by Steve Adubato, PhD

“I think women all over this country heard very clearly what Mr. Trump said.” stated Carly Fiorina in Wednesday’s GOP Debate. More powerful words have never been spoken in a Presidential debate. Republican candidate Carly Fiorina eviscerated and publicly humiliated tough guy, Donald Trump, in front of the world with those words when asked to respond to Trump’s sophomoric and disgraceful comments about her face (which he said were misinterpreted because he said he was talking about her “persona”). There you have it, in my view as well as millions of others. Donald Trump was exposed for who and what he really is.

The bully in the school yard got challenged in front of everyone else by someone with the courage to stand up and say, “enough.” And what did Trump do? A real leader - a real man - would have simply said something like: “Carly, what I said was wrong. It was stupid. I don’t know what I was thinking. I apologize to you and all women because the problems we face in our country are too serious to be insulting each other like this about looks.” But that’s not what he did.

Trump, who is absolutely tone deaf to how he is perceived by most reasonable people, looked to Fiorina and said, “I think she has a very beautiful face, and she’s a beautiful woman.” So Trump doubled down again and dug a bigger hole and made things worse. Another sign of how bad a leader he would really be if he ever found his way to the oval office.

As for Carly Fiorina, we need to know more about her leadership at Hewlett-Packard, which was clearly flawed, but in this debate, in that moment, she did America a favor by standing up and taking on the bully and alleged “political tough guy.” Yes other candidates including Marco Rubio, Chris Christie, John Kasich and Jeb Bush did well in the GOP debate, but Carly was able to expose Trumps flaws more than the others.

For now, Donald Trump has “jumped the shark.” It’s all downhill from here. He lacks the facts, the details, the substance, the humility, but mostly the decency to handle himself as a real leader on the public stage and we can thank Carly Fiorina for making that so very clear.