Is Trump bleeding support yet?
Tuesday was another bad one for Donald Trump, Boy King of the Red Hats. It ended in Indiana with Trump’s victory in the Republican primary. The former insurrectionist-in-chief won handily against South Carolina’s Nikki Haley who, Politico reports, “cleaned up in the suburbs.”
A zombie Haley candidacy continued to punch above its weight in the Trumpiest of states: The former South Carolina governor is on track to break 20 percent for the first time since she dropped out of the race two months ago.
Trump may have won Indiana’s 58 delegates, but Haley “posted above-30-point performances in places like Marion County, home to Indianapolis, and affluent Hamilton County, its suburb to the north.”
Indiana is sure to go into the Trump column in November. But in a tight presidential contest, Trump cannot afford to lose even a fraction of Republican base voters who turn out for primaries. As one Twitter user observed, if President Joe Biden had lost 22 percent to a candidate no longer in the race in a deep blue state, it would be front page news.
Indeed, there would calls for Biden to drop out of the presidential contest, renewed speculation about a brokered convention, commentary about Democrats in disarray, etc.
That’s how Tuesday ended for Trump. Earlier, he faced testimony from adult film actress Stormy Daniels in his Manhattan criminal trial for falsifying business records and election interference. Digby covered that here and here. Coverage of the trial was, well, everywhere.
For his part, Trump was lucky not to have been thrown in jail for contempt exhibited inside the courtroom:
In a private conversation on Tuesday with prosecutors and Donald Trump’s lawyers, the judge overseeing the former president’s hush-money trial rebuked him for “cursing audibly” during Stormy Daniels’s testimony.
New York Supreme Court Justice Juan Merchan said Trump’s behavior might have the effect of intimidating Daniels — who was testifying as a key witness in the case — and threatened to hold him in contempt of court once again.
“I understand that your client is upset at this point, but he is cursing audibly, and he is shaking his head visually, and that’s contemptuous,” Merchan told Trump’s lawyer Todd Blanche. “It has the potential to intimidate the witness, and the jury can see that.”
Trump’s one other lucky break Tuesday was a decision in Florida by U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon to delay indefinitely Trump’s trail on dozens of felony charges for willful retention of national defense information.
“Honey bunch”
The MAGA cult was unusually restless over at Elon Musk’s Cyber-Twitter on Tuesday. One gusss as to what had them stirred up more than usual. A 60-year-old, married, “weird” “orange turd” being spanked on his big bottom by a 27-year-old woman he called “honey bunch” (what century is he living in?) and reminded him of his daughter. Multiple court reporters commented on the “ick” factor in Daniels’ testimony about her one sexual encounter with Donald Trump in 2006. He didn’t use a condom, she said, after she’d explained that she worked expressly for her production firm because they required condom use.
Cultists may believe whatever lie Trump tells them, and that his criminal trial is a setup by the Biden administration, but they listened nevertheless. And they vented.
“Joe Biden is a worldwide fucking cartoon,” tweeted one.
“The only man who can make America great again,” posted another above a photo of Trump.
“Typical NAZI Democrat lies and propaganda,” read a third.
“Biden and democrats are always lying,” read another.
But they may have been responding to this:
● ● ● ● ● ● ● ●
For The Win, 5th Edition is ready for download. Request a copy of my free countywide GOTV planning guide at ForTheWin.us.