“I remember, when I was a child, being taken to the celebrated Barnum's Circus, which contained an exhibition of freaks and monstrosities, but the exhibit on the program which I most desired to see was the one described as ‘The Boneless Wonder.' My parents judged that that spectacle would be too revolting and demoralizing for my youthful eyes, and I have waited fifty years to see The Boneless Wonder sitting on the Treasury Bench.”

— Winston Churchill in the House of Commons, referring to Prime Minister Ramsay MacDonald, 1931

WASHINGTON

Donald Trump, whose promises are probably as malleable as his principles, promises to support the Republican nominee. Some of his rivals for the nomination, disoriented by their fear and envy of him, are making the GOP seem like the party of boneless wonders.

Some, who loudly lament how illegal immigrants damage the rule of law, have found a heroine in Kentucky. A county clerk chose jail rather than resignation when confronted with having to comply with the U.S. Supreme Court and the Constitution regarding same-sex marriage.

Mike Huckabee, Rand Paul, Bobby Jindal and Scott Walker think her religious freedom is being trampled. So does Ted Cruz, who surely knows better. He clerked for Chief Justice William Rehnquist and must remember the 1892 case in which a Massachusetts policeman claimed that rules restricting political activity by police violated his constitutional rights. Rejecting this claim, Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court wrote that the officer “may have a constitutional right to talk politics, but he has no constitutional right to be a policeman.”

In an extended recent riff on how great and loved he is, Trump cited, as evidence that “our country is being killed on trade,” this: “They have in Japan the biggest ships you've ever seen pouring cars into Los Angeles, pouring them in. I've never seen anything like it. We send them beef, and they don't even want it. It's going to end, and they're going to like us.”

Well. Leaving aside Japan's strange willingness to purchase unwanted beef, most Japanese vehicles that pour into America do so from plants in America. So, after Iowa's evangelicals have plumbed Trump's theological depths, South Carolinians can evaluate his trade-is-killing-us campaign. There, his woe-is-us narrative will collide with cheerful realities that Republican Gov. Nikki Haley recently described in a Washington speech: Flat-screen TVs are made in Winnsboro, bicycles are made in Manning (the New Jersey company moved its manufacturing there from China), and five foreign-owned tire companies manufacture in the state. So do Mercedes and, in 2018, Volvo. South Carolina has what Germany does not have — the world's largest BMW plant.

Recently Trump told MSNBC that, after his speech the day before, “The CNN reporter said it was the single greatest political speech she's ever heard.” Asked which reporter, he said: “I don't know her name. But she was wearing a beautiful red dress.” National Review's Jim Geraghty reports that CNN says neither of its correspondents at the Trump event wore red.

Novelist Mary McCarthy said of playwright Lillian Hellman, “Every word she writes is a lie, including ‘and' and ‘the.'” If that was so, Trump is not even an original.

Editor's note: The columnist's wife, Mari, works for Scott Walker.

George F. Will is a columnist for The Washington Post and Newsweek.

---

Copyright ©2025— Trib Total Media, LLC (TribLIVE.com)

---