So for the third straight night, division, disorganization and sheer hatred form meta-message of RNC 2016.
— Ed Kilgore (@ed_kilgore) July 21, 2016
I stand corrected. This @GettyImages photo is the most amazing thing to come out of Day 3 of the GOP convention. pic.twitter.com/chRc2M1Vwr
— T. Becket Adams (@BecketAdams) July 21, 2016
By calling on GOP politicians to honor their pledge to support Trump, Ingraham is preparing a post-election "stabbed in the back" myth.
— Jeet Heer (@HeerJeet) July 21, 2016
Omnishambles. This is an omnishambles convention.
— Jamelle Bouie (@jbouie) July 21, 2016
I didn't enjoy writing this, but I think it's true: "Why This Convention Could Turn Out To Be a Trump Success." https://t.co/NLD7p6nofy
— Bill Kristol (@BillKristol) July 20, 2016
I would honestly sleep easier if Kristol wrote a piece saying "Trump Will Win" https://t.co/Ke41U5oXcq
— Jeet Heer (@HeerJeet) July 20, 2016
Remember that the only one guaranteed to do well from Trump licensing his name is Trump. https://t.co/0zN1Oqk2nU
— John Scalzi (@scalzi) July 20, 2016
Report: Trump plans to license his name to his administration, not to run it https://t.co/KeFy4GUEo2 pic.twitter.com/M3QhRkG54t
— New York Magazine (@NYMag) July 20, 2016
Wow, Ted Cruz got booed off the stage, didn't honor the pledge! I saw his speech two hours early but let him speak anyway. No big deal!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 21, 2016
Vote your conscience. https://t.co/xahMq2sU1q
— Hillary Clinton (@HillaryClinton) July 21, 2016
Trolling level: Final Boss https://t.co/JmNEilri1r
— Tom Nichols (@RadioFreeTom) July 21, 2016
If Ted Cruz got up on stage and said, "I'm quitting this rotting corpse of a party," then I'd celebrate his bravery as not self serving.
— Bob Schooley (@Rschooley) July 21, 2016
I don't know how much longer the GOP can take the cognitive dissonance between what they've believed for decades and what Trump says.
— mieke eoyang (@MiekeEoyang) July 21, 2016
This is amazing: https://t.co/8oXunXu2X7 #RNCinCLE pic.twitter.com/lBI8tDpSz0
— Andrew Katz (@katz) July 21, 2016
Ok, because it's late and I don't care anymore: the FM of a NATO country told me the election of Trump is "the end of the West."
— Michael Weiss (@michaeldweiss) July 21, 2016
Or that Trump says America lacks the moral authority to criticize dictatorships. (Imagine what the GOP would say if a Dem nominee said it!)
— Jon Lovett (@jonlovett) July 21, 2016
It's also that Trump does this without any thought, preparation, research, or sense of history. He is flying blind, and thinks that's fine.
— Jon Lovett (@jonlovett) July 21, 2016
.@TheRickWilson I think it's more like a giant tire fire. The smell is obnoxious and the leftovers are toxic to all. .@realDonaldTrump
— MJ Welch, B.SC. (@Prairiewaif) July 21, 2016
hellslittlestangel
The primaries were such a joy for Trump, the Republicans should just go to Iowa and start them all over again, and just keep doing them over forever.
robert thompson
Having left NATO I wonder how much influence the master of the art of the deal will have to convince European democracies to align their interests even closer to the USA while we are under no obligation to support them?
David ?▶️Hillary/Harley Quinn 2016▶️? Koch
hahahahhahahahhahha
It’s killing them. You know the media wanted to declare this a success if only to feed into their “too close to call” narrative.
David ?▶️Hillary/Harley Quinn 2016▶️? Koch
Let’s dispel with this fiction that Laura Ingram doesn’t know what she’s doing. Se knows exactly what she’s doing.
Jerzy Russian
Is that photo with Mrs. Ingraham and Mr. Trump giving each other Romulan (or Nazi) salutes real? I saw the clip of her doing it, but was the image on that big screen photoshopped in?
Bruce K
I’ve been awake for four hours here in Athens and I’m still trying to make sense of it all. I’m seeing reports that Cruz tacitly endorsed Trump, that Cruz shanked Trump, that Trump camshafted Cruz, but all I know for sure is that they haven’t convinced me to trust any of them with a plastic spork, never mind a thermonuclear arsenal.
Seriously – I’ve been making plans to move back to the States. Should I be re-thinking them?
Jerzy Russian
@David ?▶️Hillary/Harley Quinn 2016▶️? Koch:
What about Bill Kristol?
Shalimar
@Jerzy Russian: I wasn’t actually watching at that point, so someone else can correct me if I’m wrong, but I don’t think Trump was there at the time of her speech. Ingraham was facing her left and gave what is clearly a Nazi salute before turning it into a wave as she scanned the rest of the crowd. If Trump had been in that direction, it would be creepy. As it is, it is just a WTF moment.
hellslittlestangel
@Bruce K: Cruz made a speech and stabbed Trump, then Trump made a speech and stabbed Cruz, then there were more stabbings and speeches. The whole thing was quite anti-climactic. It was like that play that Shakespeare tore up and threw in the trash, saying, “Z’blood! What the fuck was I thinking?”
Jerzy Russian
By the way, if anyone sees insomnia in human form, can they go up to him/her and kick him/her in the junk?
Greg
Trump of the will.
OzarkHillbilly
@Jerzy Russian: For the 2nd night in a row, I have slept fairly well. I’m not working today (doc appt) so I can avoid the 100 degree heat and 70% humidity. I just might hit the trifecta. But I’m not counting on it.
Applejinx
Yeah, Ingraham pursed her lips and hit the Nazi salute very sharply before morphing it into waves and fingerpoints. It was like a dance move and she executed it real crisply;. WTF is with that woman? Watch her face, something special about that moment.
On the bright side, proof Republicans can still dogwhistle even in the age of Trump?
Shalimar
I have been wondering about the June FEC report for Trump. To my understanding, penalties for campaign finance violations have basically become toothless, coming years after the fact and with penalties far too minor to change any bad behavior. Because of this, I wonder, did Trump really forgive his loans to the campaign, or did he lie on the disclosure?
Reporters researched in late June and discovered that the paperwork actually forgiving the loans hadn’t been filed. Why has no one reported seeing the form in the last 3 weeks? Why did we have to wait until the the finance report was released to find out he really did forgive the debt?
If the penalty is minor and will come 2-5 years from now, and the reward is huge in terms of donations from people who don’t want Trump using their money to repay himself, isn’t this exactly the kind of thing Trump would break the law to lie about?
RK
Anyone make sense out of the plagiarism thing? The McIver confession doesn’t add up (Maureen Dowd told the same laughable story) and it doesn’t seem Melania or anyone around her could be that stupid.
Applejinx
@Bruce K: Cruz intended to pants Trump. The Trump people saw this coming and decided to turn it into a bit, arranging for a storm of booing.
On the Trump side: Republicans love revealing enemies so they figured it was great to reveal enemies within, worth the obvious dissension. Probably nobody else is hated like Cruz, so it plays out like ‘bad guy balked and then nearly beat up backstage, powerbrokers hate him’.
On the Cruz side: Republicans love revealing enemies. And claiming to be against evil establishment forces. It’s well to remember that Trump’s supposedly the outsider against establishment forces, yet all of a sudden it’s Trump lined up with Adelson and Cruz pissing them off is supposed to be bad. Cruz LOVES being hated by those he can paint as evil, and he’s pulled it off exceptionally well, and the trigger was literally him saying anodyne stuff and asking people to vote their conscience. He is in no way an innocent Christian lamb but thanks to Trump’s instincts, he’s now painted as one, opposing the forces of wickedness that are leading the Republican party off a cliff.
Outcome: Trump gets more control of the Republican party through orchestrating a beatdown and showing what happens to dissenters. In so doing he creates a martyr and rips away the fundie wing, who get to pretend Cruz is their sacrificed Jesus. Trump is in hog heaven because it’s more drama and more beatdowns and shows of power. Cruz is in hog heaven because there’s no role he’d rather play than this, and he’s thinking 2020.
Clinton’s all ‘please proceed, gentlemen’, and rightly so. Oddly, I don’t think any of this traces back to any sort of Dem ratfuckery: I wonder about the Melania debacle, but this is clearly out of the existing divides of the Republican party. Cruz and Trump did this to themselves, because each see themselves as personally gaining by the clash. In a sense they’re right, but collectively they lose hardcore. Trump presides over a clusterfuck that can’t even put on its own fucking convention, and Cruz is set up to be the eternal protest vote spoiler pony. If he pursues this, and he will, the Republicans are severely fucked. He should split off and form a Jeebus party :)
Shalimar
@RK: The McIver confession seems like a cover story for whatever happened, but it is as plausible as any other possibility. That is the problem: someone actually was that stupid. I assume it was either Melania, Donald himself, or one of the children, because the campaign wouldn’t bother covering for anyone else.
RK
@Shalimar: Does only seem to make sense if it was done, or approved, at the top, which makes you wonder.
Applejinx
@RK: MacGyver? I think somebody’s still joking ;)
Somebody got the Trump people GOOD with that one. The rickroll part really caps it off. I suspect some traditional Republican establishment ratfucker putting in the shiv. Rove or somebody?
Yes, the Trump people are that stupid and arrogant (they most likely figured the script didn’t matter, it’s the look of the thing that matters) but this was still done by someone they trusted. Some handy Republican friend volunteering to write speeches, and a little chain of supposedly-helpful political flacks promising to come up with a good inoffensive first-lady style message. You know they’re not going to go check it against Michelle Obama speeches because it would be work. I bet whoever did this, put the rickroll part in as bait: hoping that if they got discovered, someone would find the rickroll aspect and think that was the real payload.
As for the campaign refusing to cover for anyone else: with Cruz they intentionally set him up to play the heel. This is different, a suggestion that they’re totally out of control of their own organization. Yes, they’d try to cover up the idea that they’re not at all in control of their own campaign. They stand to gain nothing by revealing that, and they can’t blame it on their future First Lady and can’t suggest that they just parrot off dumb shit anybody gives them to say, so they scramble for a ‘MacGyver’ solution.
amk
@Bruce K: it wuz all blood everywhere, dood. The knives won and the knaves lost.
Shalimar
@Applejinx: That is the most obvious explanation, but I can’t imagine any reason Trump wouldn’t nail the speechwriter to the wall if that were true, with a full-on “traitor to the Republican party who should never be hired again” narrative. He’s going after his Art of the Deal ghostwriter for being mean to him. Why wouldn’t he go after a speechwriter for making his wife look bad?
burnspbesq
@Bruce K:
Not sure it matters. If Trump is elected, there will be no safe places.
Applejinx
@Shalimar: He has no choice with the Art Of The Deal guy, and that was years ago.
World of difference between staging a bit to disgrace Cruz, and acknowledging his current team is so weak that anyone can trick them. He can’t go after current speechwriters if he wasn’t really paying attention enough to single someone out, he’s not paying attention enough to be able to isolate a speechwriter at fault, and the worst! possible! thing! is the idea that his campaign is a joke and incompetent, vulnerable to anyone’s trickery.
Staging TV drama with Cruz: strong.
Being screwed by some underling and too dumb even to notice the decoy payload (the rickroll): weak!
If it turns out McIver isn’t a real person, that just confirms my sense that they literally went ‘we need a MacGyver to come in and magically let us escape from this!’. And then some loyalist talked ’em into making a fake speechwriter to ‘confess’, when the trouble is they don’t KNOW who did that to them, because they are not that kind of organized. The servants do everything for the Trump, and now the Republican Party is expected to be the servants.
This is NOTHING. Wait and see what the ratfuckers have in store for these guys. Just imagine having a pissed-off Karl Rove and a vengeful Bush family as your servants. The idea is horrifying. I’m nearly sorry for these horrible people, just imagining how their ghastly entitlement will run into the iceberg of very practiced treachery.
If they somehow won, the purges would be 60-70% Republicans. They really do expect they can bully their way in and the Republican establishment will just become their servants. They’re waaaay out of their depth.
RK
@Applejinx: Okay, not wanting the campaign to look sabotaged and thus incompetent and out of their control makes sense but I can’t believe those at the top would knowingly allow a case of such flagrant plagiarism. No one is that stupid.
Another Holocene Human
MSNBC showed Pence live in a prayer huddle last night. It was creepy as all get out. Didn’t Jesus call people who prayed in public hypocrites? And that hypocrites had already been rewarded? Huh.
Another Holocene Human
@Applejinx: Marla McGivers: the historian obsessed with dictators who throws away her career to be KHAANN!!!’s camp-follower in the classic Star Trek episode “Space Seed”.
RK
@Applejinx:
Yes, she’s real. Had a hand in writing many of Trump’s books and works for his organization as well.
Another Holocene Human
@Applejinx: Cruz and Trump are perfect for each other. Like your analysis.
Also, Manafort is a liar and a fucking moron. Dems are looking side eye at the RNC right now.
Another Holocene Human
@Shalimar: Hail Hydra
Waldo
@burnspbesq:
Indeed. I’m enjoying this farce the same way I enjoyed Dr. Strangelove — with lots of uneasy laughter.
Denali
@Bruce K
Yes.
rikyrah
@Shalimar:
Ingraham has a non-White child.
Ugh
msdc
@Applejinx:
Yeah, it’s not like MacGyvers are known for just cobbling shit together out of whatever materials are closest at hand.
Kristine
@RK: on another list, someone said that Trump got what he wanted out of the plagiarism thing–3 days of people talking about Melania and the undecideds now associating her with “First Lady,’ that it was a marketing ploy by a master marketer and we’ve all been rolled.
I don’t buy that. I think it’s giving Trump way too much credit. But I’m a Dem, so I worry.
But what really gets to me is that no matter how many city blocks this dumpster fire consumes, Trump will still get over 40% of the vote.
msdc
@Shalimar:
Because she’s a Trump loyalist who is presumably getting paid to take the fall for him or somebody close to him. It’s not the first time.
Keith P.
I’ve got news for you – Trump actually said he would solve the Turkey problem with “meatings”. In other words, TRUMP STEAKS!
philadelphialawyer
I don’t think either screw up represents some sort of “plan,” much less diabolically effective ones.
They never vetted Melania’s speech, and so she plagiarized and it went unnoticed. Probably because the only honest part of the whole tale is that Melania likes Michele Obama, and her 2008 speech. There was no intentional orchestration of a mini scandal just to keep her in the news. Indeed, the first take was that Mrs T. had (as MSN put it) “ignited” the convention with her wonderful speech, which then quickly, and downwardly, shifted into “she cribbed it from Mrs. O.” McIver is just the fall guy. There was no “plant” either, and, in all honesty, I think the “rickroll” thing is just a coincidence. Out in the real world, most folks have no clue about that “internet tradition.”
As for Cruz, he simply went off script. Trump and his crew are now pretending that they “let” him do it. Perhaps to give the impression that they don’t mind dissent. Perhaps to make it seem like they set up Cruz. But the reality is that they were not in control, got burned, and then started making up bullshit/spin explanations.
That explains both SNAFUs, actually. They are amateurs, they are winging it, and, when stuff goes south, they wing the damage control as well.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@Jerzy Russian:
Roman salute. Romans; the original fascists.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@Kristine:
Likely Trump sees it that way. The old adage “as long as they spell the name right, it’s good publicity” But he is trying to get himself elected President. Trump is making GW Bush, the most unpopular president in modern history, look positively statesmen like next to Trump.
danielx
Is it possible that there are voters out there viewing this toxic waste dump fire (we’re way past dumpsters) who are going to watch this and be convinced that this is the way to go?
danielx
@Kristine:
Trump voters have already demonstrated they are unlikely to be swayed by anything he says or does. Insults and threats of violence towards individuals and groups? Threatening to jail political opponents, insulting virtually every voter demographic group out there except white males, making clear his total disdain for treaties, alliances and the like? Please sir, I want some more! He’s saying exactly what they want to hear, and whether there’s any coherence to his statements or not doesn’t matter.
Original Lee
@danielx: That’s actually the part that scares me the most. That there are people I know, people who I’ve known for years and (generally) like and admire, who have been carrying around these ideas in their heads the entire time: that it’s totally OK for the President of the U.S. to act like a toddler, as long as they think they will not be inconvenienced by the temper tantrums.
karen marie
@RK: Not so much “as well” as “entirely.” That’s another – relatively minor given the FEC – problem: McIver doesn’t work for the campaign, she works for the Trump “organization,” and she and the campaign were stupid enough to release her letter of apology on company, rather than campaign, letterhead.
@philadelphialawyer: No, the Trump campaign had Cruz’s speech at least hours in advance, including the negative endorsement, and they let him speak anyway, thinking they could fix him by amplifying the booing.
Lawrence
The only tweet I want to read from Bill Kristol is “Drano: Tastes great, less filling.”