It's this sort of story that makes it easy to believe that Donald Trump doesn't actually want to be president.
There are a lot of stories that make it seem like Donald Trump doesn't actually want to be president. Like this one (http://nyti.ms/29UImKs), about how his campaign asked John Kasich if he wanted to be the Vice President of Trump's America in charge of Domestic and Foreign Policy, while President Trump would focus on, ahh, Making America Great Again. Or the fact that he just isn't going to release his tax returns--almost certainly because he doesn't want to disclose that his big, beautiful, and really quite large and girthy bank account has far less money in it than he claims that it does (http://goo.gl/nAZvy7). Or that time he talked about how his penis is really quite large, on television, during a primary debate. And then there's years of this: https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump.
About a year ago, responding to some comments John McCain had regarding Trump's assertion that Mexico wasn't sending their best and brightest to the US, but rapists and criminals, Trump told a crowd of supporters that John McCain wasn't a real war hero, because he got caught. He prefers people who didn't get caught, he told the crowd (http://goo.gl/R5Lmk5).
Thinking back on the McCain fiasco, one could actually conclude that Trump wants to be president more now than he did a year ago. At least he didn't say, for example, "Humayun Khan wasn't a war hero. He's a *war hero* because he got killed. Please. I like people that weren't killed."
Progress!
A person who wants to be the President of the United States probably should not get into a week-long war of words with the family of a US soldier who was killed while saving the lives of his fellow soldiers. This is not next-level campaign advice! This is the bare minimum! As long as I'm offering really obvious campaign advice to Donald Trump, here's what he should have said to any question about the Khan family in the days after the DNC:
"Look, that was a moving speech--how could you not be moved by that speech? I can only imagine the pain they've endured over the last decade, since their son's heroic sacrifice on the battlefield. And I love Muslims--I love all people. I just have a different opinion about how to keep this country safe than they do, is all it really is. Oh, and I read the Constitution, like, all the time. Pretty good, that Constitution. Strong. Strong Constitution. Not as strong as my constitution, though. I'm healthy as a horse, and hung like one. Haven't you heard? Just beautiful. My cock, that is. Big, and beautiful. Ask little Marco, he'll tell ya'."
The point is, Trump seems to take small media brush-fires and will them into huge, stupid forest fires, on purpose. Khan's speech was powerful and incisive, and scored some gross political points for the Clinton campaign in the process, but it would have gone away in a day and a half under normal circumstances. Instead, Trump sprayed tanning oil and gasoline on the fire, like the compulsive media-savvy pyro he is.
Could it be that Trump, and now his campaign, choose to stoke these controversies in order to distract from the seemingly very obvious fact that he doesn't have the first clue about what it will be like to actually attempt to, you know, govern? To distract from the fact that he seems to have a Palin-esque understanding of current geopolitical realities? (Trump gives questionable explanation of events in Ukraine -- http://nyti.ms/2a9RTim). To distract from the fact that he views every single relationship transactionally, be it personal or business or fucking NATO? (Trump would decide whether or not to help NATO allies under Russian attack based on his estimation of whether or not they had fulfilled their obligations to us, in keeping with previous statements about convincing other allies to pay more for US protection -- http://nyti.ms/29PSiSo)
So maybe he does want to be president, after all. He wants it so badly that he's willing to say whatever it takes to shift the headlines away from his staggering ignorance, and onto things that his base enjoys and the media can't help but to feverishly report, so hungry to be flustered by him. This results in the endless cycle we have now, with Trump saying whatever careless, hateful, and stupid thing that happens to cross his mind, causing the media to wring its already overwrought hands and shake its already overshook heads.
Maybe he's the master manipulator, after all. Or maybe he's just an asshole.
We always did like an asshole, didn't we?