Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

I’d try pessimism, but it probably wouldn’t work.

Make the republican party small enough to drown in a bathtub.

When do we start airlifting the women and children out of Texas?

The republican caucus is already covering themselves with something, and it’s not glory.

A democracy can’t function when people can’t distinguish facts from lies.

We cannot abandon the truth and remain a free nation.

“What are Republicans afraid of?” Everything.

Our job is not to persuade republicans but to defeat them.

A thin legal pretext to veneer over their personal religious and political desires

They fucked up the fucking up of the fuckup!

I like you, you’re my kind of trouble.

Usually wrong but never in doubt

The poor and middle-class pay taxes, the rich pay accountants, the wealthy pay politicians.

“Jesus paying for the sins of everyone is an insult to those who paid for their own sins.”

Do not shrug your shoulders and accept the normalization of untruths.

T R E 4 5 O N

Optimism opens the door to great things.

Seems like a complicated subject, have you tried yelling at it?

🎶 Those boots were made for mockin’ 🎵

It’s time for the GOP to dust off that post-2012 autopsy, completely ignore it, and light the party on fire again.

We’ve had enough carrots to last a lifetime. break out the sticks.

Republicans do not pay their debts.

Republicans in disarray!

Schmidt just says fuck it, opens a tea shop.

You are here: Home / Politics / Trumpery / Hail to the Hairpiece / Open Thread: Trump & the Trials of A Semi-Legit Businessman

Open Thread: Trump & the Trials of A Semi-Legit Businessman

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Some people still find it hard to believe that, in the year 2016, a broad caricature like Donald Trump is actually the Republican presidential nominee. (Plenty of people have joked that, within six months of his defeat, Trump will deny that he ever ran for President.) He seems like the lead character from a crime novel, or even a true-crime narrative. And just as thousands of hours of well-known crime stories going back to MacBeth tell us, the most dangerous point in a successful crime boss’s career is when he decides to take his business out of the grey zone, to make himself fully legitimate.

It’s not true that Donald Trump is lazy. Tremendously undisciplined, yes; careless of the consequences his actions may have on other people; spiteful and incapable of letting any slight or grudge go. But if he weren’t ambitious, he could’ve taken the millions he inherited from his old man and lived a long happy life violating only social norms and the minor criminal codes, the way his sons have been doing. Donald had larger goals; he wanted to rise above the ranks of his fellow bridge’n’tunnel landlord/goniffs, to make himself a Name, a celebrity, someone who could read about himself in the papers and watch himself on television. He’s had a good run, by those standards, but mistaking the social biases in his favor for “leadership” gifts was a very bad mistake.

There’s two major problems that any aspiring crime boss faces. First, it’s hard to get good help. The best people in any field usually calculate that they can make a profitable career without risking jail (or even social opprobrium); the best dishonest people are, of course, untrustworthy. Trump’s always been a micro-manager, not least because he knows he can’t trust the sort of people who would agree to work for Donald Trump… either they’re too naive to understand what they’ve gotten into, too inept to avoid the Trump trap, or too unethical not to emulate Trump’s tactics. When he decided to “go legit”, to run for the presidency (since no lesser office seemed worthy of his gifts), he found himself surrounded by hustlers (Lewandowski), potentially dangerous professional grifters (Manafort), has-beens (Giuliani, Gingrich, Conway), half-bright opportunists (Paul Ryan, Mike Pence, Steve Miller), charlatans (Roger Stone), and bottom-feeders (Steve Bannon).

And then there’s the succession issue. A crime lord’s kids are liable to break his heart — and, more importantly, his grift — no matter whether they love or hate him. Despite Trump’s reputed fondness for “racehorse theory” eugenics, nothing in his family background or his own accomplishments indicate any special talents or high intelligence, and his three oldest kids don’t seem liable to outdo him. They’re very definitely his kids, though…

Reader Interactions

99Comments

  1. 1.

    Baud

    I wonder why people aren’t more interested in the Veep debate. If Trump wins, very high chance that Pence eventually ends up president IMHO.

  2. 2.

    Botsplainer

    @Baud:

    Exactly. He’s a walking mediocrity, and the exemplar of everything that is wrong about the suck that is Indiana.

  3. 3.

    Bill E Pilgrim

    As far as the mystery of why a vice-ridden New Yorker, who’s like a bad a caricature of an adult Richie Rich and the evil billionaire Mr Burns combined would attract so many voters from the “heartland”, watching most pundits scratch their heads in puzzlement would be amusing if it weren’t so depressing.

    “Maybe it’s economic? Elites versus working class? But the average Trump supporter makes more money than the average Clinton supporter does, so that doesn’t really work. Oh well let’s go with the low income theory anyway, because I mean otherwise I just cannot for the life of me think of a reason!”

  5. 5.

    TheMightyTrowel

    I went to grad school with a current elected politician who was so upset at Pence’s anti-gay crap that he publicly came out to shame Pence and his mob. This guy is a consummate politician of the I’m-21-and-plan-to-be-president-one-day sort – he has no public dirty laundry, he used to leave parties early and avoid being photographed with drinks, he served a strategic (but very well meaning and sincere) term in the armed forces (reserve – but i’m not sure which branch) and he was closeted to hell and back until Pence got him agitated enough. He’s a lot happier now that he’s out, so yay him but still…. the power of Pence’s assholishness

  6. 6.

    Mustang Bobby

    Tony Soprano also had pangs of guilt about his business practices; wasn’t that basically the premise of the show; a made guy going to a shrink over his panic attacks? Trump would never see a psychiatrist or admit to having any kinds of self-doubt.

  8. 8.

    sukabi

    How many fucking paintings do you need of yourself?

    Sounds like the drumpfkin’s charities need a good looking into as well.

    They’d be more honest if they’d just go panhandle like the other “takers”.

  9. 9.

    OzarkHillbilly

    And speaking of the dumbest Governor in America:

    “The governor of Indiana believes, though without evidence, that some of these persons were sent to Syria by ISIS to engage in terrorism and now wish to infiltrate the United States in order to commit terrorist acts here. No evidence of this belief has been presented, however; it is nightmare speculation,” Judge Richard Posner wrote in the opinion.

    “[Pence] provides no evidence that Syrian terrorists are posing as refugees or that Syrian refugees have ever committed acts of terrorism in the United States. Indeed, as far as can be determined from public sources, no Syrian refugees have been arrested or prosecuted for terrorist acts or attempts in the United States. And if Syrian refugees do pose a terrorist threat, implementation of the governor’s policy would simply increase the risk of terrorism in whatever states Syrian refugees were shunted to.”

    The opinion adds that Pence’s claim that he is not discriminating based on nationality but purely acting based on safety concerns is “the equivalent of his saying (not that he does say) that he wants to forbid black people to settle in Indiana not because they’re black but because he’s afraid of them, and since race is therefore not his motive he isn’t discriminating. But that of course would be racial discrimination, just as his targeting Syrian refugees is discrimination on the basis of nationality.”

    The outcome was expected after Indiana’s plan was received less than warmly in court during oral arguments last month. Courthouse News reported that Judge Frank Easterbrook said: “When a state makes an argument that’s saying we’re differentiating according to whether somebody is from Syria, but that has nothing to do with national origin, all it produces is a broad smile.” Posner asked: “Are Syrians the only Muslims that Indiana fears?”

  10. 10.

    Mary G

    I don’t think Trump is Tony Soprano. He’s the guy that owned a sporting goods store, grew up with Tony and borrowed money from him to cover gambling debts thinking he’d be fine because they were childhood friends. Then Tony busted him out just like anyone else and told him the frog and the scorpion story. Putin’s Tony.

    Well, the rightwingers pulled the plug on Julian in the middle of questions from the pissed – off reporters in Berlin. He was saying he’s in good health for someone who hasn’t seen the sun in four years. Poor baby. I’m going to sleep now. See you guys later.

  12. 12.

    rikyrah

    @Bill E Pilgrim:
    It is not puzzling. They have bent over backwards since the beginning to explain Ferret Head’s approval as anything but the current of racism and racial resentment that is the very foundation of his support. Even when he wouldn’t disavow the actual White Supremacists .

  14. 14.

    Baud

    @OzarkHillbilly:

    the equivalent of his saying (not that he does say) that he wants to forbid black people to settle in Indiana not because they’re black but because he’s afraid of them, and since race is therefore not his motive he isn’t discriminating.

    Pence’s response: “Yeah, so?”

  15. 15.

    Baud

    @Bill E Pilgrim:

    I feel like, regardless of the outcome, Trump has killed off whatever started with Occupy. How can you talk about the 99% when 44.5% are going to be Trump voters?

  18. 18.

    Bill E Pilgrim

    @rikyrah: Read my “puzzlement” as if in quotes, i.e. “supposed puzzlement”.

    Though I do think at least some of them are genuinely puzzled.

  19. 19.

    Bill E Pilgrim

    @Baud: It’s been an eye-opening campaign year, no one can deny that one.

    If by “eye-opening” we mean something like that scene from Clockwork Orange where you’re forced to watch movies showing that your country is actually far worse than you already thought it was.

  20. 20.

    amk

    WTH! Assange just said documents cld be released before END OF THE YEAR?!!! What about before the election?! She got to him #Wikileaks

    BREAKING: #WikiLeaks topples the U.S. Deep State by boring everyone to death in excruciating press conference. #wikileaks10 #OctoberSurprise

    PepeTrump ‏@fige1000 1h1 hour ago

    The night of the leak and all major cities in the US seem to be having an internet outage issue. Censorship??? #Wikileaks #OctoberSurprise

    LOL.

  21. 21.

    Amir Khalid

    @amk:

    WTH! Assange just said documents cld be released before END OF THE YEAR?!!! What about before the election?! She got to him #Wikileaks

    The end of which year?

  23. 23.

    GregB

    Fuck. This election haspopped the lud off of the biggest, filthiest sewer if all time.

    Also too, Sen. Kelly Ayotte will have a hard time walking today after shooting off both her feet with a shotgun at last nights debate.

  24. 24.

    Hal

    @Baud: Other than the spectacle of Sarah Palin I can’t think of any other veep debate that people were interested in. To be honest, I forgot about Kaine and Pence all last week.

  25. 25.

    amk

    Hillary for Prison ‏@HRC4Prison 2h2 hours ago

    It’s the middle of the night in the USA yet over 50,000 people are tuned in to the #Infowars live feed coverage of #Wikileaks10‼️ Amazing‼️

    jus’ 50k? rethugs /lizardbraintarians hearts aren’t in it any more?

  26. 26.

    Ceci n'est pas mon nym

    Don’t you need a secret lair under a volcano to be a crime boss? And a shark tank? Maybe at least he has a piranha in a 10-gallon tank in his office?

  27. 27.

    Joyce H

    He seems like the lead character from a crime novel, or even a true-crime narrative.

    A novel? That’s giving him too much respectability. Trump strikes me as much more of a comic book villain. When he was giving his convention speech, and the jumbotron behind him was all black and gold with nothing but the gigantic word “TRUMP”, I thought if a comic book supervillain were to run for president, his convention would look exactly like that.

  28. 28.

    BlueDWarrior

    @raven: Exactly. And he keeps talking like “Trump is everyone’s default” when the proper reading should tell you “A Republican Candidate has a hard floor, but Trump also appears to have a hard ceiling” and “Most of Trumps lead is coming from people wavering on Clinton as their primary choice”

  32. 32.

    BlueDWarrior

    @raven: I dunno who is worse, Mika when she’s in a full blown Concerned Democrat fit or Joe when he is obviously playing the role of super-partisan Republican instead of merely partisan Republican…

  35. 35.

    amk

    Kalliope Amorphous ‏@KAmorphous 25m25 minutes ago

    There’s going to be a massive influx of Deplorables returning torches and pitchforks to Walmart this afternoon.
    #octobersurprise
    24 retweets 65 likes

  37. 37.

    Hal

    Somewhat tl;dr, but a friend of a friend post popped up on my Facebook timeline and it’s such an interesting look into the minds of Trump supporters. At the heart of his support is a contempt for living in a country that’s supposed to be theirs but instead they have to share with the “others.” Trump’s real promise to these people is a return to the norm of a white man for president who holds in contempt the same people and beliefs they do.

    Please take the time to read this.. our future depends on it! I don’t expect you to change your mind on who you’re voting for.. just hear both sides of the story and be open-minded. CHANGE is our only hope!!!

    Lasst night a friend claimed that Donald Trump wouldn’t make a good president; he is brash, he is racist, he is a loudmouth; you know the normal things people learn to recite after being programmed by television news. The one I loved was that, “Trump is arrogant.” My friend questioned if one man could make “that much difference in the world today.” To my friend’s credit, she was respectful enough to let me respond when she asked, “Really, what has Trump done?”
    I said, “In June of last year, Trump entered the race for president. In just a little over a year, Trump has single handedly defeated the Republican party. He did so thoroughly. In fact, he did so in such a resounding way that the Republican Party now suffers from an identity crisis. He literally dismantled the party. Trump even dismantled and dismissed the brand and value of the Bush family.
    Trump has Obama petrified that Trump will dismiss programs that weren’t properly installed using proper law.
    Trump has single handedly debunked and disemboweled any value of news media as we knew it—news now suffering from an all-time level of distrust and disrespect.
    Trump has leaders from all over the world talking about him, whether good or bad. Trust me, powerful men who have been president before weren’t liked by the global community. I doubt Mikhail Gorbachev liked Reagan when Reagan said, “Tear down that wall.”
    Trump has expressly disclosed the fraud perpetrated on the American public by Hillary Clinton. He has, quite literally, brought Hillary to her knees—if you believe that nervous tension and disorders offer physical side effects and damage.
    Trump has unified the silent majority in a way that should be patently frightening to “liberals.”
    As the press accuses Trump of being a house of cards, Trump has proven the press is the real house of cards. He has whipped up the entire establishment into pure panic. Trump has exposed them for who they are and worse, what they are. George Clooney was right when he said Trump draws live news coverage of his podium that he’s not yet approached. Thanks, George, you were perfectly correct.
    What we see as headline news today are actually the last bubbles from the ship that is now sunk—meaning the standard news media, as a propaganda machine, has been exposed. They have no more value.
    In the same way Trump asked the African-American community this question, I asked my friend, ”At this point, what do you have to lose?” We have mass cop shootings, riots in our streets, ambushed cops, double digit inflation, bombs blowing up in our cities, targeted police, #BLM, a skyrocketing jobless rate, no economic growth, privately owned land being seized by the federal government, the worst racial tension in my lifetime, no God in schools, more abortions than ever, illegal aliens pouring into our country, sick veterans receiving no care, and a debt that doubled in seven years to $19 trillion. Are you really happy with the condition of the current system?
    One man has done all of this in one year—one guy, and on his own dime. And with everything I’ve written above, you believe Trump hasn’t done anything? You claim that you are afraid of Donald Trump? No wonder we’re in trouble. You can say that Trump is a lousy presidential candidate. That’s your right. Just don’t ever say he’s not effective.
    That Megan Kelly, FOX News, CNN, MSNBC, Washington Post, Rachel Maddow, the Huffington Post, the New York Times, Raleigh’s News and Observer, the AP, Don Lemon, Jake Tapper, and many more, failed to implement their collectively orchestrated lie on the American people against Trump, is actually a massive testament to Trump. The press colluded pure propaganda to accomplish his demise … and they have collectively failed and miserably.
    Here’s just one example of how badly America is injured right now. There are high school football players on their knees during the national anthem simply because the press used as propaganda to program those kids to do that very thing. But, these kids are mimicking NFL stars the same way the same kids chooses which brand of football shoe to purchase—they’re overtly brain-washed to do that very thing.
    Now, we have a generation of children who hate America.
    America’s problem isn’t that little children are on their knee in collective disrespect of America. Our problem is that America is on her knee from collective disrespect by Americans.
    You can disrespect America all you want. But, it’s high-time you respect the silent majority. Because they’re not simply the “silent majority” as you’ve been trained to believe when Hillary calls them “deplorables.” The fact is, they are simply the majority. And now they’re no longer silent either. Donald Trump changed all of that, single-handedly and within one year.” From Be Forbes.”
    Bebe Coe Bertino
    9/29/2016 , this is a copy and paste, and needs to be read and spread!! #onpoint

  38. 38.

    raven

    @Baud: That the Clinton money making through speeches is that same as Trumps tax situation and that the brilliant American electorate knows it.

  39. 39.

    amk

    Matt Jarbo ‏@mundanematt 53m53 minutes ago

    The MSM will look at #OctoberSurprise and mock the hell out of it in order to discredit @wikileaks further. #ThanksAssange

    gamer nutz are so pissed off.

  40. 40.

    Bill E Pilgrim

    Yeah MSNBC has been almost tolerable most mornings since they decided they hate the Trump monster they helped create, but today is unbearable. Apparently the real story about this week is Hillary’s inability to profit from Trump’s implosion, since she’s just as bad. And Joe thinks that no one should blame Trump re taxes, it’s just “the system”.

    This is actually the Trump surrogates’ collective position, it’s the system and not only is that not Trump’s fault, it’s Clinton’s because she’s a “politician”.

    Joe “I just can’t imagine why people are supporting Trump by the way here are some other Trump campaign talking points I agree with” Scarborough, to you.

    I may have to find another channel country planet

  41. 41.

    hellslittlestangel

    I’d love to get my hands on some of Trump’s suit material — I’ve got a couch that needs re-upholstering.

  42. 42.

    BlueDWarrior

    @Baud: That Trump isn’t getting blown out by 10 in every state with a significant proportion of Democrats/Democratic-leaners.

    It’s like she is incapable of understanding how rigid the partisanship is in this country in this current era and year.

    Pretty much every metric has Clinton right now at a greater-than 2:1 odds of winning, and a lot are getting to 4:1 odds, we should be happy it’s that high given how many people think of Clinton as a harridan and how many people just want to vote for the (R) by default.

  44. 44.

    hellslittlestangel

    @Baud: If Trump wins, very high chance that Pence eventually ends up president IMHO.

    And if my aunt had a mustache …

  45. 45.

    BillinGlendaleCA

    I’ll be pretty quiet this morning, main computer is down and then power went out.

    (Posted from Samsung Edge)

  48. 48.

    amk

    Ashton (((Elijah))) ‏@ashtonpittman 2h2 hours ago Mississippi, USA

    People who want Hillary hung 4 “exposing classified info” are salivating over a man who steals & publishes classified info #OctoberSurprise

  49. 49.

    Schlemazel

    @Mustang Bobby:
    Drumpf would say that Tony was not strong.

    To tie the mod theme to last thread about X90-bot: “Oh, Paulie… won’t see him no more” – Peter Clemenza
    Something tells me he goes on a ride to New Jersey before the 2018 elections, driven by the wingnut family.
    “Leave the Constitution, take the cannoli”

  53. 53.

    GregB

    Reading the Assange freakout now leads me to conclude that weak and old Hillary now has the power and strength of Putin because Assange looked rattled and frightened, according to the Alex Jones clown posse.

  55. 55.

    Schlemazel

    People often say some variation of “They’ll vote for Stalin/Satan if only they had an R after their name”
    We are in a test right now to see how large a group that is. I’d like to believe it is less than 40% (Hell, I wish it were only 27%) but I won’t be surprised if it is above 40. It is depressing to think that so many of my fellow Americans are this fucking stupid.

  57. 57.

    hellslittlestangel

    @Schlemazel: What I was going to say was that if my aunt had a mustache Mike Pence would pass a law allowing businesses to discriminate against her. That bastard.

  58. 58.

    Schlemazel

    @Baud:
    Trump should have grown one, he could have had a weave like the one on his head & had a long, luxurious, ‘stache just to prove how manly he is.

    He could wax it into a fat handlebar, it would attract the hipster vote.

  62. 62.

    amk

    Pinning your high hopes of electoral winning on a hideous aussie hiding in Ecuadoran embassy from a hideous rape indictment from sweden and feeding info from russian hackers is the real murkan way.

  63. 63.

    BlueDWarrior

    @Schlemazel: A lot of the problem is see is that people seem to feel they have license to ignore anything that doesn’t agree with their previous preconceptions or biases. How you crack that nut? I dunno honestly, I guess you keep whacking at it until something finally gives.

  66. 66.

    Bill E Pilgrim

    Well Bob Woodward has solved the mystery about where Trump support comes from, he agrees with Joe that people calling Trump or those who vote for him racists or morons is whut done it. It’s our fault, in other words. If we’d just kept quiet or said it’s good that you say all that stuff about “the blacks” then no one would be supporting him. Since we had to go and call him a racist, that makes people feel insulted and then they decide to vote for Trump.

    Click. Basta.

  68. 68.

    BlueDWarrior

    @Bill E Pilgrim: Well there is a small amount of truth to that, but just a small amount. Some people are voting for Trump because they see the culture having abandoned them (the old and busted) for the new hotness of ethnic minorities and women. And they resent that, deeply. And the more you point that out specifically, the more they resent you for it.

    Now you might be entirely right for pointing it out, but they will still react poorly to it, yet another nut to crack.

  70. 70.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @amk: Was listening to a story about some GOP pol who is very anti-Trump but can’t bring himself to vote for Hillary because of the e-mail thing and the supposed breaches in national security that represents.

    So he is writing in David Petraeus.

  72. 72.

    Bill E Pilgrim

    @BlueDWarrior: Woodward and Scarborough said nothing about people feeling resentful for being overlooked for not being minorities. They were talking about people pointing out that Trump is a racist and that people supporting him are supporting racism, how this is what creates Trump support.

    There’s a long, twisted, dishonest road between that and what you wrote, which I agree with, and it’s one I ain’t buying. If you could buy a road that is.

  76. 76.

    BlueDWarrior

    @Bill E Pilgrim: Dishonest in which way, reading in too much racism, or ignoring the racism that is there. Because I feel the racism and the cultural resentment are two separate but intertwined things with these people.

  77. 77.

    Baud

    MoJo

    The Hillary Clinton campaign has been fretting that millennial voters are backing third-party candidates at historic rates and threatening her base of support. But a new survey suggests that she’s doing just fine among a large subset of this group: nonwhite young adults, who are much less likely than their white peers to support third-party candidates.

  79. 79.

    Chris T.

    @Hal: That wall-of-text is full of Gish gallop, but its final takeaway is basically the claim that the White Supremacist “deplorables” are the majority. They’re not: they are neither a majority, nor supreme.

  80. 80.

    BlueDWarrior

    @Baud: So once again, the entire crux of this campaign seems to be “White people can’t sort their shit out. Film at 11”

    I would say I’m surprised, but I’m not.

  81. 81.

    Frankensteinbeck

    The comparison is interesting, but I think it’s an important difference that a mob boss became rich because of crime. Trump’s crimes were of choice, and entirely unnecessary to stay rich.

    @Hal:
    I agree with a lot of that letter. Trump is certainly effective, if not in any controlled direction, he has exposed the media as propaganda outfits, and the ‘silent majority’ does not want to be silent anymore. I’m also impressed by how quickly the list of America’s problems veers out of mere race-based lies into complaints that have no meaning other than ‘black people are getting uppity.’

    @Schlemazel:
    Voting for Satan is a feature, not a bug. Trump is no accident. He is what most GOP voters wanted all along. Many are embarrassed to admit it, that’s all.

  82. 82.

    Ivan Ivanovich Renko

    @Schlemazel: you give them too much credit to call them “stupid.”

    Mean spirited, racist fuckers is SO much closer to the truth.

  83. 83.

    waspuppet

    (Plenty of people have joked that, within six months of his defeat, Trump will deny that he ever ran for President.)

    Well, every Republican from coast to coast will deny him three times before the cock crows Nov. 9. And they’ll get away with it.

  84. 84.

    Kay

    @Baud:

    Democrat Hillary Clinton slightly widened her lead over Republican Donald Trump in Virginia as millennial voters moved away from third-party presidential candidates, according to the first statewide survey of likely votes since last week’s debate.

    I just don’t believe the third party thing with them. It’s so hard to get them to vote at all the idea they’ll turn out for a protest vote is silly.

    On November 1st of 2012 Johnson polled at 5%. He got a little over 1%.

  86. 86.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @Frankensteinbeck:

    the ‘silent majority’ does not want to be silent anymore.

    They have never been silent. If they were silent so many of the laws never would have been written exclusively for their benefit. The Tea Party IS who they are.

  87. 87.

    HelloRochester

    Ann Laurie, I’ve been carrying around a little butt hurt due to what I saw as your over the top comments about Bernie supporters but honestly “Trump’s always been a micro-manager, not least because he knows he can’t trust the sort of people who would agree to work for Donald Trump” wins the intertubes.

  88. 88.

    Ben Cisco

    @Hal: That poor deluded bastard – is what I would say if his delusion wasn’t based on his hatred of me and everyone who looks like me – so fuck him.

  90. 90.

    Soylent Green

    @Baud: We ought to have a Ball Juice office pool.

    I think Trump will get at least 43 percent. Pol Pot (R) would get at least 43 percent. Repub voters always fall in line.

  91. 91.

    Tinare

    I have relatives that just believe that Democrats are crooked and awful and Godless and Republicans are not. And there is no changing their minds. They will pull an R lever no matter what. And some are old enough to have lived through Watergate, so I don’t know what you can do about that. They are just oblivious to any flaws in any R running for office. Or at least the Dem is ALWAYS worse, so…

  92. 92.

    Miss Bianca

    @Hal: “ooh, he brought the press to their flabby knees and made people afraid! He destroyed the party he’s ostensibly part of!” Did you ask your FOAF why he thought all of that stuff means that Trump would be an effective President? Or would that just be prolonging the agony of the derp?

  93. 93.

    Miss Bianca

    @OzarkHillbilly: David Betray-us? Yeah, because nothing says “I’m worried about national security” like writing in the name of the guy who fed classified information to the hagiographer chick he was banging.

    I keep thinking that there’s a saturation point for cognitive dissonance. I keep being proved wrong.

  94. 94.

    What Have the Romans Ever Done For Us?

    @Kay: I remember when I was in College (Bill’s first campaign for POTUS) I considered voting third party for a long time. If someone had asked me up until the last couple of weeks who I was voting for I would have said, I don’t know for sure but I’m thinking third party (Democratic Socialist maybe). I voted for Bill in the end. The youths always want to appear a little unconventional and independent. Most of them, when push comes to shove, return to the party their sympathies lie closer to.

  98. 98.

    JAFD

    To Godwin the thread, a joke from 1938 or so…
    “When Hitler was born, the evil fairy told him
    “You will be the leader of the Germans, and the Germans will be:
    intelligent,
    honest,
    and loyal to Der Fuhrer”

    But the good fairy added
    “No individual German will have more than two of these qualities.””

  99. 99.

    RSA

    @Hal: Thanks for posting that screed. (I read it this morning but have only had the chance to reply this evening.)

    I sometimes try to think about questions or issues to raise with Trump supporters, something that might catch their attention, so knowing what they think is helpful. The way the person answers the question “What has Trump done?” is interesting because it basically boils down to ways that Trump has been destructive. Oh, plus promises. So I might ask, as a follow-up, “What has Trump done that’s (a) constructive and (b) not an attempt to enrich himself?” Not that I’d expect a conversion or anything, but maybe it could clarify things for onlookers.

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