Simon says Romney needs celebrities like Trump and supports Mourdock. | AP Photos Trump, Mourdock haunt Romney

Donald Trump will give $5 million to charity for Barack Obama’s college and passport records.

Big deal. I bet I can find one million Americans to give five bucks each to get copies of Mitt Romney’s tax returns.


And I bet I could get another million to pony up a sawbuck to have an independent commission determine what is nesting on Trump’s head.

Trump believes Obama may not have been born in the United States, and Mitt Romney has embraced Trump. In late August, Romney said in Michigan, “No one has ever asked to see my birth certificate. They know that this is the place that we were born and raised.”

Romney likes to use to the imperial “we” just as if he were Queen Victoria.

“A lot of people are questioning his birth certificate,” Trump said of Obama on CNBC in May. “I’ve been known as being a very smart guy for a long time. I don’t consider myself birther or not birther, but there are some major questions here.”

The only major question to me is if Trump could be any dumber if you cut off his head.

But we live in a celebrity culture, and Romney needs celebrities around him like Trump and Clint Eastwood, who probably is still talking to that empty chair.

Romney also supports the election of “celebrity” Indiana Senate candidate Richard Mourdock, who recently said that “even when life begins in that horrible situation of rape, that is something that God intended to happen.”

Mourdock must be a celebrity because only celebrities know the intentions of God. Ordinary people believe that God works in mysterious ways. Celebrity politicians believe that God works in ways to help them get elected.

Trump and Romney shook hands on a stage in Las Vegas a few months ago, which is the greatest honor Trump can bestow. Trump hates shaking hands because he believes his immune system might get compromised by the “barbaric” germs of ordinary people.

“You know, I am not a big fan of the handshake,” Trump once said in an interview with “Dateline’s” Stone Phillips. “I think it’s barbaric. They have medical reports all the time. Shaking hands, you catch colds, you catch the flu, you catch it, you catch all sorts of things. Who knows what you don’t catch?”

Pellagra, pink eye, the plague, maybe. Trump has avoided all these things (we assume) by keeping his hands in his pockets where he can fondle his money.

But he made an exception for Romney because Romney is of his social class, a social class in which people can afford to have their hands Martinized several times a day.

Romney has not yet offered to match Trump’s $5 million charitable donation if Obama produces his records. This may be because Trump is demanding a degree of “transparency” from Obama that Romney has not provided himself.

“If he releases these records, it will end the question [of his birthplace] and indeed the anger of many Americans,” Trump said in a video he released Wednesday. “They’ll know something about their president.”

But Americans already know something about Obama. They know he never had Swiss bank accounts. Or money in the Cayman Islands.

That kind of hinky behavior Trump understands, however. Trump and Romney live in the same world, a world of high finance, a world where the buck stops here, as long as “here” is a numbered account.

Romney has been asked about Trump and his belief that Obama may not be eligible for the presidency.

“I don’t agree with all the people who support me, and my guess is they don’t all agree with everything I believe in,” Romney said.

Talk about a profile in Jell-O.

John McCain may have lacked certain things as a presidential candidate - - economic knowledge and knowledge about who would make a good running mate - - but he didn’t lack character.

A McCain town hall meeting in Lakeville, Minn., in 2008, attracted more than its fair share of yahoos, and those yahoos were McCain supporters. But when they attacked Obama with slurs, McCain brought them up short.

A beefy guy in a gray T-short and baseball cap said to McCain that Obama “cohorts with domestic terrorists such as [Bill] Ayers” and that scared him when it came to Supreme Court nominees. The man wanted to know how McCain would choose Supreme Court justices.

McCain could have easily ignored the “domestic terrorists” comment and just have talked about the Supreme Court. A smarter, smoother candidate would have played to the crowd that had applauded the questioner.

But McCain would not let the insult slide, even though it was an insult directed at his opponent.

“I have to tell you he is a decent person,” McCain said of Obama as the crowd began booing, “and a person you do not have to be scared of as president of the United States.”

The boos picked up, but McCain did not care. Twenty minutes later, a woman in a red dress with a tangle of blonde hair rose and said into a hand-held microphone: “I can’t trust Obama. He’s an Arab.”

McCain shook his head and took the microphone from her. “No, ma’am, no ma’am,” McCain said. “He’s a decent family man and a citizen.”

McCain lost his race for the presidency in 2008, but he retained his decency.

Four years later, candidates know all they need to know about decency. They know it is for losers.

Roger Simon is POLITICO’s chief political columnist