“The Donald Trump situation, as anxious Republicans and mystified commentators sometimes call it, only grows more anxiety-producing and mystifying by the week. His performance in the August 6 [2015] debate was not considered world-beating. Then, in the wake of it, he was widely perceived as having made reference in a CNN interview to the menstrual cycle of Fox News host and debate moderator Megyn Kelly, which was supposed to finish him off. It was about the fourth such dose of poison but, Rasputin-like, Trump has survived each one.1 After the debate, he maintained his large lead over the field.

FOOTNOTE: “The first three: his reference to Mexican ‘rapists’; his mockery of John McCain’s war heroism; the revelation that he may have once ‘violated’ his then wife Ivana. All washed off him.”

Michael Tomasky, “Trump,” in the New York Review, September 24, 2015, pp: 12-16.