exactly what happened with the pastor in Flint, Michigan.

[Featured Image by Evan Vucci/AP Images]