Trump found a way, once again snatching defeat from the hungry mouth of victory (in Airplane! parlance, he had the fish for dinner), in his speech at the Al Smith dinner tonight at the Waldorf Astoria in New York.
The dinner, a political tradition since 1940, is supposed to be a light roast where the candidates poke gentle fun at each other, to diffuse the rough-and-tumble of the actual campaign. Only Trump abandoned the script midway through his remarks.
He started strong, unreeling a couple of good jokes: “Everybody praises Michelle Obama for he great speech, and Melania gives the exact same speech, and gets heat for it.