Trump doesn’t think before speaking, so how can we vote for him?

In 1984, when President Ronald Reagan was running for re-election, he was preparing to give a radio address on NPR regarding current affairs of the time. Off the air, to the aides and staff members there, the late president made a quick joke in which, mocking his speech of that day, he said: “My fellow Americans, I’m pleased to tell you today that I’ve signed legislation which will outlaw Russia forever. We begin bombing in five minutes.”

Funny no doubt, and containing the classic Reagan effect of making everyone in the room laugh. But the comment was then leaked out to the general public and heard by the Soviet Union, who then placed the Soviet Far East Army on high alert for 30 minutes in preparation for an invasion by the United States, something the people in the NPR studio, and Reagan himself, probably couldn’t believe had happened.

Something more recent, but of the same flavor, is Donald Trump’s remarks during a press conference regarding Hillary Clinton’s emails. “Russia if you’re listening, I hope you’re able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing. I think you will probably be rewarded mightily by our press.”

Much less funny, but yet another example of the power that a presidential candidate’s words, however sarcastic, can have. A few days after this, the Democratic National Convention fundraising committee and the Clinton campaign were hacked again by Russian intelligence services, releasing a trove of voicemails. And although Donald Trump clearly had no direct hand in that (just as Reagan clearly didn’t intend for Russia to go on high alert), everyone can agree that openly asking for some foreign cyber intervention into American issues would have the effect of lighting a fire under the most unambitious hacker.

But this little episode didn’t appear in a vacuum. Now that Trump has more attention on him than ever before, and has the potential to be the most powerful man in the world, his words really matter. They’re not going to be written up in a tabloid newspaper and then forgotten the next day, or discussed by reality television fans for the week until the next episode airs. They wield immense influence.

Take his feud with Megyn Kelly. In the first instance, it’s upsetting to realize the context of this little drama. A 69-year-old man, as he was at the time, received a question he didn’t like and took his frustration out on the journalist who asked it via Twitter, the most natural thing a person applying for Abraham Lincoln’s old job would do. This led to a nine month feud between the two.

But since this is the case, let’s look at what happened. The tweets began shortly after the debates and were mostly juvenile, saying the Kelly “bombed” as the debate moderator, the kind of stuff that might get you into some trouble at a playground, but little else. Later, he was quoted in saying “You could see there was blood coming out of her eyes. Blood coming out of her, wherever.” A comment which surprised many, but shouldn’t have if you know anything about Trump’s history with women. Then came his retweet calling Kelly a “bimbo” (clearly showing off Trump’s Gore Vidal-like wit and ability to counter. His response when called out on it in the one on one interview he later had with Kelly was “Uh, well, that was a retweet yeah. Did I say that?”). Then, in an act of support for their candidate, Trump followers began tweeting the most vitriolic garbage in her direction which was capped off by a few death threats.

This, it has to be said, was stirred up by Trump. His words and actions set the standard for his followers. If from the beginning, he had not come out with any sort of personal attacks on Kelly, we would most likely not have had an episode, and she would not have had to deal with death threats. But he did, so we had. This is not the action that mature people take. Especially if that person is running for the top job of their country and must expect criticism from every angle and of every shape. Criticism must be embraced and, if it is unfair, should be demolished with conversation and intelligence, not with insults and cheap tweets.

Trump has yet to comprehend this. His words reach much farther than he appears to know and are capable of influencing people and events in ways that he has little experience with.

This is dangerous ignorance, and if he is elected president, it’s not enough just to hope he’ll stop it.