Is Jeb Getting Desperate?

So much for Jeb Bush’s pledge to campaign “joyfully.”

Donald Trump was confronted at an event on Monday by a young woman whose shrill feminism would seem incompatible with a Republican presidential campaign. Turns out,the 18-year-old is a volunteer for Bush’s 2016 presidential campaign.

“Jeb always gets caught, sad!” a triumphant Trump said on Twitter.

In case you missed it, New Hampshire native and proud Bush supporter Lauren Batchelder told Trump in a televised event that she did not believe he is “a friend to women,” before asking if “a woman will make the same as a man, and do I get to choose what I do with my own body?” under a Trump presidency.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w9VzSvspwzI

After the event, which was hosted by the bipartisan No Labels organization, senior adviser to the Trump campaign, Daniel Scavino, Jr., accused the Bush camp of planting the volunteer, an accusation echoed by Trump.

While confirming that Batchelder is indeed a Bush volunteer, Bush communications director Tom Miller denied that the campaign sent her to the event or that her questions had been approved or sanctioned by Bush’s people.

So did an 18-year-old Bush volunteer simply take it upon herself to accost her boss’s chief rival? Hard to believe. But faced with threats from Trump and the growing strength of Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, Bush has already shown a propensity to go on the attack.

Apparently Jeb’s desire to maintain his “joyful” image is so strong he’ll get teenagers to do his dirty work.

At this point, it is unknown if the Bush campaign is sending out trolls to ruin his opponent’s events. If so, it would certainly be yet more evidence that the sunny Bush vow to campaign “joyfully” was nothing more than a facade.

Even if Batchelder’s questions were actually her own, and she simply went to confront Trump on an issue she holds dear, it would only reinforce the wider concerns of the conservative base regarding Bush’s capabilities as a leader and his commitment to true conservative values.

The episode brings up even more questions: Why would the Bush campaign accept a volunteer who actually believes those things? Does the Bush campaign not have any sort of vetting process for its volunteers?

Does the Bush campaign really make no effort to suggest to its volunteers that, regardless of their unpaid status, they are still representatives of the campaign, and therefore probably shouldn’t go on television pretending to be Joe Public in order to stitch up rival candidates?

If Bush’s campaign is run this poorly, it certainly does not bode well for the former Florida governor’s ability to run the country.

No matter which way one looks at it, this incident is bad for the Bush campaign. Either the campaign engaged in an underhanded attempt to make a rival candidate look bad and subsequently lied about it, or, arguably worse, it has zero control over its volunteers, some of whom are apparently closet Democrats.