Day #155: the childish outburst continues:
Hillary Clinton colluded with the Democratic Party in order to beat Crazy Bernie Sanders. Is she allowed to so collude? Unfair to Bernie!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 25, 2017
The most interesting thing about this comparison is that Trump equates Clinton’s “collusion” with the Democratic Party to his campaign’s collusion with a hostile foreign power. Unintentionally revealing!
Shortly after that tweet, Trump sat for a tuggie an interview with Fox & Friends’ Pete Hegseth and elaborated on his bizarre complaint yesterday that President Obama didn’t stop the Russians from sleazing him (Trump) into office:
"I just heard today for the first time that Obama knew about Russia a long time before the election." He JUST heard? https://t.co/8oS2md6gV7
— Brian Stelter (@brianstelter) June 25, 2017
Note that Trump, who has received the most highly classified intel for many months now, claims he just learned this from the Washington Post story published last week. As Stelter rightly points out, the WaPo story inspired debate about whether PBO should have done more to counter Russian interference, not whether he addressed it at all.
As Stelter says, everyone has known for months — before the vote — that the Russians interfered with the election; only Trump and his surrogates have consistently denied it. PBO took action against the Russians for it, and we know Trump knows that too, since he has removed or attempted to remove every sanction placed on the Russians. Trump even kissed Putin’s ass shortly before the inauguration, praising the Russians for demurring on a response to PBO’s sanctions and providing a wink-wink signal that the sanctions would be short-lived:
Great move on delay (by V. Putin) – I always knew he was very smart!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 30, 2016
Fox Friend Hegseth didn’t follow up because that’s not the role of the state propaganda organ’s presenter. Trump is counting on brazen lies and the inversion of observed reality at every turn to carry the day. Why not? It’s worked so far.
Corner Stone
Sen Brown on AMJoy re: healthcare.
FlipYrWhig
Add “collude” to the list of commonplace words Trump does not understand.
japa21
Of course, it is possible that he has truly forgotten that he has heard this many times before and for him it is a new thing.
But, he is at least admitting to Russian meddling, although he will deny it if asked directly about it.
Juice Box
I can’t tell the Republicans from the Eastern European bots from the Bernie cultists. It’s all too confusing.
japa21
@FlipYrWhig: And of course, he doesn’t even have his facts straight on that one.
gene108
He is clever, in a base sort of way. Try to incite the Bernie-Dem primary rancor to divert from how much he sucks.
Too many of his followers will just buy into it.
Corner Stone
As Masha Gessen and Sarah Kendzior say, it’s the language of the autocrat. It is not about the truth. It’s a form of dominance display, to say boldly whatever he wants because no one can stop him.
Citizen_X
“Collusion. Co-LOOOO-shun. It was very unfair to the crazy guy!”
gene108
@japa21:
Maybe the intel community kept it from him, because he is a security risk.
Sherparick
Trump understands that the people who elected him only accept as truth what comes to them from Fox and Rush and Sean and Laura, and they tell them stories that they want to believe anyway. They want to believe that Blacks were better off enslaved, that Hispanics are lazy job stealers (think of the cognitive dissonance just in that article of faith), that all foreigners just want to take advantage of the U.S., and that liberals are just a bunch of dirty rotten hippies who want to tax them to give money to those People, and that there is a Leader who must be obeyed – in this case Trump. Trump and McConnell’s goal is to keep the Republican Base fired up while they steal all the money for themselves and the Republican donor class and to demoralize the rest of the country into accepting their fate with apathy. Part of it is Trump’s impulses, but part of it appears to be strategy, at least strategy on McConnell’s part. Trump distracts while McConnell enacts.
Kay
Says the person who spent all of last week talking about Nancy Pelosi rather than Trumpcare. He chose THE DAY they
revealed the secret bill to do so which is probably the worst political timing I have seen this year. While Tim Ryan was doing this Ohio newspapers and local tv stations were interviewing Tim Ryan’s constituents on how they rely on Medicaid. He was unavailable- busy being interviewed by cable news celebrities about “messaging”.
Tim Ryan is really, really bad at this yet for some reason he believes he entitled to a promotion. There’s a lot of that going around.
TS
@FlipYrWhig:
Probably easier to keep a list of the words he does understand
yooge
I
me
my
Sherparick
@Corner Stone: Yes, it is very much a way to dominant the MSM and the national conversation.
Thoroughly Pizzled
If there is a hell, for Trump it will just be being held to every standard that Barack Obama was held to.
Barbara
@Kay: Mediocre white man syndrome. Maybe he is angry that the “Dago” broad runs circles around him. I am really disappointed in him. He actually stood up and counted when it came to Bush’s idiocy on Iraq.
Kay
@Corner Stone:
For someone who doesn’t care about Russia he sure spends a lot of time defending on Russia, though. “No one” cares about Russia, yet the President denies he colluded with Russia every day. He whines. He shifts blame. He makes frantic phone calls trying to stop investigations which is not really a “dominance display” unless you look at it in the most flattering light possible.
He’s afraid of something. I don’t know what it is but he spends a good chunk of every day on this. Political media say no one cares about it, Tim Ryan says no one cares about it, but Donald Trump sure cares about it.
Corner Stone
“All Star Conservative Panel” ??!!
Now Joy has scared the crap out of me.
Kay
@Barbara:
Those people tended to be over-rated though. Liberals supported an Iraq war opponent over Sherrod Brown – he literally had nothing to recommend him other than opposition to that war. Sherrod Brown also opposed the war so it made ABSOLUTELY no sense.
I didn’t believe the Democratic wave in ’06 was based on Iraq opposition. It was about GOP corruption. It was like a perfect storm of corruption. There were huge state scandals combined with general GOP sleaze in Congress. Everyone wanted the validation of being right on Iraq and I feel that clouded perception- “we were RIGHT” became more important than really looking at why the country turned against R’s that year. You ended up with crazy decisions, like supporting a former Republican over Sherrod Brown simply because the former Republican opposed Iraq even though Brown opposed Iraq.
Corner Stone
@Kay:
He showed his people what a tough guy he was when he fired Comey. And when he fires Mueller everyone will know who the boss is and that no one can stop him.
Maybe after that he’ll fire Coats, maybe Rogers. They didn’t give him what he wanted either.
JPL
@Kay: Yup! She’s the colluder. I wish that the MSM would point out that if collusion occurred with a foreign government, it would be treason. It’s not both sides.
Your comment below was good.
Mike in NC
Sunday’s Tampa Bay Times features an article by WaPo’s resident idiot Dan Balz on the concerns of rural Americans. Seems they love their guns, are wary of non-whites and immigrants, and think their Christian values are under attack. Thanks, Dan. Zzzzz….
debbie
@gene108:
I disagree. Trump’s being far too obvious and is fooling no one.
Baud
@Kay: I thought the line was that Ossoff lost because he didn’t spend enough time attacking Trump.
debbie
@Kay:
Proof that Ryan is a Republican to the core. I’m sick of these people who think they are so smart, but presume no one in the electorate is capable of either multitasking or multithinking.
debbie
@Kay:
That he’ll be found out. Period.
Corner Stone
@Mike in NC:
That’s…but…My God man! That’s fucking genius! Now, how can we put this into an action plan that will work? Shut up about guns? Check. Throw blacks off and then under the bus? Gotcha. Demonize immigrants? All day, baby. And I think for the final stroke of genius to gather these votes unto us, we should absolutely float a deal that dismantles Planned Parenthood the way we did for ACORN. Remember how that legislative awesomeness won us so many rural votes?
Let’s do this!
Betty Cracker
@Kay: I believe an anti-corruption message could win again. It needn’t be “Trump sucks” alone, though he does and that needs to be said. It should be: “They’re lining their pockets at your expense.” Lord knows there’s a target-rich environment, with Trump’s fat cat cabinet and corrupt family. I think it would be politically effective, and it has the added virtue of being 100% true.
Kay
@Barbara:
You know what Tim Ryan could do? He could go to his district and translate Medicaid into money. If you’re a high school graduate in Ohio and you and your spouse make 9 dollars an hour then Medicaid for your children is worth about 4000 dollars a year. If you make 30k a year 4000 dollars is huge. He could try that instead of worrying about national party “messaging” that is aligned with his district. He’s the messenger and he can run that any way he wants. What he chose to do was direct attention away from his district. He’s not even a good congressman if he’s not doing that. He should get better at his own job.
Baud
@Mike in NC:
He didn’t say “cling to” so it counts as an original thought.
MomSense
@Baud:
Losing democratic candidates are a Rorschach test for pundits. I look at it as a way to figure out what makes the pundit tick.
Corner Stone
That stupid fucking scowl on his bloated beefy face. And always sitting like he has to go poopy but the interviewer won’t let him.
MattF
Don’t forget! War is Peace! Freedom is Slavery! Not to mention that we have always been at war with Eastasia.
JPL
@Mike in NC: Everyone knows only the whites are the real christians.
Baud
@JPL: Just like Jesus.
Corner Stone
@MomSense:
I think a couple pundits have their own hobby horse but in general I just look to see what the broad brush of conventional wisdom is telling Democrats they did wrong this time, or what they failed at doing.
Bobby Thomson
@Kay: that was just a turf thing. GOS adopted the guy when he ran against that loon in a House race and he became a symbol of the “power of the blogosphere.” Ridiculous junior high level shit.
Kay
@Betty Cracker:
People really do want clean government. They really resent the lining of pockets. It was actually central to TRUMP’S campaign. Crooked Hillary? He says it all the time- “they’re working for themselves, I work for you”.
The political environment in Ohio changed when it came out in ’05 that Republicans had invested workers comp money with cronies. It became a kind of symbol of how low-down they were. The GOP donor went to prison.
It’s so funny because they’re doing it again. They’re taking workers comp money to plug the 1 billion dollar hole Kasich blew in the budget. He cut taxes and his magic market revenue didn’t appear, just like Kansas. He’s a billion dollars short which is a big deal in state budgeting because they can’t run a deficit. They’re going to have to raise taxes by 2018.
MattF
@Corner Stone: It’s easier to list the people he can’t fire.
Brachiator
Yep. And this shit is so tiresome and infantile.
Meanwhile, in the real world, Trump’s ineptitude continues to create a clear and present danger.
From a Jerusalem Post story
Kushner and his staff are the gang that can’t negotiate worth shit, and the story goes on to claim that Man Baby Trump is threatening pulling out of all peace efforts.
This is just pathetic. But the GOP leadership must get their tax cuts, and Trump is their great hope.
japa21
@Baud: Beat me to it. HE should have just said that rural America is full of gun-toting, Jesus worshiping (albeit in a weird way), racists. Same thing.
MattF
@Kay: I do wonder how people whose lives depend on Medicaid and Medicare are able to swallow the Republican anti-tax message. My current theory is that it’s the classic con game: if you want to be rich, the first step is to act like you’re rich– and that means you have to hate the ‘takers’ and believe what the guy in the suit is saying. It’s a delicate operation, you have to extend the logic just so far and no farther. But it seems to work.
Corner Stone
Iron Stache on AMJoy at top of hour if you’re interested.
Kay
@Bobby Thomson:
It’s hard, right, for advocates generally? It’s easy to believe “my thing is THE thing” and get caught up and not look at what happened. The other thing that happened is Ohio’s economy started to fade early. There were real warning signs of the impending economic collapse. A lot of people knew people were over-extended and the home values weren’t real. It didn’t make any sense,”the boom”, like a kind of collective delusion that was cratering. My husband and I joked that a lot of people must have been inheriting money, because there was no way they were living like that on what they earn.
SiubhanDuinne
@Mike in NC:
Was that under a “Breaking News” banner?
Corner Stone
@MattF:
I wonder if the people who depend on these programs think about being rich or think about quality of life for themselves and their loved ones?
I think psychologists get could a number of studies done by the breakdown in the results of how people think about this and how they vote/don’t vote.
Corner Stone
@Corner Stone: Another pretty solid interview by Mr. Bryce.
Kay
@MattF:
Frankly, it’s why I’m rapidly losing patience with them. If you’re low income it is VITAL you know where 4000 in health care and health care value comes from. It’s like throwing away 4000 dollars and I don’t have sympathy for people who got 4000 annually in addition to wages and then pitch it in the trash. They HAD it and they are throwing it away out of some kind of personal spite or “feeling”? Then why should anyone get it back for them? So they can throw it away again?
donnah
If ignorance is strength, then Trump is Hercules.
ThresherK
@Kay: Charlie Pierce (and I) are with you.
Iowa Old Lady
@Corner Stone: The Medicare people will tell you they paid for it themselves when they were working. Math is hard.
rikyrah
@Kay:
Nail him, Kay
rikyrah
@Kay:
You are on fire, Kay!?
Kathleen
@Corner Stone: It’s not hard to write their scripts for them. Maybe Juicers could start lucrative business. “Script Writing for Pundits”. We could do it as we sleep. These noxious vapors are such lazy hacks.
Kathleen
@Bobby Thomson: Paul Hackett. Good times. I actually went door to door for him because I wanted Mean Jean gone so badly. And I wasn’t even in her district.
HRA
Ever so often someone posts a question about how people think on a trending subject and how they vote or don’t vote. In my own personal experiences before and after I became involved in election campaigns, there is not a one size fits all.
Healthcare became important to me when my businessman father had to have emergency kidney removal surgery and I learned we did not have health insurance. It changed my 18 year old life. I had to inform the college that I was not going to attend and find a job providing health insurance to the employees.
Early on when a bunch of my friends and I met once a month at each other’s homes for coffee, cake and conversation, the only time politics were seriously mentioned was if someone we knew locally was running for office. Presidential elections were “He’s going to win. It’s his party’s turn in the presidency.”
The bottom line is most voters are not immersed in politics. They are focused in what is happening in their daily lives. If they at all pay any attention to a campaign, it’s during the last few days before voting and base it on the candidates appearances then.
‘
FlipYrWhig
@Bobby Thomson: Two people who were championed by the blogosphere against their supposed establishment-hack enemies: Paul Hackett (over Sherrod Brown); Caroline Kennedy (over Kirsten Gillibrand). Two examples of why heeding Our Progressive Betters is so futile.
Kathleen
@Kay: I think Cordray and Steve Driehaus, my Ohio rep at the time, were trying to stay on top of that issue at least a year before the crash.
? ?? Goku (aka Junior G-Man) ? ?
@Kay: Oh, but he said on Meet the Republicans that he didn’t want Pelosi’s job. Yeah, right
Jay Noble
“Freedom Caucus member calls for Robert Mueller to recuse himself …” Add “recuse” to words the GOPers don’t get. In more ways than one.
? ?? Goku (aka Junior G-Man) ? ?
@HRA:
And they will ultimately pay for that attitude, dearly. Will they finally wake up when democracy is no longer our form of government? When autocratic, managed democracy is the order of the day? No, better to see how the Redskins are doing. The neighbor down the street just got taken from his house in the dead of night by goons with guns, but who cares? It’s not me. He probably did something wrong anyway. Never really liked him.
That sounds right
D58826
Well in a brain that can draw a line between two functioning neurons, this should be the end of the “russia is fake news’ tweets. But as I say it requires TWO functioning neurons
D58826
@? ?? Goku (aka Junior G-Man) ? ?: The bottom line is most voters are not immersed in politics. They are focused in what is happening in their daily lives
D58826
Oh my stars where are these people planning on going camping
http://www.msn.com/en-us/autos/enthusiasts/top-10-coolest-extreme-duty-4×4-campers-at-overland-expo/ar-BBD5qX2?li=BBnb7Kz&ocid=iehp
oldster
Weirdest thing about this tweet?
The syntax of this sentence: “Is she allowed to so collude?”
That use of “so” in “to so collude,” meaning “in the way just specified”, is correct, elegant, and elevated.
(Setting aside, as one always should, nonsense about split infinitives.)
It does not sound like Trump at all.
? ?? Goku (aka Junior G-Man) ? ?
@D58826: Ha! I know what he meant, but I could legit see that tbh. Sometimes I really hate people
debbie
@Kay:
It wasn’t trust funds; it was more that the deals the brokers were offering buyers were absurdly ridiculous.
Sab
@? ?? Goku (aka Junior G-Man) ? ?: You live in his district. Call his office tomorrow.
I am one of his constituents whose life literally depends on the monstrous Senate healthcare bill not passing. Tim Ryan could be helping to educate his voters about what Rob Portman etc al are up to. Instead he is babbling on about Pelosi.
I think he watches too much Fox.
Noncarborundum
@japa21: Have you heard that word, “collusion”? I came up with it a couple of days ago and I thought it was good.
Corner Stone
@Noncarborundum:
Nice going. It’s a perfectly cromulent word.
Betty Cracker
@oldster: Also, he said “Democratic” rather than “Democrat” Party, which is a break from standard wingnutese. But who else would write that, including the “so” construction? His social media guy is another subliterate. Maybe it was a joint effort with the shitty real estate lawyer who keeps going on TV and stepping on his own dick.
? ?? Goku (aka Junior G-Man) ? ?
@Sab: Planning on it. When I called to thank his office for voting against the House bill last month, the person answering the phone sounded really annoyed and apathetic.
JDM
Seems to me the most revealing thing in Trump’s “Obama didn’t do enough” tweet is that Trump is acknowledging that the Russians meddled with the election when he’s been denying that for weeks.
jake the antisoshul soshulist
@japa21:
I have decided that they forget everything that happened between Jesus’ birth and crucifixion.
But they love themselves some Old Testament and Paul the (self appointed) Apostle.
When was the last time someone on th
right quoted the Beatitudes.?
TenguPhule
@Corner Stone:
Or we could have the Republicans marched into labor camps. Let them learn trade skills, like picking fruits and vegetables.