Now he’s gone too far

First he came for the Mexicans. Then he came for the women. Now he's coming for the teleprompters!

In a speech in Iowa yesterday, Donald Trump mocked his fellow Republican presidential candidates, saying, "These other guys, they're going around, they make a speech in front of 21 people. Nobody cares, they read the same speech—deet-deet-deet. They have teleprompters. I say we should outlaw teleprompters for anybody, right?—for anybody—for anybody running for president."

The crowd cheered, just as the crowd cheerred Rick Santorum in 2012, when told a crowd in a Gulfport, Miss. restaurant, "See, I always believed that when you run for president of the United States, it should be illegal to read off a teleprompter. Because all you're doing is reading someone else's words to people."

It's the oldest gag in the speaker's book. Before teleprompters, the speaker would pull a speech out of his coat pocket, tear it up and promise to "speak from the heart."

Live audiences still fall for it, and cooler heads always know better.

It is fun, though, to think of President Trump's off-the-cuff State of the Union Address. —DM