Month: March 2016

Adorbs

by digby

The Easter egg roll. Slightly surreal, but overwhelmingly cute:

Open letter from a defector

by digby

A Trump defector.

Wow, just wow:

Almost a year ago, recruited for my public relations and public policy expertise, I sat in Trump Tower being told that the goal was to get The Donald to poll in double digits and come in second in delegate count. That was it.

The Trump camp would have been satisfied to see him polling at 12% and taking second place to a candidate who might hold 50%. His candidacy was a protest candidacy.

It pains me to say, but he is the presidential equivalent of Sanjaya on American Idol. President Trump would be President Sanjaya in terms of legitimacy and authority.

And I am now taking full responsibility for helping create this monster — and reaching out directly to those voters who, like me, wanted Trump to be the real deal.

My support for Trump began probably like yours did. Similar to so many other Americans, I was tired of the rhetoric in Washington. Negativity and stubbornness were at an all-time high, and the presidential prospects didn’t look promising.

In 2015, I fell in love with the idea of the protest candidate who was not bought by corporations. A man who sat in a Manhattan high-rise he had built, making waves as a straight talker with a business background, full of successes and failures, who wanted America to return to greatness.

I was sold.

Last summer, I signed on as the Communications Director of the Make America Great Again Super PAC.

It was still early in the Trump campaign, and we hit the ground running. His biggest competitor had more than $100 million in a Super PAC. The Jeb Bush deep pockets looked to be the biggest obstacle we faced. We seemed to be up against a steep challenge, especially since a big part of the appeal of a Trump candidacy was not being influenced by PAC money.

After the first debate, I was more anxious than ever to support Trump. The exchange with Megyn Kelly was like manna from heaven for a communications director. She appeared like yet another reporter trying to kick out the guest who wasn’t invited to the party. At the time, I felt excited for the change to the debate he could bring. I began realizing the man really resonates with the masses and would bring people to the process who had never participated before.

That was inspiring to me.

It wasn’t long before every day I awoke to a buzzing phone and a shaking head because Trump had said something politically incorrect the night before. I have been around politics long enough to know that the other side will pounce on any and every opportunity to smear a candidate.

But something surprising and absolutely unexpected happened. Every other candidate misestimated the anger and outrage of the “silent majority” of Americans who are not a part of the liberal elite. So with each statement came a jump in the polls. Just when I thought we were finished, The Donald gained more popularity.

I don’t think even Trump thought he would get this far. And I don’t even know that he wanted to, which is perhaps the scariest prospect of all.

He certainly was never prepared or equipped to go all the way to the White House, but his ego has now taken over the driver’s seat, and nothing else matters. The Donald does not fail. The Donald does not have any weakness. The Donald is his own biggest enemy.

A devastating terrorist attack in Pakistan targeting Christians occurred on Easter Sunday, and Trump’s response was to tweet, “Another radical Islamic attack, this time in Pakistan, targeting Christian women & children. At least 67 dead, 400 injured. I alone can solve.”

Ignoring the fact that at the time Trump tweeted this (time-stamped 4:37 p.m.) the latest news reports had already placed the number differently at 70 dead, 300 injured, take a moment to appreciate the ridiculous, cartoonish, almost childish arrogance of saying that he alone can solve. Does Trump think that he is making a cameo on Wrestlemania (yes, one of his actual credits)?

This is not how foreign policy works. For anyone. Ever.

Superhero powers where “I alone can solve” problems are not real. They do not exist for Batman, for Superman, for Wrestlemania and definitely not for Donald Trump.

What was once Trump’s desire to rank second place to send a message to America and to increase his power as a businessman has nightmarishly morphed into a charade that is poised to do irreparable damage to this country if we do not stop this campaign in its tracks.

I’ll say it again: Trump never intended to be the candidate. But his pride is too out of control to stop him now.

You can give Trump the biggest gift possible if you are a Trump supporter: stop supporting him.

He doesn’t want the White House. He just wants to be able to say that he could have run the White House. He’s achieved that already and then some. If there is any question, take it from someone who was recruited to help the candidate succeed, and initially very much wanted him to do so.

The hard truth is: Trump only cares about Trump.

And if you are one of the disaffected voters — one of the silent majority like me — who wanted a candidate who could be your voice, I want to speak directly to you as one of his biggest advocates and supporters.

He is not that voice. He is not your voice. He is only Trump’s voice.

Trump is about Trump. Not one of his many wives. Not one of his many “pieces of ass.” He is, at heart, a self-preservationist.

In fact, many people are not aware of the Trump campaign’s internal slogan, but I will tell you. It is stolen from a make-believe television presidency on The West Wing where Martin Sheen portrayed President Bartlet. The slogan on the show amongst the idealistic group of Bartlet’s staff was “Let Bartlet Be Bartlet.”

Inside the Trump camp, the slogan became “Let Trump Be Trump.”

It is a repurposed slogan that seemed spot-on for the candidate. He is an intelligent, charismatic man who is involved in every aspect of his organization and would rather speak from the cuff than read briefing notes and recite them. I, in fact, admire Trump for this. But saying this qualifies him to be president is like saying that Seth Rogan is suited to be president. Another extraordinary improvisor, not an extraordinary presidential candidate.

Trump has undoubtedly lived up to the slogan, right down to his main public-relations liaison. Rather than go for a focus-group Washington insider, his communications person had previously taken press calls for the Trump Organization and directed them to the appropriate Trump child. She joked that before joining the campaign she thought “Common Core” was a class at Equinox.

The primary problem with this? What I’ve seen the longer I’ve helped prop him up along with the millions who are helping Trump is that we got the slogan wrong. A more accurate internal slogan would read, “Let Trump Help Trump.”

I don’t dismiss any single Trump constituent, which is why I believe it’s important to let you know that the candidate does.

I, too, think our country has gone off track in its values. I, too, think that we need a dramatic change of course. But I am, in my heart, a policy wonk and a believer in coming to the table with necessary knowledge for leading the free world.

The man does not know policy, nor does he have the humility to admit what he does not know — the most frightening position of all.

I remember watching the second Trump debate and thinking, After this, he is going to have to start hammering it home on policy; the country needs substance to make an informed decision.

I wished for it six months ago and am still waiting for it today. He had an opportunity after the terror attacks in Belgium and instead he used the opportunity to talk about closing the borders and what a mess that country had become. I was appalled that he offered no condolences or words of support; he merely gave his “build a wall” stump speech and talked about his greatness.

I felt sad for him at that moment.

And now, with the latest horrifying terror attack in Pakistan, my sadness has turned into anger.

I consider myself a part of the silent majority that led to Trump’s rise, which is why I want you to know that I am with you — I wanted Trump to be real, too.

He is not.

He even says so himself. His misogyny? That’s the character.

His presidential candidacy? That’s a character, too.

The problem with characters is they are the stuff of soap operas and sitcoms and reality competitions — not political legacies.

Trump made me believe. Until I woke up.

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A wealthy businessman with tea party ties confirmed Sunday that he is mounting a primary challenge to House Speaker Paul D. Ryan, saying that after donating to the Wisconsin Republican’s past campaigns he feels “betrayed” by the speaker on trade deals and immigration. 

The businessman, who is not yet revealing his identity, promised that his run will “shake up the establishment in a profound way,” according to a political consultant close to the prospective candidate. 

The emergence of a viable Republican challenger in Wisconsin’s 1st Congressional District is the culmination of a monthslong recruitment effort by tea party activists who say they were double-crossed by Mr. Ryan when he passed a $2 trillion spending package late last year. 

Eric Odom, a conservative activist and political consultant in Wisconsin, confirmed with “100 percent certainty” that a local business leader would be running to oust Mr. Ryan.
“I’ve had the privilege of attending multiple meetings with this individual, during which he has expressed his sense of betrayal by Speaker Ryan. He has a strong desire to see real representation for the people of the district versus a congressman who represents special interests in Washington,” he said. 

“It’s very personal for him,” Mr. Odom added. “He intends to run a full-scale candidacy that will shake up the establishment in a profound way.”

Thee have been some good Democrats running against Ryan in the past and if they’d had some serious support from the party they might have even won.  But those were different times. Ryan was the handsome Young Gun wonk with all the potential in the world. Now he’s just another corrupt Washington whore.  Like Eric Cantor, his young gun buddy.

It’s unlikely that a House speaker would be ousted in a primary but we are in uncharted waters. Who knows?

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A telling list of endorsements

by digby

You remember these guys, right?

If you live in Iowa and own a phone, you might get a call this week that sounds something like this: “I urge you to vote for Donald Trump because he is the one candidate who points out that we should accept immigrants who are good for America. We don’t need Muslims. We need smart, well-educated, white people who will assimilate to our culture. Vote Trump.” 

This jarring message is just one part of a robocall recorded on behalf of Donald Trump by the American National Super PAC, created by none other than the leader of the American Freedom Party, a prominent white nationalist organization.

Well, they’ve compiled a list of approved white supremacist for Trump’s cabinet.

We know Trump doesn’t have many advisers. It looks like his most ardent supporters are stepping up with some approved suggestions. I’m sure a few of the people on that list would rather not be on it.

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by digby

Here’s an example of Trump’s character from Buzzfeed that goes way beyond his disgusting treatment of women. The article is about how he insulted Rosie O’Donnell by saying he understood why she was depressed because she’s so ugly. Ugh.

But this is what caught my eye. Trump said this in a speech after the flap:

“She announced last week that she suffers from depression. They called me for a comment, and rather than saying ‘I have no comment’ or ‘isn’t that too bad oh, that’s so bad,’ I said, ‘I think I can cure here depression,’ — most of you heard this. ‘If she stopped looking in the mirror, I think she’d stop being so depressed.’” 

He continued, “And they said, ‘It’s a horrible statement, it’s a horrible statement.’ What’s so horrible about it? She attacks me. She said I had terrible hair. You know, it’s amazing. She calls me comb-over, she calls me — but we’re not allowed to attack.” 

Trump then said that when O’Donnell was asked about his remark, she said, “I have no comment, I have no comment about him.” 

“Get even,” Trump said to the cheering crowd. “When somebody screws you, screw the back in spades. I really mean it. I really mean it. You’ve got to hit people hard and it’s not so much for that person, it’s that other people watch.”

This is his worldview. And it doesn’t just apply to his personal feuds. He has made it clear that when China is “taking advantage” in trade deals it’s because they don’t respect America. He thinks the various countries in the middle east are “laughing at us.” His response to Vicente Fox for saying he won’t pay for the wall is “that wall just got 10 feet higher.”

The man is a moron when it comes to actual knowledge of world affairs as his astonishingly obtuse interview with the New York Times over the week-end proved. He is no better than Sarah Palin in that regard and it says something important about the GOP that this is the second time in eight years a cretinous fool has come close to the presidency (and might just make it this time.) He runs entirely on instinct and is such an egomaniac that he believes he is infallible

I like to do the right thing where I don’t actually have to ask for forgiveness. Does that make sense to you? You know, where you don’t make such bad things that you don’t have to ask for forgiveness. I mean, I’m trying to lead a life where I don’t have to ask God for forgiveness….Why do I have to repent? Why do I have to ask for forgiveness if you’re not making mistakes?

(You can watch the whole video of him dancing around his infallibility here.)

That is the man whose instincts tell him:

“Get even,” Trump said to the cheering crowd. “When somebody screws you, screw the back in spades. I really mean it. I really mean it. You’ve got to hit people hard and it’s not so much for that person, it’s that other people watch.”

Now imagine the day some foreigner makes fun of President Trump.

Update:

GOP front-runner Donald Trump, during an often-contentious interview with conservative talk show host Charlie Sykes in Wisconsin Monday, refused to say if he’d apologize for a retweet mocking the looks of Ted Cruz’s wife Heidi, and said he “didn’t even know it was a bad picture” of her.
[…]
“He knew totally about that,” Trump said of Cruz. “If he didn’t know about that, it would be a totally different thing.”

The ad was posted by the anti-Trump super PAC Make America Awesome, which is not affiliated with Cruz, and Sykes used that to press Trump on the issue.

“So is this your standard?” he asked Trump. “That if a supporter of another candidate, not the candidate himself, does something despicable, it’s okay for you personally, the candidate for president of the United States, to behave in that same way? I mean, I expect that from a 12-year-old bully on the playground, not somebody who wants the office once owned by Abraham Lincoln.”

That is exactly what he thinks. He got hit and he hit back.

And when Sykes asked him if he ever apologizes, Trump said he does believe in it, he would “think about apologizing, he owes me an apology, because what he did was wrong. He sent out a picture to people in Utah.”

It’s going to be an RNC rumble even before the convention

by digby

This piece by Ed Kilgore about the probable chaos at the RNC convention planning meeting in light of what may be an undecided contest is fascinating.   I hadn’t thought about this but all conventions are planned TV events with a nominee in mind these days and this might be one that’s very difficult to plan at all. Who knows what might happen?

An excerpt:

In this leaderless situation, there are really only two basic approaches the convention management can take. It can treat the absence of a putative nominee as a vacuum to be filled and plunge ahead with good-faith decisions made in loco parentis, subject to reversal by the full convention. If, as seems likely, the two viable presidential candidates in Cleveland are Trump and Cruz, decisions that may affect their interests (on, say, credentials or rules challenges, or even on which friends or enemies get prime speaking roles) coming from convention CEO Jeff Larson — Reince Priebus’s appointee — or from convention chairman Paul Ryan will draw immediate and intensely hostile attention. Remember that Trump and Cruz are living repudiations of everything the RNC called for in its famous post-2012 “autopsy” report. Many of the operational people they will confront during those potentially tense weeks in June when decisions about the convention simply have to be made are presumptive enemies and saboteurs. It will not make for a cooperative atmosphere. 

Besides, there’s only so much party or convention officials can do to offset the absence of a putative nominee. The overriding purpose of the modern party convention is to tout the nominee’s sterling personal qualities, inspiring “story,” accomplished record, and courageous agenda. Not knowing the identity of the hero to be lionized leaves little to be done other than to attack the opposition, perhaps too often and too loudly for the party’s good. The 1992 Republican convention, which featured Patrick Buchanan’s prescient but controversial “culture war” speech, showed the risks of too negative a convention message. 

The alternative and politically safer approach for a convention without a putative nominee is to allow representatives of all viable candidates for the nomination to participate in decisions. So if Donald Trump and Ted Cruz are the only active and feasible candidates going into Cleveland, the convention managers could simply duplicate the usual approach and have two sets of eyes on absolutely everything they do. Aside from making decisions harder rather than easier, this approach could politicize virtually everything the convention does, however minor, generating fight after fight.

This is the messy scenario that a contested convention is likely to create in the run-up to the event and over the first two to three days before the first (and possibly subsequent) presidential ballots are cast. If the chaos is allowed to proliferate or if inversely it is quelled with too much force, the legitimacy of the nomination itself could be called into question. And even if that doesn’t happen, very little time will be available after the nominee is known to get the party and the convention prepared for the rousing unity gestures of the crucial final night. One can easily imagine frantically suppressed protests, rows of empty seats, security and message-discipline lapses (like the Clint Eastwood fiasco of 2012), and just a bad scene all around.

And that’s just the run-up.

There’s a lot more and you should read it. He doesn’t even get into the obvious problem presented by the fact that the leader going into the convention is likely to be a megalomaniacal, neo-fascist Bond villain with a group of rabid followers.

There were hints of the kind of problems that might be expected last time:

Ron Paul supporters at the Republican National Convention erupted in fury Tuesday over decisions that weakened their delegate count and other rule changes that will make it harder for non-establishment candidates in future elections.

Several members of the Maine delegation walked out of the Tampa Bay Times Forum after the convention affirmed the GOP’s decision to replace 10 of Maine’s 24 delegates.

“It’s a disgusting, disgusting display of a hostile takeover from the top down,” said Ashley Ryan, 21, a Maine delegate. “It’s an embarrassment.”

Paul did not win a single state, but his ardent followers worked arcane local and state party rules to take over several state delegations, including garnering 20 of Maine’s 24 spots. The RNC decided to replace 10 of them, effectively stopping the state from being able to submit Paul’s name for nomination. (In response, the state’s Republican governor, a Romney supporter, decided to boycott the convention.)

Although Mitt Romney easily has the delegate support to take the nomination in one ballot, avoiding a floor fight allows the GOP to present a unified front.

But the decision to not seat the original Maine delegation, and the approval of rules that will make it harder for grass-roots-fueled candidates in the future, caused an uproar in the handful of state delegations dominated by Paul supporters, as well as some others that are concerned about the GOP centralizing power in the hands of a few and taking it away from the states.

Wiselot Rouzard, a delegate from Nevada and a Paul supporter, compared the situation to Adolf Hitler taking power in Germany.

I’m going to take a wild guess that the Trump and Cruz people won’t roll over if they try something like this. They strike me as being ready to rumble. Eager to rumble.

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Guess who’s once again at the center of our election coverage? #angrywhitemen #asusual

by digby

I wrote about this familiar phenomenon for Salon this morning:

The press is doing a whole lot of navel gazing at the moment, wondering how they went so wrong about Donald Trump’s appeal. Apparently, they all thought it was joke until this weekend or something. And the big takeaway is best exemplified by this observation by Nicholos Kristof in the New York Times:

Somebody will pay, believe it
by Tom Sullivan

You have to wonder: Does Donald Trump have any friends? Really? Not many in New York, it seems. Maybe he should visit Mexico for Easter some time. He has lots of friends down there. Tre-men-dous friends. They love him down there:

Mexicans celebrating an Easter ritual late on Saturday burnt effigies of U.S. Republican presidential hopeful Donald Trump, whose anti-immigrant views have sparked outrage south of the American border.

In Mexico City’s poor La Merced neighborhood, hundreds of cheering residents yelled “death” and various insults as they watched the explosion of the grinning papier-mâché mock-up of the real estate tycoon, replete with blue blazer, red tie and his trademark tuft of blond hair.

Media reported that Trump effigies burned across Mexico, from Puebla to Mexico’s industrial hub Monterrey.

Huh. It’s hard to imagine why poor Mexicans would want to do that to someone they love.

For some reason, Europeans love the World’s Most Dangerous Man about as much as Mexicans. Maybe less. Maybe because he’s talking about dissolving NATO at a time when Poland is worried about becoming the next Ukraine. Daily Beast foreign correspondent, Christopher Dickey, was rather blunt about it:

Well, these are frightening times in Europe for a lot of reasons. The economy is not in great shape, particularly here in France. The terrorism threat has been growing. There are wars all over the place, little wars that sometimes Americans don’t even notice. You’ve got the push by Russia into Ukraine and the threat to the Baltics. All this going on makes people very, very nervous, and they’d like to think that their American friends would be reliable friends.

But now, they see what looks very much like a circus to them. […] Europeans look at this and they don’t just scratch their heads. They shake their heads as though they’re looking at the doom of the world. They really see it as an incredibly negative thing and then when you’ve got Ted Cruz on the other side saying we’re going to carpet bomb places, well, good luck with that Ted.

That’s not going to take care of ISIS, but that is going to cause a horrific blowback against America around the world. So I think that they are looking at a situation where they believe they are reasonable people, Europeans, and they are looking at an American political situation that is extraordinarily unreasonable, theatrical and dangerous.

If the angry Republican base would care to break off and revive the Know Nothing Party, they’ve found its leader.

Cretin America

by digby

If you want to know how a vulgarian like Donald Trump can become president, take a look at this mess:

Yeah, I know, these people are all frustrated by trade deals so we really should be sympathetic.

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Some good news on American internment camps

by digby

Trump ruled them out. But lest he appear to be soft on American Muslims he made sure everyone knew he’s going to bring the hammer down in other ways… if you know what I mean.

“Would you categorically rule out the idea of internment camps for American Muslims?” ABC News’ “This Week” host Jonathan Karl asked Trump.

“I would rule it out, but we would have to be very vigilant. We’re going to have to be very smart,” Trump said. “We’re going to have to be very rigid, very vigilant. And if we’re not very, very strong and very, very smart, we have a big, big problem coming up. We’ve already had the problem. Check out the World Trade Center, OK.”

“Check out the Pentagon,” he continued. “We’ve already had the problem.”

He has said that he wants to ban all Muslims from entering the country and will send back all refugees who are already here. But because he’s a humanitarian, he wants to build “safe zones” in the middle of the desert where all the refugees can live. Presumably they’ll be allowed to leave to go join ISIS or Assad or whomever, right? Right?

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