Donald Trump ought to give a Jewish custom a shot.
It’s apology season on the campaign trail.
After months of botched damage
control, Hillary Clinton did what she needed to do when her bureaucratic
scandal first erupted. The leading Democratic presidential candidate said she
was sorry she didn’t use an official government email account when she led the
State Department.
And after Donald Trump
disparaged Ben Carson — the soft-spoken neurosurgeon and No. 2 Republican
candidate — for questioning the GOP frontrunner’s faith, Carsonapologized to his competitor.
Even Trump himself is talking
about it.
“I fully think apologizing is a great thing,”
Trump told host Jimmy Fallon on the Tonight Show the other day. “But you have to be
wrong. If you’re not wrong…”
At this point, Fallon completely lost it. Upon regaining composure, the host
directed a goofy smile at the Donald, who said in a serious tone of voice:
“I will apologize sometime in
the hopefully distant future if I’m ever wrong.”
What? Donald Trump has said so many cruel things that demand an apology lately that The Hill published a list of some 30 of his latest “notable insults” just last July. It included the one where Trump disparaged Senator John McCain for becoming a prisoner of war in Vietnam and referred to Mexican immigrants as “rapists.”
Then Trump kept saying nasty
stuff, instantly rendering this litany completely out of date.
A Rolling Stone profile
released in September, for example, relayed how Trump belittled fellow GOP
hopeful Carly Fiorina’s looks, declaring “Look at that face! Would
anyonevote for that?”
Trump also reprised an
incestuous joke about his daughter Ivanka Trump that he’d made before. “Yeah,
she’s really something, and what a beauty, that one,” the real estate developer
rambled to journalist Paul Solotaroff. “If I weren’t happily married and, ya
know, her father…”
If he needs more evidence that
he ought to learn how to apologize, he can check out Time magazine’s Trump insult
generator. You enter someone’s name and it says something mean about
them, with affronts drawn from the candidate’s own Twitter feed.
When I tried
entering a random name it spat this out: “Melania Trump is a totally overrated
clown who speaks without knowing the facts.”
Maybe it would help if Trump
were to embrace the Jewish custom of making amendsthis
time of year with people we have harmed in some way. It’s not that far-fetched,
given that Ivanka converted to Judaism in 2009 while engaged to her
now-husband Jared Kushner.
Their family keeps kosher and is
pretty observant. That means they’re in the midst of the High Holidays, which
culminate with Yom Kippur — as am I. Before this Day of Atonement, Jews are
supposed to heal rifts with anyone we have wronged.
Ultimately, the custom of making
amends is about doing your best to become more considerate. Donald Trump should
do himself and everyone else in this country a favor and give it a try.
Columnist Emily Schwartz Greco is the managing editor of
OtherWords, a non-profit national editorial service run by the Institute for
Policy Studies. OtherWords.org.