This effort to clean up Trump soils everyone involved. He cannot take back what he has already said. Words, programs and proposals matter, of course, but what matters even more is the mind-set that produced them. Trump’s belittling of McCain’s torture, his gleeful enthusiasm for waterboarding, his mocking of a physically handicapped reporter, his tasteless leering at female beauty evince a man who lacks empathy. This — not his narcissism, not his lying, not his unfathomable ignorance — is his most dangerous characteristic. He shares it with some of history’s most repellent figures.
Richard Cohen