Try as I might, I cannot for the life of me figure out this from Gauleiter Drumpf:
I am getting bad marks from certain pundits because I have a small campaign staff. But small is good, flexible, save money and number one!
“Save money and number one!” So his number lines begin at two? He and his staff promise to pee less? He’s running for a job as the Count’s assistant?
I read that tweet in light of this analysis of Trump’s purported advantage over Clinton, made by a once and (at least so he hopes) future Republican candidate-whisperer:
“She is fighting a conventional war and he is fighting an asymmetrical war, and I don’t think that bodes well for her,” said Terry Sullivan, a Republican strategist. Mr. Sullivan has a unique perspective on the question, as the former manager of Senator Marco Rubio’s vanquished presidential campaign.
Trump’s secret weapon according to Sullivan: feed the beast. Constantly.
The primary lesson: “The solution is always more content, not less,” Mr. Sullivan said.
Partly, this is just grift. Here’s how the reporter, James Rutenberg acquired that earth-shattering insight:
Mr. Sullivan; the former Rubio communications adviser Alex Conant; and a lawyer for Mr. Rubio, Will Holley, had reached out to me to discuss their new consulting firm, Firehouse Strategies. It’s based on the premise that Mr. Trump has rewritten the rules of modern communications strategy, and candidates and corporations need to take heed.
But what strikes me in this Firehoser’s argument is his apparent ignorance of everything that’s happened in media beyond politics over the last decade. “Always more content” turns all content into noise soon enough.
Trump may have a bit of a first mover advantage in his dominance of the sclerotic political mediascape, but I think (a) that’s wearing thin, and one of the shocks of last week for the Trump camp was the degree to which their former lapdogs in the media have turned on them.
And more important, (b): as a number of people have pointed out, Trump’s got a long haul problem. When the brand is escalation, at some point you’re promising to build a wall to bar the Red Lectroids from Planet Ten — paid for by the takings from Vogon poetry readings.
Which is to say that yes, there’s much to be done to stomp his campaign into utter oblivion. But if texts like the Drumpf-tweet up top represent the current state of his content stream, I’m OK with that.
Image: Frans Snyders, Hounds Bringing Down A Boar (couldn’t resist), before 1650.
The Dangerman
So, small hands ARE an indicator of a small staff.
Betty Cracker
My guess is “number one” refers to his victory over big-spending GOP opponents. When unclear on what Trump is saying, it’s usually a safe bet that he is referring to himself. He may be the most self-referential human being ever.
ETA: Any claim Combover Caligula had to media super-genius status was exploded by his attack on journos last week. That was unbelievably stupid.
dedc79
Hehehe:
cmorenc
Please proceed, Mr. Trump. Deja vu – now where the Hell did I come across something like that before?
The Dangerman
Big Turd?
ETA: Also, Trump shouldn’t use phrases like “small staff” given his, well, ya know…
Betty Cracker
@dedc79: OMFG! Hilarious!
AliceBlue
Former manager of Marco Rubio’s campaign? That tells me everything I need to know.
Mike J
Matt “spellchecker” Y says on twitter Bernie will drop out Friday.
Iowa Old Lady
@dedc79: I seriously don’t know what to say. Thanks, Obama?
Yutsano
@Betty Cracker: His opponents in the primary had the disadvantage in that they couldn’t disagree with his fundamental message. After her speech last week, it’s clear Hillary doesn’t have that issue. She absolutely can hit him in the balls over and over again and get away with it spectacularly. His only responses so far have been sputtering on Twitter. Even the press is starting to come around to calling him a liar. Could he still win? I never underestimate the stupidity of the American people especially in this day and age. But he won’t come out unscathed.
hovercraft
Feeding the beast or the firehose approach has the disadvantage of producing this type of content. So yes he is being thrifty, but at what cost?
Mike in NC
Another good one.
germy
hovercraft
@dedc79:
O my god !! This general is going to be epic.
Tom Levenson
@Betty Cracker: I so love “Combover Caligula” –;-)
MattF
Of course, Der Trump is dangerous. Trump running for President is like giving an infant a hand grenade.
Mary G
He’s apparently lost Joe Scarborough who was all buddy-buddy with him during most of the campaign. Who the trash press builds up they will then tear down. Couldn’t be happening to a more deserving person.
Mike in NC
This ranks right up there with Karl Rove’s infamous boast about “we create our own reality”.
Chris
The fetish for “saving money” will be the death of this country yet.
But hopefully, in the meantime, it’ll be the death of Trump’s campaign.
germy
@MattF:
The pin doesn’t make a good pacifier…
Jeff Spender
@dedc79: I am absolutely dumbfounded that a presidential nominee could be so gods-damn stupid.
Maybe I can win my race for state representative, after all.
Major Major Major Major
@dedc79: ha! Haha actual LOL!
Tom’s thing about the wall for alien aliens reminds me of that futurama episode where they run a candidate against Nixon who won’t show anybody his Earth Certificate.
Ramping Up
And yet the race is TOO CLOSE TO CALL.
Here’s how it’s going to go down in the next week:
You’ll keep flogging the story about the judge, about Mexicans, about Muslims etc etc. You’ll be sure the Trump campaign is finished. You’ll talk about a Hillary landslide and taking back the House, or even how he’s going to drop out soon. You’re going to be very, very confident that this is it. And then…
…the new round of polls comes out. It shows a race either too close to call or Trump even slightly ahead nationally and in key swing states. You begin to tear your hair out. “This would have killed any other candidate!” You will get a sinking feeling inside your gut. Trump will then make another outrageous statement/action that should “end” his campaign. You rejoice and begin to flog the story “surely, THIS must end his campaign!”…and wash, rinse, repeat….
That’s exactly how it goes down when you’re up against someone as unconventionally invincible as Donald J. Trump.
Get used to it…
Mike in NC
@The Dangerman:
Said the Short-Fingered Vulgarian
Adam L Silverman
Tom, you’re spot on in regard to hitting a ceiling. He’s going to run out of upper limit/head space to escalate his hyperbole. And he’s going to overwhelm the signal with noise. Combine those with an almost nonexistent ground operation, his micromanaging, and you’ve got a problem. That said we’re talking a US presidential election, so its still possible he can overcome all that, but whether that would have set a new way forward or not is unclear. Also, I don’t think Senator Rubio’s former advisors really understand the meaning of asymmetric.
Mike in NC
@AliceBlue:
He misspelled “mangler”
WereBear
Sheer genius.
OzarkHillbilly
@germy: Sure it does…. For Republicans.
dedc79
@Jeff Spender:
Imagine how the campaigns of the 16 Republican competitors he beat must feel. “We lost to this idiot?!”
Major Major Major Major
That Times op-ed is terrible. I am dumber for having read it.
Mike in NC
@germy: They always fall in line; part of the authoritarian mindset.
Ruckus
@Jeff Spender:
I’m pretty sure you’ve been paying attention for the last 2 decades or so and that leaves me dumbfounded that you’d even be mildly surprised by the level of stupidity of many republican candidates for any office.
Ruckus
@Adam L Silverman:
Which sounds like the least of their problems.
Betty Cracker
@Adam L Silverman: Yep. In the Fox clip I posted downstairs, Trump responds to a softball question about Clinton’s broadside with the same lame-o “she should be in jail” line he sputtered during a campaign appearance the day of Clinton’s speech. What’s he going to say next — she should be executed? He’ll escalate to more obviously gendered attacks eventually; he won’t be able to stop himself. And the gender gap will become a yawning chasm.
Mnemosyne
@Yutsano:
All of this. Despite what the “Republicrats” idiots claim, there is a LOT of space between Republican and Democratic policies. His Repub opponents couldn’t attack him on (just to name a few) immigration, healthcare, or regulation because they all agreed with each other and could only compete on who would go the farthest.
Dems and Repubs have fundamental differences on all of those things. Either Trump starts agreeing with Hillary, or he gets pantsed over and over again.
Keith G
While it is possible that Trump will be the the first primary process winner to implode before the convention, I wonder what the probability is.
I know that the GOP’s first instinct will be to find ways to polish this turd, but how impossible will he make that process?
Jeff Spender
@Ruckus: I’m 28, so maybe the last decade and a half. Still–I mean, I know the other candidates were crappy but this isn’t the same kind of crap.
This speaks to some kind of encephalitic rot at the heart of Trump’s entire operation. Like prions are slowly eating away that delicious grey matter.
I fully expect the next Trump hire will be Senior Diaper Changer and ADL Supervisor.
RandomMonster
@Adam L Silverman:
I almost expect him to try to ratchet it up anyway. You know, moving into full Hitler-esque demonizing: “…the personification of the devil as the symbol of all evil assumes the living shape of the Mexican…”
Chyron HR
@Ramping Up:
I’m not sure who Lee Arwater is, but I’m very intimidated by your prediction anyway.
MattF
Latest news is that Der Trump is ordering his surrogates to attack reporters who ask about Trump U. Maybe it’s genius that I just don’t get. But maybe actual Republican politicians won’t be happy about being ordered to shill for an obvious con game.
dmsilev
@Betty Cracker: I’m convinced that if Trump doesn’t chicken out of the general election debates, Hillary will at least once get far enough under his skin that he snaps and outright calls her a bitch live in TV.
jl
I don’t have a firm memory of it, the wasn’t Perot spewing stream of consciousness buzzword laden ad lib speeches, with lots of supposedly clever one liners and gotchas for the soundbites. Trump has just added racism and xenophobia and general random insults to the mix.
hovercraft
@Betty Cracker:
He is incoherent most of the time so maybe I shouldn’t ask, but he called her a thief. What is she supposed to have stolen ?
hovercraft
@Chyron HR:
Lee Atwatter was one of if not the main architect of the southern strategy.
Ruckus
@Jeff Spender:
Thought you were older, remember seeing you around the block a time or two.
Miss Bianca
@germy: awesome campaign ad copy. there.
OzarkHillbilly
@Chyron HR: Lee Atwater
Yellowdog
@dmsilev: That would only endear him with his base. Except that some would consider it too mild.
Major Major Major Major
@Chyron HR: hahahaha!
Just google “Lee Atwater n***er”
Gimlet
Perhaps Trump is a nuttier, unfocused, less articulate Howard Beal reacting to any and all opposing him.
hueyplong
Eventually Trump will say no woman can be commander in chief.
Miss Bianca
@Jeff Spender: Just out of curiosity, what state/district are you running in, if you don’t mind the question?
Ramping Up
Brining up Jeb just shows how utterly invincible Trump is, defeating the deepest GOP bench in a generation while spending almost no money/campaign infrastructure.
GregB
In some ways I am pleased that the Trump Brain Rust thinks the rest of the electorate is as petty, ignorant and racist as one third to ine half of the Republicsn bade voters.
Major Major Major Major
@Gimlet: can’t be. Howard Beal was right.
bystander
@Tom Levenson: I keep trying to add that the reference to Little Boots fits in perfectly with the little hands leitmotiv. But BJ keeps swallowing my posts.
Botsplainer, Cryptofascist Tool of the Oppressor Class
@dedc79:
Jesus, that set of responses is positively frightening.
He’s reminding me of another Austrian with a combover.
Surreal American
@Ramping Up:
Betty Cracker
@hovercraft: Good question. Maybe he imagines she pocketed the place setting when she attended the reception at his wedding to trophy wife #3. Or maybe it’s just the random insult-generator in his squirrelly brain and he’ll call her a cattle rustler next.
Gimlet
@Major Major Major Major:
can’t be. Howard Beal was right.
A doppelgänger!!1!
Jeff Spender
@Ruckus: You have. I’ve been following this blog since I was 20. Back in 2008, the first president I voted for was Obama.
@Miss Bianca: Michigan, 93rd District. Clinton County and most of Gratiot County. I’m in the Clinton County Dem party, and we’re going to be using Clinton4Clinton in our GOTV and canvassing efforts. Thought it was catchy.
CONGRATULATIONS!
@dedc79: Worse yet – he ran a genuinely better, smarter and more honest campaign than they did.
You gotta admit, the crop of GOP
suckerscandidates this time around was a loser’s parade in every way.OzarkHillbilly
@Ramping Up: BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA…. gasp wheeze… BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA… Stop it. yer killing me.
Patricia Kayden
@dedc79: WOWZERS! Trump sounds like someone out of his mind. Beyond delusional. It’s almost scary to think that he’s an adult given how jumbled up his thinking appears to be. Who is actually running his campaign?
@GregB: True. Trump and his brain trust (using that term very lightly) are so out of it that they think their racist supporters represent the majority of Americans. So he really thinks he can insult upwards of 30% of the American population and still win in November? That’s not even counting the fact that he has insulted over 50% of the population with his sexist remarks. The man is an idiot.
Patricia Kayden
@OzarkHillbilly: LOL! at your reaction to whatever nonsense RU is spewing (which I refuse to read). Good that you’re getting such a deep belly laugh out of the trolls. Save some of your laughter for when RU, srv, etc., get all desperate closer to November. Now that should be fun.
jonas
@Adam L Silverman:
I think they’re counting on potential clients not knowing what it means, but who are impressed when they throw it around, like “Web 2.0” or something .
dedc79
@Botsplainer, Cryptofascist Tool of the Oppressor Class: Particularly amazing given that it completely undermines one of the core supposed appeals of his candidacy. If he can’t competently oversee a political campaign how will he competently run the country?
Brachiator
Very true. And maybe, instead of putting political reporters on the Trump beat, who are used to dealing with candidates who talk and behave according to traditional campaign style, the media should throw in some entertainment reporters, regular beat reporters, and a lot more women reporters.
But no business reporters. Half of those clowns will believe anything.
Villago Delenda Est
Drumpf is in the process of digging his own grave. By all means, please proceed, Mr. Drumpf.
scav
GSD help me, I read
and my first thought it well I suppose he is trying to save number one as his campaign strategy so far has been poo-flinging and he’s got to hold the other for the more presidential general election. Moreover, if it’s flexible and small, it would be an exact match the verbal diarrhea exploding from all his lips. Of course he’s proud of it, they all go through that stage.
Villago Delenda Est
@jonas: Yes, it’s buzz speak for morans with MBAs on their staffs.
Ramping Up
Keep having your fun proggies because the next round of polling will show this whole week is all a tempest in a tea pot.
All Trump’s “outrageous” statements in the primary did nothing. Trump is POLITICALLY INVINCIBLE.
A Ghost To Most
He reminds me of a Daffy Duck cartoon. Daffy is trying increasingly desparate acts to impress a talent agent (Elmer Fudd?) without success. Finally, he sits on a powder keg and blows himself up. Elmer, finally impressed, tries to book Daffy. Daffys ghost replies, “That’s the problem; I can only do it once”.
Villago Delenda Est
@Surreal American: I think that we’re dealing with Bill Kristol here. Seriously.
Villago Delenda Est
@Ramping Up: The only poll that matters is the one conducted nationwide on 8 November.
And you will once again be proven to be a total doofus.
Villago Delenda Est
@hovercraft: His virginity, I guess.
schrodinger's cat
Trump is like a caricature of the ugly American come to life.
AkaDad
You don’t need a huge staff or budget when you have a winning personality.
smith
Josh Marshall has an interesting discussion about Trump’s behavior as a businessman and the campaign behavior we’re seeing now, in which he initiates with aggression and then doubles down until he wins (or “wins”). It only works in business if you have very deep pockets and a raft of lawyers and are able to wear down your opponent. Marshall also asserts that there’s a psychological component such that Trump’s using an attack as an opening move puts the opponent in a defensive frame of mind that makes them thankful to get out with 5 or 10 cents on the dollar. I don’t see either of these aspects of his MO working with the Dems in general or Hillary in particular. But if Marshall is right, we will, as Tom predicts, see him escalating to the moon.
Jeff Spender
@Ramping Up: This is good news for John McCain.
Major Major Major Major
@Villago Delenda Est: Big Data™! The Cloud ☁️?⛅️!!
The Other Chuck
@A Ghost To Most: I’m pretty sure the punchline to the entire Trump campaign is “The Aristocrats!”
Jeff Spender
@smith: I actually think it will have the opposite effect because the attacks he’s making are from a defensive posture, at least right now. He is willingly bringing attention back to this Trump University mess and his bonkers nonsense about the judge.
The aggression makes no sense because of the content of the aggression. It’s not like Trump can drag out the election past November and grind his opponent slowly over the long term.
nominus
Seeing that same theme more often, morons congratulating Trump for being able to “get his message out there” in front of the media. The only problem is that when the “message” is that you’re a garbage human being, it’s sort of an anti-accomplishment. Trust us guys, we know what Trump’s message is. The problem is not that enough people haven’t received the message, the problem is that too many people received the message and rejected it for what it is.
Adam L Silverman
@Jeff Spender: Why does he need someone from the Anti-Defamation League?
aimai
@dmsilev: I see enormous potential for a movie, based half on Pygmalion and half on The Princess Diaries, in which the koch brothers have Trump kidnapped and brainwashed into lookig and acting like a normal presidential candidate. They turn him into a complete gentleman and he is so revolted by his home life and his business history that he commits seppuku to free the country of his own noxious presence.
Iowa Old Lady
@AkaDad: I truly laughed out loud when I read this.
Adam L Silverman
@RandomMonster: Its possible, but if he does that I’m not sure any amount of spin, by anyone, is going to happen, let alone help. At that point even our news media would likely awaken from their false equivalency driven somnolence and bestir themselves to actually point out what is going on in no uncertain terms and with no attempt to balance magic fairies.
Barbara
@dedc79: If you ever watched I Claudius, you might remember the Caligula episodes in which all of the wealthy Roman power brokers had to pretend that Caligula and his sister had been transformed into deities. And it hits me hard, to see that even though we are not an empire and Trump is not the emperor, there are people who are modern day equivalents, willing to sink to unheard of depths in order to stay close to power. When will the fever break?
Jeff Spender
@Adam L Silverman: Ha ha. Oops. ADL for me means Activities of Daily Living. I work in a cardiac unit at a hospital and half of what I do is assisting in ADLs.
aimai
@smith: This is quite an interesting assessment of Trump–its probably based on a reading of his books and the materials he used to sell Trump U to the rubes. I think other useful books are probably things like “In Sheeps Clothing” which is an early book about high conflict people, or other books on narcissism and conflict. There just are people who are extremely aggressive, see everything as a zero sum game, and who agressively pursue advantage and dominance in every interaction in which they are a party. That does “work,” for some values of work, in some kinds of negotiations. But elections are a different kind of transaction.
Trump does pretty well seducing a certain kind of voter into giving him their votes. But he does so by offering himself as their surrogate in attacking and beating “the enemy” who, in this case, are other voters. So for every person he attracts, he disgusts and horrifies someone else who has ended up being labled as th enemy. The only question for us as a country is: how many of them are there, and how many of us?
Barbara
@<a href="#@Tom Levenson: comment-5836080″>Tom Levenson: I didn’t even see this mention of Caligula and it’s the first thing that came to my mind as well. Not good, I think, not in the larger scheme of things to have a modern day equivalent of Caligula.
germy shoemangler
Hillary Clinton’s student commencement speech from 1969:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=60&v=2CAUOa5m5nY
Chat Noir
@Jeff Spender: Good luck to you! Clinton4Clinton is great. My mom lives in Ingham County otherwise I’d tell her to vote for you.?
moonbat
@aimai: Sort of like A Clockwork Orange, until Alex is cured of his cure, that is. In this case, though, the title is more than fitting. I approve.
Jeff Spender
@Chat Noir: Thanks! Ingham County is right next door and where I was born. Lived in Lansing until I was 10.
And to be fair, we came up with possible catch-phrases for every candidate because the party was neutral in the primary. I worked with Clinton and Bernie people, all of them really awesome.
RandomMonster
@Adam L Silverman: I agree (and hence why I went with “half-expect”). But nothing would surprise me, given Trump’s spectacular sense of tactics…
aimai
@moonbat: You are right–I must have dimly been remembering a clockwork orange. And as you say it is a most fitting title.
sm*t cl*de
That is a nice way of saying “failed grifter whose advice is demonstrably worthless”.
Smiling Mortician
@Betty Cracker: Combover Caligula is nice, but I can’t believe you haven’t been getting mad props for Hair Raid, which is at least as good.
Ramping Up
INVESTORS BUSINESS DAILY POLL CLINTON LEAD NARROWS, TRUMP UP,
Looks like all this was heat and fury signifying nothing, if anything, Trump benefitted a little.
Just like the Primary…
Patrick Thompson
@Betty Cracker: Sounds, really, like “Wile E. Coyote, Suuuuuper-Genius.”
Baud
@germy shoemangler: Oh sure, that speech she’ll release.
Villago Delenda Est
@Ramping Up: Keep fucking that chicken.
cokane
New national poll has Clinton +5 over Trump. And this is while Trumps enjoys a winning the nomination bump. This race isn’t going to be close.
Brachiator
@smith:
Very interesting point. And I agree that this may not work with Hillary if she refuses to play Trump’s game.
In the GOP primary, Trump would effectively say to some of the candidates, “You’re my friend. Don’t attack me, just watch while I take apart the other guys I don’t like.” The dopes would agree, and then be helpless when Trump inevitably turned on them. And they all took Trump to be a conventional politician playing by standard mainstream political rules.
dmsilev
@aimai: As with so so many things, The Onion beat us to it.
dedc79
@Barbara: Coincidentally, I recently bought a copy of the book, but I haven’t started it yet.
sigaba
@A Ghost To Most: I’m a skeptic of the Trump-is-maxed-out theory, only because freakish political statements aren’t exactly rankable. It’s not like they get worse and worse until they become out-and-out insane, they’re all equally insane in their foundation.
Basically every Trump rally ends with him screaming “WE CALL THE ACT ‘THE ARISTOCRATS'” and as long as he changes up the scenario a little every day he gets points.
Schlemazel Khan
@Mike in NC:
I admit it, that was the first thing I thought of! He HAS to say “small is good” because of his . . . inadequacies.
pat
Anyone else think “small and flexible” and recall the insults about his… um.. manly manliness?
Adam L Silverman
@jonas: If they start going with 4th Generation Politics or the Graduate School of Politics, they’ve spent too much time reading the stuff put out by the Coindinistas between 2007 and 2012!
dedc79
Re that Investors Daily poll (I don’t respond directly to trolls):
I’m not normally one to pick apart the sampling numbers but that it wildly out of line with actual Party ID in the U.S. This would suggest the lead is significantly bigger than +5.
pat
Also, I imagine Ramping Off sobbing quietly as he composes another useless rant. He can’t really believe that mix of projection and hallucinations can he?
Ramping Up
@dedc79:
UNSKEWED POLLZ!
Baud
@dedc79: If it’s unweighted, then presumably the weights adjust for that difference.
some guy
@Ramping Up:
Clinton LEADS Trump, with the Libertarians leeching off 11% of gOP voters ?
your side is totally fucked.
dmsilev
Cries that Trump is INVINCIBLE remind me that the Black Knight in Monty Python and the Holy Grail said exactly the same thing.
Schlemazel Khan
@dmsilev:
I so hope he accuses her of bleeding out of her . . . somewhere.
I mentioned it this morning, my big fear now is that it will occur to him he is getting his ass kicked or the masters and owners of the GOP bribe him to jin up some BS excuse for dropping out and the masters and owners pick someone else. It would be risky because they could very easily piss off both the Drumpf and the Crudz mobs but it might convince the uniformed that the GOP is not crazy.
Adam L Silverman
@Jeff Spender: Okay. I figured you meant something else, but maybe he was trying to immunize himself by saying: “look, I’ve got this real great, I mean really great, guys, is he great? he’s great! guys from the anti-Defamation League who’s just come on board to do minority outreach. He’s the best at minorities and outreach, I mean the best, just the best, and he’s going to outreach the best to the minorities that are the best, and they like me the best!”
I think I just broke my brain…
Ramping Up
@some guy:
Libertarians took from both sides equally! Hope they get on the debates, the muddier the waters the better for Trump will be just like the primary debates then!
Adam L Silverman
@aimai: Give this a whirl:
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2016/04/we-witnessed-the-birth-of-trump-university/
Ramping Up
@some guy:
TOO CLOSE TO CALL, within the MOE, the way your side talks she should be up 10+!
dedc79
@Baud: Whoops, you’re right, missed that word in there. In any event, I’ll take +5 at this point.
Schlemazel Khan
@Chyron HR: THIS is Mr Atwater, may he be selecting pineapples in Hell
Feebog
You are talking about your staffers moron. You know, the people YOU hired! His campaign really is a train wreck in progress; let’s hope it destroys the Republican Party when it jumps the rails entirely.
some guy
@dedc79:
yeah, IDB is like WND for business scumbags. That sampling puts a yuuuge thumb on the scale for R voters. The GOP is so fucked right now, watching tRump burn the party to the ground is popcorn inducing pleasure
cokane
@dedc79: precisely, the R’s have fielded their worst candidate perhaps in their party’s history. He’s going to get clobbered. The key is to win back the Senate and the House if possible.
Adam L Silverman
I’ll do a post with a link to this later on, but for now:
http://home.cc.umanitoba.ca/~altemey/
Altemeyer has made his work on authoritarianism available at his departmental website.
some guy
@Ramping Up:
soo funny I burst out laughing so loudly I scared my kids.
Schlemazel Khan
@Surreal American:
Now I think we need to ignore this infected pustual but by god that was worth the comment! THANK YOU!
burnspbesq
@cokane:
As long as we don’t get complacent.
cokane
@burnspbesq: I’m saying the exact opposite though. Seize this fucking opportunity to knock out a bunch of House and Senate Republicans. Every asshole from the party that allowed Trump to get this close to the presidency needs to be out of fucking government
Ramping Up
@some guy:
It says so in the polling blurb, dipshit.
Wapiti
@aimai: That was my take as well. Trump’s aggressive openings might work in a business setting, when the other party is interested in what he’s offering. But Hillary (and Democrats, and POC, and women, and a lot of others) don’t need to buy from Trump. I think the guy isn’t able to do the mental pivot from sleazy businessman to likable politician. He wants the surrogates to get involved in his business dealings – the tiff with the judge – when he should be focusing himself on the race.
But I think that the dude’s so much of a micromanager that his business can’t take him being absent for four years.
SFAW
@Villago Delenda Est:
My thoughts as well. Racist Hump has been as right as Bloody Billy Kristol and Roy Riegels combined. Actually, no, that’s not being fair to Riegels.
JosieJ (not Josie)
@Ramping Up:
I AM INVINCIBLE!
via GIPHY
(I wish I knew how to embed .gifs!)
burnspbesq
Surprise!
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/06/06/racial-anxiety-is-a-huge-driver-of-support-for-donald-trump-two-new-studies-find/?wpmm=1&wpisrc=nl_wonk
Surreal American
@Schlemazel Khan:
And oldie but a goodie troll-quote from the Sadly, No! website back in 2008.
J.A.F. Rusty Shackleford
@Ramping Up: Brinks trucks will be backing up…
SFAW
@Ramping Up:
Hey, moron, you’re as innumerate as they come, and you proved you couldn’t understand polling numbers back when you were fluffing Jeb?!
They idea that anything you say is accurate or truthful is laughable. And not in a funny ha-ha way.
SiubhanDuinne
@Ramping Up:
“It’s on his hat!”
Surreal American
@SFAW:
It’s kind of a funny ha-ha way. Especially when he fails on an epic scale.
SFAW
@J.A.F. Rusty Shackleford:
… right over Racist Hump, probably. “That klaxon is a sign that Trump is Invincibarrghh!”
Mike in NC
@pat: Jerking Off went into my troll filter, so fuck whatever that clown’s inhaling. All the Trump Chumps and BernieBros are gone from my screen.
hovercraft
@Villago Delenda Est:
Snort.
chopper
@OzarkHillbilly:
yes but who’s Lee Arwater?
chopper
whatever your wife says, donnie.
pat
@Mike in NC:
If it’s not too long I’ll read it and marvel at the level of denial and magical thinking it must take to write it, let alone believe it.
Too long: now skipping over all Boob’s stuff.
hovercraft
@smith:
That’s why on his conference call with supporters today he told them to go out and double down. He wants republicans to stop criticizing him on this. But this is not a board room, we can all see what he’s doing here and IT IS RACIST.
ThresherK
@dedc79: IBD is all I needed to know, but I appreciate the digging you did.
The Lodger
@Ramping Up: Brining up Jeb
You forgot to mention the part where your (ex) BFF got plucked and gutted.
hovercraft
@nominus:
Yeah, for the last few weeks the media kept criticizing the democrats for letting him dominate every news cycle. It turns out to have been Hillary’s version of ‘please proceed governor’.
chopper
@Ramping Up:
worst. cookbook. ever.
Miss Bianca
@Jeff Spender: best of luck to you! I fled Michigan in 1988 and haven’t been back except for visits since. You will have your work cut out for you at the state level. : (
Trollhattan
@Surreal American:
Oh, my.
/Sulu voice
The internets is a true Wayback Machine ™.
Miss Bianca
@Adam L Silverman: About time for another read on that work…
@aimai: you have quite the imagination…
Villago Delenda Est
@hovercraft: The media twits always are critical of a politician who refuses to validate their narrative. They’re as bad as Drumpf in this instance.
Mnemosyne
@cokane:
I’m with you — we need to work hard so we can humiliate the Republicans in November and drive them before us, listening to the lamentations of their women.
Gravenstone
@aimai:
I am Elmer J. Fudd, millionaire. I own a mansion and a yacht.
There’s a Bugs Bunny reference for everything …
Just One More Canuck
@Mike in NC: incoherent babbling is a communications strategy?
Omnes Omnibus
@Just One More Canuck: Of course it is. Just not a very good one.
burnspbesq
@Just One More Canuck
It may not be a good strategy, but yes, it’s a strategy.
Just One More Canuck
@Omnes Omnibus: @burnspbesq: “Small is good, flexible, save money and number one” – he makes Sarah Palin sound like Laurence Olivier
sm*t cl*de
Eventually you run out of room in the basement for all the Mason jars.
Alexander
Others have said it, but can’t you just see it? Trump alone, head bowed, hands in his lap, murmuring to himself, over and over again, “Small is good… Small is good…”
PurpleGirl
@Patricia Kayden: One change…
The man is an idiot. (In a Keith Olberman voice.)
PurpleGirl
@dedc79:
Because he’ll hire the best, the best — I mean the best to work for him. //snark
What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?
Trump is generating a maginot line of BS and Hillary’s organization, surrogates, and campaign speeches are going to blitzkrieg right through it. He has no organization, he has no money, he has no policy prescriptions or knowledge. He has nothing but a wall of “impregnable” BS.
I mean, he sort of scored a point, arguably, when he referred to Senator Warren as Pocahontas, once. But she came back with real criticisms of him and all he had was using the same insult again and again. That joke is stale now but its all he has.
The same is going to happen to all his other schtick – funny names are funny a couple times and then the people are going to start asking, well, what about what that person you called a funny name said about issue X? Maybe you could give a cogent rebuttal to that? But he won’t because he can’t.
Paul in KY
Sounds like the strategery of a bad actor: Any publicity is good publicity.
Paul in KY
@Keith G: I look forward to seeing the process.
Paul in KY
@jl: Right now, today, I’d have to say Perot was doing a better shtick than Trump.
Paul in KY
@Jeff Spender: You need to be out there campaigning & not wasting time commenting on a blog.
Paul in KY
@Brachiator: He’s used to dealing with fawning entertainment ‘reporters’.