I’m going to expand on a comment in an earlier thread and disagree somewhat with distinguished colleague Tim F on what the Trump-Breitbart merger means. Replacing campaign veterans like Manafort (odious, second-rate and disreputable though they may be) with an alt-right circle-jerk might look like Trump giving up on winning the presidency. But it’s just a change in tactics.
What’s happened is that the Trump scampaign has realized that they will never win by making Trump conventionally “presidential.” He can’t pull that off. Instead, they’ll seek victory by trying to drag Hillary Clinton down to Trump’s level in the public’s perception and eke out 270 electoral votes on anti-establishment sentiment alone.
We should pause here and take in the fact that a major party nominee has openly embraced white nationalism, which the Trump-Breitbart merger confirms. We knew that already, of course, but with the Breitbart affiliation, there can now be no doubt, and it will be interesting to see how the Beltway press responds to that phenomenon.
Joy Reid, subbing for Chris Hayes last night, ably grilled a Trump scampaign surrogate on the kooky Breitbart angle, confronting him with that organization’s batshit crazy extremism. Here’s a screen grab of the Breitbart headlines Reid referenced to demonstrate what a pack of pinwheel-eyed kooks they are:
But Trump’s brain trust is counting on the fact that most Americans don’t know that Breitbart is a white nationalist fever swamp, and indeed, they don’t. The Trump shill on Reid’s show ducked questions about the nature of Breitbart while telegraphing the reason Trump brought Bannon on board: to smear Clinton.
Trump may be hoping that even if he can’t attract more voters to himself, he can slime Clinton enough to drive disaffected Republicans and independents away from her and into the Johnson or Stein camps and squeak out a win that way. I don’t think it will work because Trump is an embarrassing buffoon.
But at this point, he’s pinning all his hopes on making Hillary Clinton as toxic as himself. So get ready for a tsunami of slime that may be unprecedented in our lifetimes. That’s the only play the Trump people have left, and thus the Trump-Breitbart merger is not 100% stupid or self-indulgent. It’s the vast right-wing conspiracy — retooled.
*Stolen from valued commenter GregB.
Trentrunner
I agree with this analysis 100%. Get ready for a tsunami of tsludge about Clinton over the next 80 days.
shomi
All this overanalyzation is hilarious. Like Trump is some idiot savant rather than just an idiot who has never served or ran for public office and has no idea what he is doing.
bupalos
I think every little move trump makes and cake he tries to bake Hillary should just meet with “good lord, were did you read that, BREITBART?” That can pretty much just be the stock response.
shomi
@Trentrunner: So just like the predictions of the tsunami of sludge people have been making for the last 6 months. Like that?
Like wrong way Coles “oh noezzz…he is going to pivot to the left” prediction?
It is going to be more of the same. They have been slinging sludge for awhile. You may not realize it because they haven’t made anything stick and don’t really have the budget for it anyways and are making too many enemies on the right to get their help.
piratedan
Apparently Trump is channeling Mr. Burns as he releases the hounds (Breitbart) upon the Dems. It’s not as if Faux wasn’t doing the job but they still had delusions of pretending to be fair and balanced and Trump has obviously come to the conclusion of “why bother?”.
Mary G
I apologize if this has already been posted before, but I’ve seen it a couple of places around the web. Illustration of the Republican Party giving their nomination to Trump.
bupalos
@shomi: Let’s dispense with this notion that Trump doesn’t know what he’s doing…he knows… well. OK, I guess he really doesn’t.
But honestly, he is probably the only person on planet earth that ever thought of making the claim that he could turn a profit running for president, and I am leaving open the possibility that this is all a strategy to grift dollars in the campaign and ultimately to supplant the FoxNews empire.
Gin & Tonic
I honestly had a hard time imagining that he could bring on anyone more odious than Paul Fucking Manafort.
I guess I was wrong.
Villago Delenda Est
@bupalos: Well, or “Where did you read that? Infowars?”
Mike in DC
The problem for Trump is that at least 55% of the electorate consider him unfit and unqualified. The 3rd party candidates are unlikely to pull enough support from Clinton to drag her low enough for Trump to win.
dmsilev
The thing is, Hillary Clinton has been the subject of nearly non-stop deluges of conservative slime for the past 25 or 30 years. It’s been dialed up to 11 for the last couple of years. Is finding a new dial that goes right past 11 up to 12 really going to matter all that much?
Botsplainer, Cryptofascist Tool of the Oppressor Class
I have an interesting anecdote to share. Someone I know is part of a luxury resort marketing network that Trump’s resort properties are part of. She said that those reps (GMs and concierges) are genuinely nice people, but that they seemed really unhappy, because they were getting a real cold shoulder at this conference, and that she’s guessing that bookings are way down and there’s some dissing going on across the industry.
Nora
@Mary G: That’s perfect — right down to the little victory dance the chimpanzee does at the end!
Baud
Haha. Via Wonkette, via Politico
Iowa Old Lady
We should all glory in the fact that we will be able to say we were there during the Trump run for the presidency. No matter how it turns out (and god help us if it’s not in his defeat), it’s a historic event.
Doug R
Is that the best they got?
mapaghimagsik
Team Clinton has a deep bench of surrogates who are not stuck with outright lies. I think we’re seeing news outlets struggle with handling the Gish gallop of Trump’s surrogates and their fantasy of being a need organization. At some point, they have to call bullshit or defend their credibility.
That’s why I don’t are this working, but I agree it might be all they have left. Even my racist sister in law can’t handle Trump.
dmsilev
@Baud: Is it really worth anyone’s time to try to reverse-psychology-manipulate Trump? I mean, left to his own accord, he decided that campaigning in Connecticut was worth his time and effort.
the Conster, la Citoyenne
This Breitbart move is having the unintended consequences of forcing conservatives not in the Breitbart/white nationalist realm to face reality, and drop the masks. Like this guy who has made a life as a GOP operative, now seems to be clearly seeing the effects of ODS on the conservative “movement”. Like I always thought, he thinks Trump’s motivation re running for president started the night of that WHCD – the worst night of Trump’s life. Seriously, this is an epic revealing truth bomb that gives away the whole game, but WAY too late. LOL.
Major Major Major Major
@dmsilev: Well put.
Baud
@dmsilev: Don’t know. But it makes for fun copy. Idaho!
Trollhattan
@shomi:
It’s overanalyzationing, duh….
Mai.naem.mobile
I don’t think that Trump wants to become president I think he wants a billionaire to buy him a TV network.Having Ailes help him run it will even be better, he thinks anyway. There is a story in the Post saying that Kushner and Trump are looking to get the network.
WereBear
As someone in NYC during the time The Art of the Deal sold like hotcakes, I can state that the more one sees of Trump, the less one likes.
piratedan
at what point do we reach that moment when the Trump campaign has its Sex Pistols epiphany and he says out to the crowd, do you feel cheated?
Doug R
@Baud: Well, since my previous reply got et, remember Utah hated trumpet in the primary.
Trollhattan
@piratedan:
Johnny Rotten has a lot more smarts than our Donnie, so I guess never. Everybody else needs to stick close in hopes of getting paid. Sucks to be them.
Mary G
I think the theory that Trump has already written off the election and is trying to build a new media empire explains both Ailes and Breitbart. If he can take down Fox News, it’ll sooth his wounded fee-fees.
Miss Bianca
@Trollhattan: I think “Donnie Rotten” is a great new nickname for den Drumpf.
Botsplainer, Cryptofascist Tool of the Oppressor Class
Speaking about Breitbart and why people do what they do:
Joseph Goebbels’ 105-year-old secretary: ‘No one believes me now, but I knew nothing’
So that is Breitbart Media in a nutshell.
Hoodie
He didn’t have to bring Bannon on the campaign team to use Breitbart smears. I tend to back the theory that Trump doesn’t care about winning the presidency as much as laying the foundation for a new media empire. Putting Bannon on the campaign will give Breitbart access to Trump’s marks and validate it as a media outlet for them. Bannon has no experience running campaigns, but he does have experience in media. It’s cross-selling to grab market share from Fox, which is reeling from the general disarray in the GOP and the Ailes scandal, and which Trump hates because it’s allied with the GOP establishment. I don’t watch much Fox, but it seems like some of their on-air talent believes that this is what’s happening.
Jeffro
@Trentrunner: @shomi: @Gin & Tonic: @Mike in DC: @dmsilev:
(among others)
Everyone’s right. It’s just a change in tactics, but Hillary’s already been smeared for 40 years, everyone but the crazies have been driven away from Trump, he’s clearly capable of bringing on folks more odious than Manafort, and even some of the furthest Right of our friends & relatives can’t bring themselves to vote for this guy.
Also, Hillz has the Democratic Justice League on her side, so there’s that. =)
GOTV and pass the popcorn
geg6
I agreed with your post right up until this point. You may be right that the 100% figure is wrong, but only in that it’s only 99% stupid and self-indulgent. The other 1% is what you are talking about, which is not going to work. The not-insane Repubs I know aren’t going to want to be associated with Milo Y, Pamela Gellar and whatever crazy name most KKK/Aryan organizations are calling themselves. And I really don’t think the media are going to be down with jumping into bed with Breitbartians. And even if they are, do you really think Hillary and her team aren’t ready for this? I mean, it’s not exactly going to be difficult to cut a few ads illustrating exactly what type of people Bannon and company are.
I think you are going way too far with this and assigning it a brilliance it doesn’t deserve, in addition to dismissing the competence of the Clinton campaign.
Roger Moore
@dmsilev:
This. I think the slime has been going on for long enough that people’s opinions of Hillary are already pretty set. If you haven’t already been convinced that Hillary is awful, there’s not a lot of other slime they can throw at her that will change your mind.
FlipYrWhig
@Mary G: That would give him credit for forethought, which I don’t think he has. I think he thinks he’s winning but it’s not showing up in the polls because the polls are biased (because he doesn’t understand numbers, just power and narrative). So he thinks he just needs to get louder and nastier and listen less to the know-it-alls, by which strategy he’ll win more news cycles (because people will be talking about him, which is always good), draw bigger and more uproarious crowds (which for him is always good), and hence win even bigger. He’s a narcissist and he thinks that confidence and braggadocio are the way you win, regardless of what you’re trying to win; and since he’s confident, he’ll win, and if he had any doubt, it would show up in a lack of confidence, which he doesn’t have, QED.
MJS
@dmsilev: I think the Connecticut campaigning is pretty easy to explain, i.e., it’s close to New York. It looks like Trump is doing something, and it keeps him in his comfort zone of not having to spend the night somewhere that he doesn’t own. Because it’s really Trump that has “low energy” and can’t be bothered to campaign like a real presidential candidate by going on extended trips and actually meeting with people. He’ll agree to do his rallies if he can (mostly) fly into and out of the location in the same day. Otherwise, he wants to be able to appear via satellite TV or, better yet, just call in.
redshirt
@dmsilev: …but this one goes to 11.
geg6
@Mai.naem.mobile:
Here’s what I don’t get. Kushner is Jewish. Why would this guy be so eager to get into bed with all these white nationalists? Does he think, somehow, he’s the only Jew who’s going to be immune if they ever get the power they seek and that he will have helped them get? Is he unaware, completely, of his own history? How much must he hate himself to do this?
Roger Moore
@Mary G:
It fails Trump’s Razor (the stupidest explanation for Trump’s behavior is the most likely). Trump’s Razor says he’s still in it to win it, and this is what he thinks will help him win.
piratedan
@the Conster, la Citoyenne: I think Reed’s response to his tweetstorm was even more powerful. They could have spoken up, knew that what they were doing was wrong, but while there was the opportunity to win, they shitcanned morals, principles and ethics for the possibility of power.
nonynony
@dmsilev:
To be honest I don’t even think it’ll be dialing it up to 12. It’ll be them scratching out the 11 and trying to convince everyone that it’s a 12.
Maybe they can find Hillary Clinton’s Whitey Tape. That would at least be something new.
Tony J
In any normal election season the Republican candidate could probably rely on the US national media in all its guises to mule-train a substantial chunk of the slime and grime his official and unofficial campaign teams could churn out and try to bury the Democratic candidate with it.
Will Trump get that kind of assistance, though? Have enough ‘serious’ Republican grandees come out as #NeverTrump stalwarts to spare Clinton from the traditional one-two punch of GOP/MSM co-operation?
The likes of the NYT and WaPo would have to walk back a metric ton of anti-Trump coverage in order to normalize and mainstream the alt-Right kulturkreig Trump’s scampaign is turning into, and in the face of not-so-behind-the-scenes opposition from their valued friends in the GOP Establishment.
I wouldn’t bet on it, but I don’t know these people like you guys do.
J.A.F. Rusty Shackleford
The Republicans who are running away from Trump aren’t in the Breitbart constituency. This move is not going to help Trump one bit. If anything, it’s going to make his life much more difficult.
Breitbart doesn’t scare folks in the media the way FOX and Limbaugh do.
Trump is toast. I expect the last 45 days or so of this campaign to be a nasty fight between Trump and the establishment GOP, not a dogfight with the Clinton campaign.
Once Clinton lights Trump on fire in the first debate the race will be over.
The Dangerman
I think it’s a shorter and longer term thing; shorter, Trump’s rallies will devolve into looking like “In The Flesh” from The Wall movie, but, I still think longer, he finds a way to drop out. Getting his ass kicked on election day is so not Trump’s style.
ETA: Adding on to my upstairs neighbor, I don’t see Trump debating … maybe that will be around the time he says seeya…
ETA2: Well, 1 on 1 debate. He will be begging for the Libertarian and Greens to be allowed on stage.
Iowa Old Lady
@Tony J: That’s a good question. The media seems to be recoiling from Trump at the moment, possibly because he calls them the worst people in the world, etc.
OTOH, you don’t get more mainline than Andrea Mitchell and she seems to be peddling the line about Clinton’s health failing.
the Conster, la Citoyenne
@piratedan:
Agreed – but we rational people outside that right wing media bubble have seen and known that all along. To see a die hard conservative who has spent most of their life inside the bubble admit to it is something else again. The bubble is pierced.
nonynony
@Tony J:
If Trump and his Brietbart pals could come up with something new and verifiable? Something that was really a scandal no matter how minor? Yeah I think the media would jump on – they love a good smear job. They’re typically great for ratings.
They’re going to be extra cautious with anything that comes out of the Trump campaign, though, because Trump is a known liar and Brietbart is as well. So I doubt that in fact they’ll go very far because everything that comes from this crew is either going to be a) recycled from previous smears or b) outright made up whole cloth or c) somehow, against all odds, both a and b.
Roger Moore
@Tony J:
No, and I don’t think teaming up with the Breitbrats is going to help. The media has already started treating Trump differently- Ezra Klein has a very good article on why– and teaming up with an alternative media group they despise is not going to reverse the trend.
Hoodie
@J.A.F. Rusty Shackleford:
That’s why this is about giving Breitbart access to Trump’s followers. Trump is harvesting the tail value of his campaign, selling his brand to Bannon and the fever swamp before it loses all of its value in November. I wouldn’t be surprised to see Trump just quit to avoid losing. He will claim the entire process is rigged, and Breitbart is the perfect organ for transmitting that message to the morons dumb enough to buy Trump’s schtick in the first place.
Trollhattan
@Miss Bianca:
Yes! Maybe he and dead Breitbart an work up a treatment of “My Way” to fire up rally crowds.
one_particular_harbour, fka Botsplainer
@FlipYrWhig:
I hope that our would-be revolutionary cadres have thousands of hours of talking head pundit video to scour, and that for each and every one of the pundits who is recorded as having spoken approvingly of candidates or elected officials “maintaining a strong and consistent narrative”, there’s a surprise capital tribunal at the start of the Revolution.
As each sentence is carried out after a drumhead trial, the phrase “how’s THAT for a strong and consistent narrative” can be ceremonially shouted for the benefit of the audience of pundits awaiting trial and sentencing.
Pay per view rights for the worst revolutionary excesses alone will defray some of the expenses of the Revolution….
burnspbesq
@piratedan:
I have nothing to do with any of this, and if I do you can’t prove it.
aimai
@Gin & Tonic: Right–there’s the genius and the inspiration of the man!
Tilda Swinton's Bald Cap
I think Booman’s analysis is pretty good too. Link.
Rommie
I just wonder where they can go that doesn’t sound batspit crazy. Obama’s weather-control powers caused the flooding in the South? HRC’s passing along intel briefings to ISIS? Tim Kaine puts catsup on his hot dogs? There’s really only one avenue of attack left in my mind – the Full Reich, and espouse that Herr Failure is the dictator America needs. It’s been their fight for 240+ years, why stop now?
geg6
@MJS:
I think you’re absolutely right about this. Here’s the tell about how he really is too lazy to do what it takes to win people over in an election: do you recall any events at all, now during the general but even during the primary, of him just hanging out and talking with voters in casual settings? Hillary does this all the time. She doesn’t just hold giant rallies, though she does that too. But even after the rallies, she hits the rope line or goes to the local deli or lunch counter. She meets with small local groups for discussion groups. She goes to local high schools or child care centers or hospitals. When have you ever seen Trump doing any of that retail campaigning?
one_particular_harbour, fka Botsplainer
@J.A.F. Rusty Shackleford:
All Trump has to do to either win or at least have the debate declared a draw is to avoid visibly taking a shit in his pants onstage. It can even dribble out of his trouser leg – he can come up with some excuse for that.
Mnemosyne
Ironically, I think Trump and his merry band of idiots have made the same mistake that Bernie made: they actually think that they can get whites who don’t normally vote to vote for Donald. Problem is, those voters are mythical. They have about as much substance as the Loch Ness Monster. So they’re chasing a phantom and thinking they can catch it and win the victory. Sad!
scav
Speaking of Heil Marys and Middle Fingered Outreach, Baltimore City hiring Neo-Nazi-affiliated lawyers to defend the PD is right up there.
WereBear
@Iowa Old Lady: Another day, another reason to loathe that woman.
Betty Cracker
@geg6: I don’t know where you got the idea I think it’s a brilliant strategy or that Clinton & Co. don’t know how to handle it. Certainly not from anything I actually wrote.
jl
@shomi:
‘ Like wrong way Coles “oh noezzz…he is going to pivot to the left” prediction? ‘
Maybe, maybe not. If RNC and big corporate money shuns Trump from now on, could see re-appearance of his apartheid welfare state pitch. Which include return to promises to stand by Social Security and Medicare and government infrastructure spending. Trump’s wobbles on that have seemed to coincide who he thought he could get money from.
And I did read someplace, don’t remember where, that Trump is talking with media industry investors for some future venture, the kind of people ready to back a Trump News Network after the dust settles. We will find out if Trump is an idiot savant marketing genius or just an idiot after the election. I don’t care that much as long as he loses. If he can separate a lot of the white hard core bigot vote from GOP for his own profit and milk them for future vanity runs for office, that would weaken the GOP.
Comrade Colette Collaboratrice
@Iowa Old Lady:
I thought that when Reagan ran in 1980, too.
redshirt
@the Conster, la Citoyenne: Awesome link. Thanks for sharing.
bystander
What I like about Bannon – in addition to telling it like it is and speaking his mind – is how much he reminds me of a certain cholesterol-fueled, overweight, florid rageholic who unfortunately had an early life ending coronary event. What the heck was his name?
WereBear
@Tilda Swinton’s Bald Cap: Sweeeet!
catclub
@bupalos:
The best part of this is that all the ex-(and returning)Breitbart alums on Trump’s team will think this is a win. It will drive clicks to Breitbart
(who is still dead, I want to note), but it will not win many undecided voters to the Trump ( or Breitbart) cause.
gogol's wife
@bystander:
My husband looked at his picture and said, “He’s had his nose broken. And he’s broken other people’s noses.”
gogol's wife
@bystander:
First I thought you were talking about Scalia.
catclub
@bystander:
Thought you were getting to John Cole, for a minute.
different-church-lady
Like I said in the other thread: down by three goals and playing lackluster, so you sent the goon on the ice to start a fight, rattle the other team’s flow, and bait them into taking dumb penalties.
Problem is, it seldom ever works.
catclub
@jl:
It takes a different eye than mine to look at the evolution of Glenn Beck, from Fox darling, to TheBlaze and think; “There is niche that needs more members, and is profitable!”
schrodinger's cat
So Trump wants to become Nigel Farage or Geert Wilders of the United States. So we will see if open bigotry is the path to electoral success. I have my doubts.
Peter
@Hoodie: This, exactly. Also, too, with Ailes a free agent, it’s pretty easy to see the outlines of the network already forming. The only real questions about this purported campaign are A: whether Trump TV will be on basic or premium cable and B: How they spin the “rigged” story they’ve been fluffing into a legit “I’m not a loser, the system is unfair” quitting strategy.
dmsilev
@Mnemosyne: The NYT has an article today that covers that question. Turns out that if you assume that white men vote at a 99% participation rate and all other groups follow their 2012 turnout rates, Trump _still_ loses the popular vote by over 1 million.
Edit:
Peter
@schrodinger’s cat: Per my comment above, it was never about electoral success. He doesn’t want the gig. His whole “campaign” has been a publicity stunt gone horribly right.
redshirt
@Peter: If the future Trump TV can destroy Fox News the same way his campaign has destroyed the Republican Party, I’m all for it.
different-church-lady
@nonynony: Here’s the thing: it doesn’t even feel like 11 anymore. It feels more like a band from the sixties on a reunion tour of the summer-tent venues, playing their hits without much enthusiasm.
jonas
I agree completely — this is precisely what’s going on. That’s their plan, in any case. And if Trump were a fanatically disciplined person who could work out a plan to take Clinton down, stick to it, and really coordinate this like a well-oiled propaganda machine of the kind Lee Atwater or Karl Rove ran, there might be cause for concern. But Trump is a buffoon with a famously short attention span, surrounded by even more clownish, outrageous surrogates who will simply derail whatever “Hillary Sucks” talking point/scandal du jour they dream up with some over-the-top, outrageous tweet or statement and once again, the attention will be back on much of a flaming trainwreck Trump is.
dmsilev
@Peter: We can update The Producers. Perhaps call it “The Candidate”.
Iowa Old Lady
OT, but it’s the anniversary of the ratification of the 19th Amendment. To celebrate, I went to You Tube and found Joan Baez singing “Bread and Roses.” I know it’s a union song, but to me, it’s all part of the same arc bending toward justice.
catclub
@geg6: Another aspect of it is the bench/team behind him if he is elected. This was a criticism of Sanders, but Trump is worse. He has no friends that are not subordinates. No team of GOP stalwarts who would fill government positions.
The guy with the funny mustache was elected in 1933 (without even a majority) when unemployment was 47%. Someone like Trump only has a chance when things are very bad and getting worse. But that guy clearly had a team backing him.
geg6
@Betty Cracker:
I think you’re giving them way too much credit for actually having a plan. Breitbart 2.0 and Kellyanne “Yippy Bitey Dog” Conway may have a plan but, since they are insane lunatics, it’s unlikely to work. And Trump really is as self-deluded as he seems, I think. If it makes you feel better, I think Doug’s theory is even more ridiculous than the idea that Hillary should be, in any way, playing defense against these odious idiots.
bupalos
@catclub: Absolutely. I mean, especially if this “election” can increasingly be viewed as a media empire takeover strategy by Trump. Hillary and Trump can even form a pact, Trump will try and sink the senate and house in return for Hillary pretending BreitTV is her greatest nemesis and maybe the only thing standing between her and her girlish dreams of confiscating all the guns and freedoms.
MattF
@Mary G: I think this illustrates the likely result of ‘Let Trump be Trump’. Focus on Hillary? Well, that means a focus on someone other than DJT. I don’t buy it. Lots of ‘intense’ rallies? Crowds of people frothing at the mouth is… unattractive, at least, and possibly dangerous.
Hilz has been the target of truckloads of slime. I’m sure that her campaign has developed tactics to deal with that. It won’t be pretty, but Hilz will win.
different-church-lady
I’m not sure they themselves realize it. To them it’s just “normalcy”.
jl
@catclub: I agree. I’m happy to let Trump lose the election and then he can figure it out.
Betty Cracker
@geg6: What’s Doug’s theory? And who has suggested that Clinton should be playing defense against these morons?
Davis X. Machina
@dmsilev: Or “The Aristocrats”.
dmsilev
Presented without comment: Naked statues of Donald Trump titled ‘The Emperor Has No Balls’ are popping up in major cities.
MattF
I agree that we should expect a tide of sewage, but everyone knows that, and everyone is prepared. It’ll be ugly, but we all knew that, right? FWIW, I don’t think Trump will be able to focus his attention on sliming Hilz– letting Trump be Trump means his mouth rattles on with minimal supervision.
geg6
@different-church-lady:
Nope, it feels like at the end of “(This Is) Spinal Tap” when the band is reduced to opening for a puppet show at the zoo.
encephalopath
I also have to agree with Booman. Trump is going to try to run against the Republican establishment, tack to the left of Clinton on trade, throw the entire Washington foreign policy consensus under the bus with some good old fashioned isolationism. (That’s what those sneering remarks about the Intelligence community were about.)
There is no winning coalition on the Republican side anymore, so Trump is going to try to turn himself into the iconoclast’s dream date (presented on a bed of white nationalism.)
Iowa Old Lady
@dmsilev: Holy crap. I can’t unsee that.
sunny raines
but so are many US voters. We’ll see exactly how many in Nov (assuming trump doesn’t drop out or establishment republicans don’t jettison him in some more obvious fashion before then.)
redshirt
@geg6: If I told them once, I told them a thousand times: It should be Trump then Puppet Show.
Mnemosyne
@Peter:
I’m with the group that thinks it’s even simpler: he wanted to get back at Obama for embarrassing him. He wanted to prove that Obama is just as dumb and incompetent as Trump thinks he is, and Trump was going to prove that by running for president himself and beating Obama at his own game.
Yeah, it’s stupid and macho and makes no sense to a rational person who understands that being president is an actual job. Donald Trump is not a rational person.
Peter
@dmsilev: “NEVER PUT YOUR OWN MONEY INTO THE SHOW.”
JPL
@dmsilev: Naked trump is trending on twitter. The problem with the statues are that you can’t erase them from your memory. I didn’t link to Kos, but the Washington Post only show the statue from behind. It’s just as bad though.
dmsilev
@Iowa Old Lady: I figured the title was warning enough for those with delicate stomachs.
lollipopguild
@Rommie: Kaine puts ketchup on his hot dogs? NO! We are doomed………
catclub
@Roger Moore:
If Ailes is able to work on that, after presumably signing a non-compete agreement with FOX, Murdoch should sue his lawyers for incompetence.
Mnemosyne
@sunny raines:
Show me the voters who switch to Trump at this point. Is it African-Americans? Latinos? White women with a college education?
Trump is gambling that there’s a huge block of voters out there who would vote if only they didn’t hate all the candidates. I think that block is mythical.
catclub
@Mnemosyne: Another insult was the Romney campaign and no offer of prime slot at the 2012 RNC convention. Explains antipathy towards the establishment GOP.
Trollhattan
@geg6:
Can’t wait until Donnie lowers Stonehenge!
redshirt
@JPL: We should all be prepared for this mental imagery though, given the many months of small hands discussion.
JPL
Even if Trump wins, the TV station will go on. A win guarantees a state run station, and a loss means, that he can continue to rile up the white supremacy base.
Peter
@Mnemosyne: I agree that the WHCD from a few years ago left a deep and malignant mark on Trump’s psyche and agree with your point. But remember—and this is where I part company with everyone coming up with new ways to describe him and his toadies as insane—revenge is sweet and all, but monetizing it is the sine qua non. His empire is heavily leveraged and he needs/wants a huge amount of money. Beyond humiliating his opponents when he can, being rich is the way he proves his superiority. And he can’t humiliate Obama or Clinton.
germy
@Peter:
I feel like this whole campaign year has been a Seth Rogen movie.
Miss Bianca
I think this might be the best idea for dealing with Trump that I’ve yet seen – ratings gold!
Mnemosyne
@catclub:
Yep. He thinks that all the other Republcians are doing it wrong, and he’s going to be the one to show them how to win. Because he’s a winner.
He is every impatient middle-aged white guy who snatched a wrench out of a plumber’s hand to show them how to do it right and proceeded to break the whole goddamned pipe.
Poopyman
@dmsilev: I will not click. I will NOT click ….
Tripod
@Baud:
It’s right there in plain sight:
Western big money (energy, ranching, lumber, etc) sees the writing on the wall.
jl
@Mnemosyne: A big problem with Trump’s approach is that if he ramps up the apartheid welfare state angle, the open hard core bigot angle, and the populist rustbelt and coal industry decline resentment angle, he turns off too many more educated whites, who may still have bigot impulses, but are repelled by the hard core version.
Right now he is losing big among college educated whites, even males (IIRC). If he returns to full frontal Trump mode turned up to 11 all the time, he’ll start losing whites who could manage to finish HS. I think just too much ignorance and crazy has to go along with the white nationalist populism, which requires open and hard core bigotry of so many kinds, hard to list them all. Race is at the top, of course, but also general xenophobia, rabid anti-intellectualism, and among the real fans who will attract attention to themselves, violent and repulsive antisemitism and Bilderberg/Illuminati conspiracy BS comes along sooner than a sane person would expect.
Mnemosyne
@Peter:
Says who? I think Donnie is 100 percent convinced that he can humiliate them if everyone around him stops holding him back.
And while I’m sure he’s trying to play a financial angle, he’s also the guy who went bankrupt running a ca$ino. It takes a special kind of talent to do that, believe me.
dmsilev
@Poopyman: C’mon, don’t you want some images seared into your brain that will cause you to wake up in the middle of the night in a cold sweat? You know you do. Click the link.
geg6
@Betty Cracker:
The logical extension of your argument is that Hillary should be playing defense against the smears they will be lobbing at her. If you don’t think that, it’s just not clear to me from what you wrote. And I mixed up Doug with Tim, but I find that theory ridiculous. If that’s what he wanted to do, he could just quit and do it. His minions aren’t going to stop being his minions, especially if there’s a guarantee they can be listening to his ranting and raving every night and day on their teevees. He doesn’t need the campaign to do it.
I guess I don’t agree with anyone who doesn’t think he went into this to win and still plans to do just that, regardless of any reality. He doesn’t live in reality and never has, rich boy that he has always been. He’s convinced, totally, that his rallies prove he beloved by the “silent majority” of millions and millions of non-voters that he is sure have just been waiting for him to come along so they could all rise up and make Murka great again. All this over-analysis is typical Dem overthinking, which we do with everything. I think it’s completely transparent, what he’s doing. It’s all about him and his bubble, where everyone adores the Donald and that will be what makes him POTUS come November. And if not, he still has his neo-Naxi fanbois, so he’ll still be adored in his bubble.
Calouste
@Mnemosyne: Bernie’s white douchebro voters weren’t mythical. There just aren’t very many of them. There were enough of them to swing some caucuses, which made it look like there were more of them than there were, but that was it. And of course the hardcore Bernistas are as reality-challenged as your average Trump spokesperson.
redshirt
@Poopyman: Don’t fear the truth. Click it…. click it….
D58826
Somewhat OT but the right is working up the latest Obama outrage on twitter. It seems that Obama has not in interrupted his vacation to visit the soggy folks in Louisiana. It just goes to show he doesn’t care. After all he only declared the area a disaster area, freed up federal money, sent in FEMA. I guess these jokers expect him to show up with a bucket and some mops. The last thing the locals need right now is the full bore presidential entourage. But they have been looking for Obama’s Katrina moment so they are comparing it to the Bush/Katrina flyover. The thing is the Bush fly over wasn’t really the problem. The locals didnot need the full presidential entourage at that point either. The problem with the Bush response was in actuality a non-response lead by the horse trainer Brownie.
gogol's wife
@Poopyman:
Yeah, don’t.
raven
@D58826: And you expected what?
Tripod
This is Trump not going gently into that good night. He’ll rage on, and only ding dongs in the press and on blogs will try to make sense of it.
raven
@D58826: And NOW what do you expect?
D58826
@raven: Oh not in the least bit surprised. Also saw on Twitter that some GOOPer congress critters are shopping FBI notes stories to the media. Twitter didn’t give any details about what the alleged leaks contained but it’s just a matter of time.
Ben Cisco
Union Square got some new statuary – hilarity ensued.
raven
@D58826: Sure, I mean I hate the fuckers but they’ll use everything they can.
Aleta
@bupalos: ha ha good idea.
“Every deal you make
Every vow you break
Every lie you fake
Every truth you shake
We’ll be watching you.”
Donalbain
Taking advantage of the open thread: I hope there are few commentors here who are starting to rethink their racist bullshit about how the Brazilian police must have lied about the pure upstanding righteous American swimmer.
D58826
@raven: hmm, sounds like we might have outfoxed the Iranians. Maybe their people can now complain that the Iranian government gave up good hostages just for a plane load of cash.
Ella in New Mexico
@Trentrunner:
Well, Breitbart and Infowars are one thing, but they got nuthin on the Enquirer…
Dickie Morris and his pals over there are ON to the real inside story : This weeks headline is “Hilary Gains 103 Pounds!!!”
Apparently she’s eating herself to death, thanks to a secret mental breakdown.
Oh, and Bill has Parkinson’s AND Alzheimer’s and is apparently not gonna make it to election day…
gogol's wife
@Ella in New Mexico:
Oh yeah, right, the guy who gave that speech at the DNC has Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s. It’s always projection.
D58826
@Ella in New Mexico: And Hillary will be replaced by a space alien cloned to look like her. Makes sense to me
WereBear
Times like this, I miss Bat Boy.
JPL
@Ben Cisco: This is from Patch nyc link
Mnemosyne
@Calouste:
Very few of them were new or first-time voters, though. Some of them were garden-variety douchebro lefty guys who didn’t want their mom telling them to clean up their room, and some of them were Paulistas who had a sad that King Ron was not running this time and glommed onto the next best white guy on offer.
But the fact that even the Republican Party’s own Paulite rebels turned to Bernie first says to me that they’re not going to be voting for Trump in large numbers.
dmsilev
@Ben Cisco: Trump probably hasn’t seen all the tweets and videos yet. The last entry in his feed is this from several hours ago:
raven
@D58826: :)
Thoughtful David
@shomi:
I agree. I think Hanlon’s Razor applies here: Never ascribe to malice what can be adequately explained by stupidity.”
Trump’s campaign is really just stupid.
The Dangerman
@Ella in New Mexico:
I’ve seen a few clips of Bill where he looks like shit; campaigning’s hard work, no doubt, but it is what is there.
JPL
@dmsilev: Oh no, he’ll write about how big his man parts are again.
lollipopguild
@Aleta: You left out “every cake you bake”
Mnemosyne
@raven:
So it’s not that we paid them to let the prisoners go, it’s that we refused to pay them money that we owed them until they let the prisoners go.
Have the people whining about this never had to deal with a contractor or vendor who did a half-assed job, so you refuse to give them the rest of their payment until they make good? We just did that a few months ago here at my job, FFS. Were we supposed to pay in full after the idiots left giant black handprints on a beige wall and then hope they would make good on it after they had their money?
raven
My wife just texted me and told me she dropped her phone in “a river of water” getting out of her car!
raven
@Mnemosyne: Yea, that will matter.
JPL
@dmsilev: This is from the NYC parks department.. teehee
Peter
@Mnemosyne: He can attack them, but look at the people who he has humiliated: Rubio, Bush, Christie, et al, even Pence. They were all complicit one way or another in their humiliation, especially Christie.
Do you think he humiliated Megyn Kelly? I don’t. I think he made himself look awful. Same with his remark about Clinton’s bathroom break. Whatever he throws at her is just going to further destroy Republican hopes for female voters for a generation.
Fair Economist
@bupalos:
I’m seeing another “Bill and Hill” parody post from Billmon.
opiejeanne
@Gin & Tonic: And Breitbart’s Finest isn’t the only turd in the punchbowl. Today I ran across one of his foreign policy advisors with the last name of Schmitz: Joseph Schmitz.
Joseph is the son of John G. Schmitz: OC Ultraconservative
Mnemosyne
@Ella in New Mexico:
I could see Bill being in the early stages of Parkinson’s, actually. He seems to have a little tremor. But while it would be sad to have a presidential spouse die while the president is in office, it’s not going to affect our government in any way. Idiots.
redshirt
@WereBear: That was Weekly World News, a great publication (RIP).
Batboy was the hero we needed, not the one we deserved.
Peter
And I didn’t say he was good at business; I just said he’s permanently desperate for money (in large part because he’s bad at business).
catclub
@D58826: This. We held their money hostage for 35 or so years. We negotiated down the payment from something like $8B to more like $1.7B .
Non story.
JPL
In response to the naked Trump statue, the parks department has released a statement
NYC Parks stands firmly against any unpermitted erection in city parks, no matter how small.”
The link is at comment 145
jl
@Peter: Good point. You need the right kind of audience, and just the right kind of weaker swindler opponent for Trump style humiliation to work. Another kind of audience, another kind of opponent, the result is people looking at Trump and wondering how such an obnoxious fool can exist.
Iowa Old Lady
@Mnemosyne: They apparently have trouble distinguishing between Bill and Hillary. Someone on here said today that they saw a PAC ad in Ohio that cut between Hillary denying email and Benghazi accusations and Bill denying a connection with Lewinski.
It annoys me that Trump cheated on his wife and Clinton was cheated upon and yet she’s the one who takes guff for it.
Mnemosyne
@Peter:
Again, I think you’re misunderstanding the difference I’m drawing between what Trump thinks he can do and what he can actually do.
He really thinks that he can humiliate Obama and Hillary. He’s wrong, but he still thinks it’s true.
scav
@JPL: Some do have such a way with words.
Fair Economist
Going to Breitbart has a big side effect – the MSM is not going to want to refer to anything coming from Breitbart. It’s the competition. They’ll be a lot less willing to carry Trump’s propaganda.
Miss Bianca
@Ben Cisco: Not cool, dude. NOT COOL. (Funny, tho’)
Ella in New Mexico
@dmsilev: They are awesome. Total likeness, top to bottom.
cmorenc
How can Trump’s campaign possibly get any aggressively sewer-slimy nasty than it has been already, without going so far off the rails that the attacks simply aren’t credible to anyone (even relatively low-information voters) except the hard-core GOP / alt-right base who already support Trump? The Trump campaign has already played, without success:
1) reviving Vince Foster’s murder
2) Bill’s blowjobs / rape allegations / Hillary’s alleged attack on the complaining victims e.g. Juanita Broaderick;
3) Hillary’s ill health;
4) Hillary’s Wall Street Speech income;
5) emails emails emails email
6) castrating bitch
…and several more that don’t come to mind offhand.
What other cards do they think they have in their coat pockets to trot out? What potential cards that they don’t actually have can they successfully forge using totally fictitious allegations?
redshirt
@Peter: Agreed. I don’t think Trump’s attacks on Clinton will work – that is, shift the balance of opinion much. What can he say that’s not already said?
But he can hurt himself even more by attacking her, driving away even more Republican women.
gvg
@the Conster, la Citoyenne: Well Trump wouldn’t have been made fun of if he was not such a racist, that he had to buy into that birther excuse fantasy. He made some choices to get there. And Obama and all fair minded citizens needed to shoot that stupid idea down completely.
I don’t get them. I spent a bunch of my childhood where the American hero myths I saw in movies celebrated how many kinds of people came here for the opportunities. People still gossip around the copy machine about how many ethnicities we have. Most of us claim at least 3 even if they all are now “white” or not. Coming to America…….and these people are afraid. And they don’t know real history.
catclub
@D58826: I don’t know the number of houses flooded in Katrina versus this Louisiana flood, but I do know that the number of drowning victims in Katrina was about 1,000. It is 15 or so for this flooding. This is still a very big deal, but another thing that is unlikely to be Obama’s Katrina. Governor Bel Edwards was making his statements with Craig Fugate – head of FEMA – standing beside him.
on the radio, the Lt Gov was praising the response of FEMA here and contrasting it with Katrina.
Peter
@Mnemosyne: Yes, absolutely. Have you been reading Josh Marshall’s Trumpological pieces over at TPM? He’s done the best job I’ve seen of breaking down DT’s psychology into its salient components. Chief among them is a need to dominate and humiliate everyone around him. Someone post-Christie called him a “dignity vampire” and I think it’s true, but with the caveat I mentioned above.
Ella in New Mexico
@D58826: I’m waiting for the semi-annual “Bad Beach Bodies” photoshopped spread they do. I’m sure they’ll prove she’s gained a shit-ton of weight but just doesn’t give a damn, she’s going to the beach in the Hamptons in her bikini, dammit.
catclub
@Iowa Old Lady:
In their world, Bill Clinton is a hated criminal. In our world he is a popular former President, who worked with Bush on the Clinton/Bush katrina recovery program.
cmorenc
@Mnemosyne:
But the State Dept should have explained it that way straight-up, admitting that we did refuse to pay money we had been adjudicated to legally owe Iran until they first returned the four prisoners – which is different than Iran taking hostages and then concocting some dubious basis for paying ransom to get them returned. Denying there was any quid pro quo and then having that cover blown accomplished nothing but damage to the State Dept and Obama Admin’s credibility on the matter in the minds of many folks who might otherwise have given the Admin the benefit of the doubt.
Peter
@redshirt: Which leads to my main question. Now that the GOP nominee is about to go full Stormfront, what happens to the party? Do “reasonable” conservatives split and become Libertarian? Create a new party? Or, given the fact that white supremacy and misogyny have been features, not bugs in their agenda since LBJ (since forever in misogyny’s case) do they just reassure everyone who’ll listen that post-election they can totally get the party back and that all these emboldened proto-, quasi-, and neo-nazis will fall in line behind Rubio 2.0? I’m buying popcorn futures.
Tony J
@Iowa Old Lady:
Oh that doesn’t surprise me. In line with what nony nony and Roger Moore say, the MSM will always batten onto a tasty scandal tossed their way by the Breitbarters because that’s what they do – see ACORN and The Tale of Wiener’s Weenie – it’s tabloid infotainment and an easy way to level-up the Both Sides scales.
But they’re now being asked not only to take the Breitbarters seriously as a source of juicy scandals, but also as serious political players behind a failing and flailing political campaign. They’ll play ball up to a point, but it’s getting more and more apparent that when Trump declared war on the Republican Establishment he lost their friends in the Media.
Mnemosyne
@Peter:
I haven’t been, but we’re dealing with someone with a personality disorder in my family right now, and Trump sets off the same Narcissistic Personality Disorder flags that our in-law does. Until you see it up close, you can hardly believe that an adult would act that way, but they sure do.
Emma
@dmsilev: This is terrible… *snicker*…. indecent… *snort*… Oh Gawd I’m going to split a seam laughing. Infantile, yes. Juvenile, yes. Ridiculous, yes. Funny? Darn tooting.
catclub
@cmorenc: Hillary’s ill health. When newt Gingrich is the voice of reason, it is defintely through the looking glass.
seen at TPM.
jl
@cmorenc: Hillary’s FAT! Gained 105 pounds. Why, everyone can see that with their own eyes, right? That will sink her.
germy
The college republicans are at it again.
They graduate and then they become ratfuckers.
Peter
@Mnemosyne: I’m sorry to hear that. I had a similar experience, which mercifully ended about a year ago. It’s uniquely maddening because there’s no way in, no agreed upon reality in which forward progress can be made.
Mnemosyne
@cmorenc:
It’s not a quid pro quo. It’s withholding compensation until the other party holds up their end of the contract.
Major Major Major Major
@cmorenc: I don’t know that we should spend time worrying about the opinions of people for whom a poor choice of press-relations strategy on a relatively minor issue is enough to damage the State Department and Obama Admin’s credibility.
germy
@Peter: Saw this comment from NonyNony on LGM:
jl
@Peter: If Trump wants to get the hard core ignorant all-round white bigot on nearly everything vote to milk all on his own, I guess he could try to take over the party, or drag those loons over to some other political movement. So, GOP will have to fight off an attempted take-over for long term control, or deal without big chunk of their voting base (and live as a minority party for quite a few cycles), or let them go and move towards a more honest saner stance.
Or, if people like Ryan are involved, keep trying the pallid and boring standard GOP con on the people who remain?
Anyway, way things are going, sounds like a long term problem.
Trump has talked in an interview about how much he likes the bad meth head rush he gets from the attention in electoral politics. “Nothing else like it” is a phrase I remember. I wonder if he’ll be able to let that go. My guess is that he’ll revel in it, and will be even more fun if he can turn into a reliable revenue stream, and as a splinter group, the pressure of actually winning or doing anything resembling actual policy work (or even the pressure of having to work up fake GOP style policy BS) is gone.
cmorenc
@Mnemosyne:
The problem I’m pointing out is the initial attempt by the administration to deny the one had anything to do with the other – that the timing was coincidental rather than causal. Call it what you want, but we did refuse to return the money until Iran released the four prisoners. An honest explanation of the exchange up-front along the lines you earlier said would have been much better in the long run for credibility against allegations that we payed “ransom”.
Trollhattan
@raven: Has she experienced rivers that are not of water? On second thought, I withdraw the question.
I remember rain. Ah, rain.
Calouste
@catclub: Newt is not the voice of reason, he’s just trying to get the story out there by pretending to be the voice of reason.
Peale
@Peter: They bow down to Trump. Seriously, he’s now running against Ryan and McDonnell again, because ever since he’s endorsed folks like Ayotte, his popularity has been falling. My guess is that the slime will be 3 parts clinton, 2 parts media, and one part Cuckservative.
Anoniminous
The Infotainment Mediums need a HORSERACE! because advertising $$$ but this thing is so over:
The next step is to ensure the Senate so we can move on to taking the House.
Brachiator
Yep.
sukabi
@Peter: pretty sure Ailes, as part of his parachute is barred from competing with fox …
shomi
@bupalos: Lol…Trump is not that smart on both counts.
It’s obviously true that he is using it to promote his fake gold plated tacky empire and grifting as much right wing dollars as he can while he can. However, he also in love with the idea of being president and dictator. Not doing the actual job mind you. Just being ‘that’ guy and lining his pockets while doing it.
He will never be president but if he were I can guarantee you 100% he would be impreached within a year.
Brachiator
@Peter:
If Republicans continue to control state governments and the Congress, do they really have a problem?
Hal
That was very nice to see. Reid wasn’t having it, right up to her basically going bye Felicia to the chump rep when it was time to move on to the next segment.
Oh, and my favorite reply to Reid was that just because breitbart publishes racist, sexist homophobic bullshit doesn’t mean it’s chairman actually believes it. So there!
Brachiator
@Anoniminous:
What horserace? The media has been reporting that Trump is behind in all polling for weeks now.
But polling is not prophecy and the election is not being held today. It is only reasonable that the Trump empire should fight back with campaign ads and political attacks. I hope he fails, but nobody can expect him to roll over and give up.
Kay
I;m fatalistic about this one. Don’t all start telling me to GOTV or whatever- I’ll do what I always do to help. I just feel like Trump is such a joke that if he wins merit doesn’t matter at all and if THAT’S true then all the “trying” in the world won’t change it.
CONGRATULATIONS!
@srv: Pat Lang is a chickenshit racist motherfucker and I’d be more than happy to tell him that to his face.
jl
@Hal:
“my favorite reply to Reid was that just because breitbart publishes racist, sexist homophobic bullshit doesn’t mean it’s chairman actually believes it.”
Didn’t see the clip. But if she went to that response immediately, interesting that Breitbart is so bad that no point even trying the Fox News excuse and even attempt to defend the content (and vicious and obvious nonsense is pretty much all of the Breitbart content).
Villago Delenda Est
@burnspbesq: LIKE
Peter
@Brachiator: Nationally, it all comes down to 2020, the next redistricting. If the Dems can take the house in that election, the gerrymanders keeping it red will be removed. More locally, once Clinton nominates a 9th Justice, there will be more limits on what even the most reactionary legislatures can get away with. And those legislatures will likely trend bluer as demographics continue to change over time.
Villago Delenda Est
@Anoniminous: The horserace is now all about flipping the House.
Peter
@jl: It’s fascinating stuff. Too bad the stakes are so high. And the people least happy with how the election turns out will be the most heavily armed.
Cat48
@D58826:
Fugate was on TV today. He said they had already taken 80,000 applications for assistance & took food & water last weekend. This is not Obama’s Katrina, although the press may name it that, AGAIN.
rikyrah
@dmsilev:
It has been 25 years of demonizing.
Bring it, muthaphuckas.
Bring it.
redshirt
@shomi: I’d take that bet if it were possible to come about. Which it won’t. So you won’t have to answer for another wrong post.
FlipYrWhig
@cmorenc: Is anyone paying attention to this story? It’s Trump meltdown and the Olympics 24/7. If Trump later wants to zing Hillary with some Iran details, so be it, it’s not going to matter and he wouldn’t have said anything any differently anyway (“it was a bad deal with Muslims as usual, and that won’t happen with Donald Trump on the case!”).
Kay
This is what I mean by “fatalistic”:
If Americans really want these Trump people running the country then the whole idea of merit is just over and all bets are off.
This is what a Trump Administration will like. This country will be an absolute laughingstock. They think this is reality tv. They’re circus clowns.
Tilda Swinton's Bald Cap
Interesting information coming out about one of the Talking Combover’s advisors. Link.
jl
@Peter: Going to be a mess, even if Trump loses and it eventually turns out well
Black Republicans Growing Even More Frustrated With Trump Effort
Buzzfeed
” [Flordia] black Republicans are privately fuming about the emphasis Trump insiders place on white turnout and watching for- in the words of one senior Republican strategist – “heated rhetoric” they believe is designed to turn out a segment of the white vote ”
…
” Sean P. Jackson, a young Floridian [black] Republican strategist.. recently told friends that the Trump campaign’s chief Florida strategist Karen Giorno told him during that primary that Trump didn’t need his “classification of people” to get elected. ”
https://www.buzzfeed.com/darrensands/black-republicans-growing-even-more-frustrated-with-trump-ef?utm_term=.qrponzw3A#.jn49y805v
Edit: article also mentions incident where black GOPer bigshot was escorted out of meeting with Trump campaign approval. Not sure if that is new one, or referring to previously reported one a few months ago.
Baud
@Kay: Some of the stuff Trump has done was odius but understandable. I can’t believe they think the health issue will catch on.
Although I’m tempted to start a #SheHasScurvy hashtag on twitter.
jl
@Baud: HRC is FAT! That is going to heart of soccer mom lifestyle demo. Just because Baud! 2016! didn’t think of it…don’t mean it won’t work.
Baud
@jl: Wasn’t “phat” a cool thing to be about a decade ago?
Jeffro
@Peter: it definitely will be interesting … It might take quite a bit of work to get reasonable conservatives into a coherent political party after the cycle … They would almost be better off working with Democrats and trying to keep progressive taxes from being steeply progressive. (ETA: I am not advocating this as I think the more progressive the taxes are the better… I am just saying that might be their take on things )
You could almost see the possibility of far left folks making their own 20% party on the left, the dolt-right making their own 27% party on the right, and the Democrats continuing to scoop up something in the low 50% in national elections .
But then I remember that the dolt-right looks like it wants to fight with itself for a cycle or two at least so that 27% may consist of a few smaller groups
jl
@Baud: HRC has the commie youth vote sewed up. Mr. Trump’s very top people have that one figured out already, see, loser. And sez who, also too?
Bill Arnold
@Roger Moore:
LOL somehow I missed that. John Scalzi gets credit for that coinage. (And Josh Marshall for the idea.)
redshirt
@jl: What’s stranger: Black Republicans or Gay Republicans? Or I suppose the mythical Black Gay Republican?
Baud
@jl:
Isn’t that redundant?
Mnemosyne
@cmorenc:
I think they were trying to figure out WTF the press was talking about since the whole transaction was initially explained in full back in JANUARY, and suddenly the NYT and others were reporting it a second time like it was news.
It was not news. It had already been explained months ago. But it took a few days for the administration to figure out WTF the MSM was going on about.
That’s it. That’s the whole “scandal.”
randy khan
@Ben Cisco:
The fingers are not short enough.
Brachiator
@Peter:
I agree with much of what you say, but it doesn’t say much about what the GOP should do, how they should react to the Trump shit show, or their immediate prospects.
I don’t see the GOP giving up or becoming more reasonable. They might even double down on more outrageously blocking all of Clinton’s judicial nominees, not just SCOTUS nominees. Obama got few appointments through, and the GOP will do everything they can to diminish Democratic power and influence.
Cat48
Halperin said today that it’s very important to drive down Obama’s Approval Rating which is 52% today, along with Hillz’s, of course.
jl
@Baud: I don’t know. Having worked extensively for the miserable Baud! 2016! campaign, I am an expert on the beer drunk street butt smoking hobo vote. Can’t help you, whoever you are. Sorry.
Mike J
@Tilda Swinton’s Bald Cap: Former Blackwater guy. Forced out of DoD for covering up “contracting improprieties.”
Baud
@jl:
My base! Unreliable voters, but I love them.
D58826
an d here we go again with the Clinton rules. The campaign announced that the CGI would no longer accept foreign and corp. donations after September. The VSP/chattering class of course are asking why they didn’t do this sooner and why they didn’t do it when she was S-o-S. And oh the optics and the conflict of interest and and and……..
I remembered it was mentioned that Chaney/Bush (41/43) had financial interests in the oil industry but that din’t seem to raise a conflict when it came to the energy task force and energy policy. It was mentioned in passing but no one suggested corruption when St Ronulus the Unready appointed all of the friends who helped him get rich to government posts.
Lets get real here, there are so many ways corporations and foreign governments can buy/bribe access to government officials why does anyone care about the CGI? (rhetorical question it’s because the Clintons are involved).
jl
@Brachiator: I think continued attempts at all obstruction all the time, while continuing dogwhistles of every kind of bigotry imaginable, and smears against HRC, will be expected establishment GOP holding action.
They will experiment with best smears to use against HRC, just as they did with Obama. I don’t think GOP was sure racist smears would be best approach, and they experimented with Kerry effete smears, and standard anti-Dem big gummint bureaucrat/commie smears, but decided to go with what worked best with racist white base, which was the race stuff, often carefully coded, sometimes not very coded at all.
lollipopguild
@rikyrah: I love you.
ruckus
@geg6:
There are members of groups and MEMBERS of groups. I’m an old, white, male but resent being included with drumphf supporters who fall into the same group. Or boomers, a group I also belong to. Does he consider himself to be Jewish?
Kay
@Baud:
I don’t think she looks sick.
I’ve said this before but I actually like how she looks. She looks like a regular person. You know how so many high-level political people are all worked out and perfect looking? She’s also not at all self-conscious physically. She appears completely relaxed sitting on a chair onstage. It’s kind of admirable – she’s not vain about her physical appearance. I watched a state department panel once that she was on and everyone else was tightly wound- legs crossed, back erect. She could have been sitting in her living room. It’s appealing to me, how relaxed she is in that role.
jl
@ruckus: Don’t worry. Trump is issuing VIP gold cards at 49 bucks a pop, marked down from 299. Soon will have to prove really a member. No guessing allowed. Need to know who is in the club. Smears against whole demos will fade away.
Kay
@Baud:
I don’t think she looks sick.
I’ve said this before but I actually like how she looks. She looks like a regular person. You know how so many high-level political people are all worked out and perfect looking? She’s also not at all self-conscious physically. She appears completely relaxed sitting on a chair onstage. It’s kind of admirable – she’s not vain about her physical appearance. I watched a state department panel once that she was on and everyone else was tightly wound- legs crossed, back erect. She could have been sitting in her living room. It’s appealing to me, how relaxed she is in that role.
randy khan
@Major Major Major Major: I imagine that the way the prisoners/money thing played out is that the State Department did not want to say publicly it was withholding the money until after the prisoners came back for fear of messing up the deal or of giving the Iranian regime a talking point that would be a problem for the U.S. with other Islamic countries.
lollipopguild
@Kay: That is an insult to circus clowns.
Brachiator
@efgoldman:
I expect the GOP to continue to play obstructionist games. They really have no reason not to, unless they lose the Congress. And maybe not even then.
These vacancies exist because the GOP refused to be fair towards Obama. The same is true with respect to executive branch and ambassadorial appointments.
What would happen if the GOP went nuts and declared that they would refuse to consider any Supreme Court nominees as long as Clinton was president?
D58826
@Brachiator: If the democrats control the Senate, go nuclear on SCOTUS as well as lower court vacancies.
I hope the Hillary team whispers in the ears of some of the older judges that now would be a good time to retire. Then fill the openings with a bunch of 40 something judges. Control the judiciary for a generation or more.
Kay
@lollipopguild:
That one spokesperson alone should make Trump unelectable. He hires absolute morons and crazy people. That should be enough. She says shit like this every day.
This is what he is! They think he’ll be better after he has all that power? He’ll be worse!
FlipYrWhig
@Jeffro:
The “far left folks” aren’t 20%, or anywhere close. They’re like 6-8%. The reason why the left doesn’t have much influence is that the left doesn’t have many people in it.
Baud
@Kay:
This was just posted on TPM.
Tilda Swinton's Bald Cap
@Mike J: Also, his sister is none other than Mary Kay Letourneau.
lollipopguild
@Baud: Who are you calling unreliable?
randy khan
@Brachiator:
So far Trump has run no general election ads at all, although someone I know who has reason to know says that he’s supposedly got something coming on Friday.
Bill Arnold
@Rommie:
Y’all RFer-types, please don’t spin up & share any theories that will cause harm to the broader polity (or the broader world in general) in the very possible event that they last for the next several decades.
Baud
@lollipopguild: Am I the nominee?
lollipopguild
@Kay: You are correct-these are people who live in their own alternate universe. Only people who are crazy like Trump can reallly work for him in this way.
Kay
@Baud:
I think Trump will lose but in a way it doesn’t matter. The damage is done. He has NO redeeming qualities. He’s an asshole who doesn’t know anything and he’s also rude. Yet. At least 25 states will add to his electoral total.
He’s a new bottom. Nothing- not charm, not merit, not accomplishments- he’s not even funny. He seems to have no sense of humor at all. If he hadn’t have inherited that real estate he would be a below average person in any group. The idea that he should be President is ludicrous.
redshirt
@randy khan: Once he starts you’ll regret this comment.
divF
@redshirt:
Baud
@Kay: The damage is done, but this is a clarifying election for a lot of people.
randy khan
@redshirt: Perhaps. I should add that my source, who generally is very tuned into what’s coming in the way of political advertising, has some doubts as to the likelihood that actually will happen.
Brachiator
@jl:
I agree with you, but I don’t think the GOP experimented much or used dog whistles. They were up-front and blatant about it.
The GOP never clearly repudiated birtherism. They fed on fear and resentment. And there was a recent Maddow show which showed a headline about the GOP intending to obstruct Obama which was published soon after his election.
The GOP didn’t need dog whistles. We’ve had years of comments on Websites and in social media from white racists who have done everything they could to pretend that Obama was never the real or legitimate president because he was too black for the job.
Hillary,if elected, will be aware of all this and will no doubt have memories of attempts to shut Bill Clinton down.
I can only hope that she and the Democrats will keep in the Republicans’ face and develop a strategy seeking to smash the GOP in the mid term elections.
Miss Bianca
@Cat48: yeah, but since Trump, according to Halperin, is one of the two most brilliant presicential campaigners ever, that should be NO PROBS, amirite?
Brachiator
@randy khan:
Saw something on Maddow saying that Trump was about to roll out $32 million in ads.
jl
@Brachiator: I admit that the trial period for their experiments with the Kerry approach (Obama east baby lettuces and fancy mustard, and body surfing is for sissies) was pretty short. Sadly, that racism worked best with their base became clear very quickly.
SW
Well, the character assassination angle is valid, but I think it is even simpler. The Donald just got sick and tired of having people who work for him telling him to straighten up and be normal. It was like paying someone to nag at you. So he replaced them with people who are crazier than he is, so that he can be the one who decides what ‘going too far’ entails. Now they can bring to him all the crazy shit that they want to do and he can red pencil the stuff he doesn’t want to sanction.
redshirt
@randy khan: Who knows with Trump, of course. But there will be ads. And they’ll be atrocious.
randy khan
@Brachiator:
It wouldn’t surprise me, although something I’ve learned about election ad buys is that they don’t actually count until the ad runs – campaigns constantly reserve time and then don’t use it, particularly in Presidential elections where they shift from one state to another as they figure out where the need is greatest.
NoraLenderbee
@redshirt: *The* black gay republican was interviewed on This American Life a few months ago.
Alex Chalgren.
redshirt
@NoraLenderbee: Wow. Did he have some kind of head trauma or something?
Peter
@redshirt: All of them, Katie.
J R in WV
@Iowa Old Lady:
Andrea Mitchell is an odious, despicable, fraud who lies about events her audience just witnessed with her to their face. She is more evil than incompetent, and is the main reason I have given up ever watching NBC news programs.
She isn’t mainstream particularly, except when her prejudice accidently aligns with that of others in the “news” business – as distinct from journalism, which Ms Mitchell has never practiced, no doubt why she is so bad at it.
Peter
@Brachiator: But if they lose the Senate, they can’t block any more.
Peter
@Jeffro: It’s an intriguing prospect, having four parties instead of two. Imagine the dynamic coalitions in Congress working to get shit done and make everyone’s lives better!
catclub
@Peter:
Decennial redistricting is usually done by state legislatures. The GOP won those in 2010 (at really small cost of campaign funds)
to control re-districting.
satby
@Iowa Old Lady: Thank you for reminding us! I just shared the 19th Amendment Solutions T-shirt page on FB with this statement:
“On August 18, 1920, our foremothers won the right for women to vote.
In November 2016, 94 years later, women will vote and save this country from an incompetent fascist.”
Brachiator
@Peter:
This is not entirely true. Don’t senators and maybe some Congress people have all kinds of weird powers that lets them put holds on presidential appointments. Maybe not Supreme Court nominees, but lower court and other executive branch nominees?
pea
gop platform:
“i’m rubber, you’re glue,
whatever you say bounces off me and sticks to you.:
“that’s what you are, what am i?:
GHayduke
@Doug R:
It was the best they got, it was the worst they got.
The Lodger
@catclub: You lost me when you put Glenn Beck and evolution in the same sentence.
Seth Owen
@the Conster, la Citoyenne: he got a lot of pushback from Republican denialists afterwards. I see very little evidence that Republicans/conservatives collectively have the wherewithal to self correct.
The Lodger
@opiejeanne: And the brother of child raping teacher Mary Kay Letourneau. Nice family there.
redshirt
@pea: Ha! Literally everything is bouncing off me!
LAC
@geg6: amen! The hand wringing is not necessary in this case.
barbequebob
@redshirt:
It still lives on-line
http://weeklyworldnews.com/
But it looks like my favorite, Ed Anger, wrotre his last comment in 2014. Wonder if he works for Trump now?
dopey-0
@J.A.F. Rusty Shackleford:
Will Hillary turn Trump’s Dominance / Bitch Slap debate technique on him? I can’t wait to hear Hillary reply to Trump’s stock answers with “Well, Donald, if you didn’t have the attention span of a needle-dick bug-fucker and the IQ of a week-old sack of garbage, you’d know that what you just suggested is what President Obama has been doing for the last 24 months. But you’re a Winner, and I guess Winners can’t be bothered to keep up with world events. Your attention span seems to match the size of your little hands.”
Donald proceeds to lose all control on national TV and starts foaming at the mouth. Would you give a month’s pay to see that? It would be irresponsible not to ask….
Joel
@efgoldman: I generally agree, but … Cassandra was right.
Death Panel Truck
@Mnemosyne:
Army Detachment Steiner was mythical, too.
Special Ed
@Mnemosyne: I think you are right about Trump doing all of this to get back at Obama. He seems to be campaigning against Obama with the “Founder of ISIS” crap and his visit to Baton Rouge while mocking Obama playing golf. Might be more effective if he actually ran against Hillary.