I’m so old I remember when candidate Barack Obama was forced to give a major address to distance himself from a pastor whose church he attended from time to time because of comments the pastor made when he wasn’t present. The whole country was Up In Arms.
Extremist commentator Christiane Northrup has promoted a pro-Nazi film that denies the Holocaust, encouraged people to check out the infamous antisemitic tract Protocols of the Elders of Zion, and repeatedly pushed the conspiracy theory that a secretive mafia is hiding behind Jewish identity to control world events. Still, Northrup has spoken twice at Trump’s Miami resort alongside Eric and Lara Trump and been featured in a Robert F. Kennedy Jr. campaign video.
Northrup is a former OBGYN who initially gained fame as a self-help author who was praised by Oprah Winfrey. Since then, as The Washington Post reported in May 2022, Northrup has claimed COVID-19 “was part of a plot involving Deep State brainwashing and treacherous depopulation schemes” and she “encouraged fans to check out QAnon, called the Centers for Disease Control a ‘covid death cult,’ and described the vaccines as crimes against humanity.”
Northrup is listed as a “featured” speaker on the pro-TrumpReAwaken America Tour. She, along with Eric and Lara Trump — now the co-chair of the Republican National Committee — appeared on the tour’s stops at Trump Doral in Miami, Florida, in May and October 2023.
A poster for the tour’s next stop in Selma, North Carolina, in October lists Northrup, Eric Trump, and Lara Trump as scheduled speakers.
The tour has become a magnet for Hitler-promoting antisemites. Including Northrup, Media Matters has now identified at least five speakers who have shared antisemitic and pro-Hitler material.
Fine, fine, perfectly fine…
This is the caliber of people who come to speak at the Republican presidential candidate’s home. Raving nut-cases. And the chair of the RNC and her husband, the candidate’s son, are on the campaign trail with her. ((Not to mention fellow weirdo Robert F. Kennedy Jr.)
Just don’t use the “N” word (Nazi) to describe them. People get very upset.
July of that year was a real nail biter … and Obama went on to win by 4 points.
How about 1992?
G. Elliott Morris of 538 (formerly the Economist poll) has this to say about that new NY Times poll, dropped coincidentally on the night before the debate, showing Trump up 6 among registered voters. (Biden is ahead among likely voters,.)
Here the NYT is acknowledging partisan non-response is driving swings in their poll results. Good on them for being honest, this is probably happening to most pollsters at this point. But if a pollster can detect this, shouldn’t they adjust for it? pic.twitter.com/ekQKf6u7XM
Donald Trump’s plans to make America great again are going to include a lot of whining.
Trump on Tuesday morning in an interview on CNN’s “New Day” proclaimed that he is “the most fabulous whiner” when confronted with an opinion piece that criticized him using the same label.
“I do whine because I want to win and I’m not happy about not winning and I am a whiner and I keep whining and whining until I win,” Trump told CNN’s Chris Cuomo on Tuesday.
This is what four year olds do before they learn that they can’t have everything they want when they want it. Trump never learned that lesson.
He knows he no longer has to legitimately win anything
A disturbing number of Republican congressmen are onboard for the lunatic right-wing conspiracy theory that Joe Biden will be on performance-enhancing drugs for tonight's debate. https://t.co/aX3nRRAoyEpic.twitter.com/kRMWAeWDv9
Donald Trump in recent days gave speeches in Washington and Philadelphia and greeted supporters at a cheesesteak restaurant in Pennsylvania. He flew to New Orleans for a fundraiser Monday, and called in to a roundtable with Black leaders on Wednesday in Atlanta.
Ahead of what could be the most consequential political event of the cycle, Trump has continued campaigning and has eschewed intense debate preparations, even as Joe Biden has remained hidden away at Camp David to get ready.
That’s made easier by the fact that he’s already declared the debate is essentially rigged.
Trump and his team have worked to undermine, undercut and cast doubt on the historic debate before it’s started: They’ve questioned the fairness of CNN moderators Dana Bash and Jake Tapper. Trump and his allies have criticized the format of the debate. They’ve repeatedly asked President Joe Biden to take a drug test.
It’s a playbook Trump has followed for years, most notably ahead of the 2020 election and his criminal trial this spring in Manhattan. If Trump comes out the winner of the debate, his allies predict, then it will be in spite of the obstacles. If Trump stumbles, then he has already set up who and what to blame. It’s also a brand of grievance politics that has long animated Trump’s most fervent supporters and helped him, baselessly, explain away past political failures and legal setbacks.
Win-win for the sore loser. And his followers can’t get enough of it.
Trump’s Himmler:
Here’s our future Secretary Of State:
The whining and crying continues: “The most important person tonight is going to be the engineer who decides when microphones go on and off. I’d like to know who he or she is, how they voted .. This is not a debate.” pic.twitter.com/58q5kQi2VJ
A strong showing by Biden will neutralize Trump’s claims about his opponent’s cognitive decline.The Trump campaign knows this. That’s why, in recent days, Trump and his aides have been working overtime to mitigate the damage should Biden deliver a commanding performance similar to his fiery State of the Union address. The Trump campaign’s first tactic is the most Trumpian: Spread a nasty smear. At a Pennsylvania rally on June 22, Trump made the baseless claim that Biden will use drugs to get “jacked up” for the debate. Trump senior adviser Jason Miller told me that Biden’s State of the Union speech was “evidence” that Biden uses performance-enhancing drugs. “The Joe Biden who delivered the State of the Union is not the same Joe Biden the American people see every day. It’s clearly two different people. It’s literally Jekyll and Hyde,” Miller said. (Asked about Trump’s drug claims, a Biden campaign spokesperson said the former president is “resorting to desperate, obviously false lies.”)
Secondly, the Trump campaign is lowering the bar by playing the media’s victim. If Biden wins on Thursday, Trump can say CNN rigged the debate in Biden’s favor, regardless of whatever millions of Americans see with their own eyes. “It’s a three-on-one dynamic with Biden, [Jake] Tapper and [Dana] Bash,” Miller told me. “The structure makes it impossible for President Trump to get a fair shake,” Miller said. The Trump campaign will also say the media grades Biden on a curve. “The media has lowered the bar so much that if Biden can stand up for 90 minutes, he’ll be declared the winner,” Miller told me.
Trumpworld’s third move is to turn Biden’s serious debate preparation against him by highlighting that Trump is conspicuously not doing formal debate prep—a clear flex to show Trump isn’t worried about Biden. According to Miller, Biden is spending a week prepping at Camp David because the Biden campaign didn’t expect Trump to accept their offer to debate with a mainstream media moderator. “The Biden people didn’t want the debate to happen. The terms of the debate were so one-sided in their favor they didn’t think Trump would accept. But Trump called their bluff. That’s why Biden is freaking out and taking a week off to prepare,” Miller said.
Apparently, they don’t believe there’s a chance in hell of Trump just winning the debate on the merits. And they’re right about that. He’s a narcissistic imbecile. But these people do have a talent for influencing the media and indoctrinating their followers.
So CNN believes it can keep Donald John Trump under control during tonight’s debate. They have rules. Rules will tame him. And no live audience to mug for. They’ll mute the candidates’ mics when their answer periods are up.
Will all those rules keep this exercise on the rails? CNN has said that moderators Jake Tapper and Dana Bash “will use all tools at their disposal to enforce timing and ensure a civilized discussion” (emphasis mine).
But it remains to be seen what that means. If Trump begins stalking the stage menacingly or either candidate starts interrupting (or even yelling), will Tapper and Bash open up a trapdoor? Whip out a lasso or old-timey shepherd’s crook to yank the candidates offstage? Pull a fire alarm?
And there’s no plan for live fact-checking. How will any falsehoods be curtailed?
They won’t be. Trump is a firehose of falsehoods.
CNN CEO Chris Licht was fired a month after a town hall with Trump moderated by Kaitlan Collins last May became an “opportunity to spew lies, smear enemies, and insult the moderator.” No one (here) needs reminding that Trump lost the 2020 election yet incited a mob to storm the Capitol on his behalf. Rules are for suckers and always “rigged.”
“I also expect that CNN is going to rig it as much as possible and make it as favorable as they possibly can for President [Joe] Biden, but I don’t think it’s going to work,” Speaker Mike Johnson told Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council.
Team Trump is pre-spinning the debate every which way so Trump can claim victory whatever happens tonight. Heads he wins, tails Biden loses. They’re pre-spinning November as well.
Still, the big question of the night is: Will CNN be able to keep things civil? Cutting the mics will certainly help, but presumably, the moderators won’t be able to physically restrain Trump from, say, wandering up and talking into Biden’s microphone. Less dramatically, a candidate’s mic might still pick up another candidate’s shouting. Plus, the reality is, they’ll be in the same room. Trump yelling at Biden, calling him crooked or sleepy or accusing him of being on drugs, might prove distracting enough to derail the debate, even if viewers at home can’t hear it. CNN may have removed the unpredictability of a live studio audience, but it can’t remove the unpredictability of Donald Trump.
No flashbulbs, please. They upset the big gorilla.
Nate Silver is out with a new polling model that says Donald Trump has a 66% chance of winning and everyone on social media is having a fit.
If you come across that I would just suggest you remember this:
You’ll note that’s dated the day of the election. How’d that work out?
Just keep in mind that these close races, as they all are these days, are impossible to predict and data guys like Silver should stop with this nonsense. All it does is make people nervous and unhappy.
"Q is anonymous, but he seems to be completely for the good. He seems to be totally on Trump's side … There's a once in a lifetime opportunity to take this global cabal of Satan worshiping pedophiles out." Marjorie Taylor Greene. Expel now.
— Adam Kinzinger (Slava Ukraini) 🇺🇸🇺🇦🇮🇱 (@AdamKinzinger) June 26, 2024
More Republicans should do that.
Trump is “The most complainey-est, bellyaching-est, he was POTUS for four years, the most powerful man in the world and yet he the VICTIM of EVERY plot everywhere?! Everybody is out to get him he can’t defend himself?!”
— Adam Kinzinger (Slava Ukraini) 🇺🇸🇺🇦🇮🇱 (@AdamKinzinger) June 26, 2024
That’s what I’m talking about. There must be some Indies and moderate GOPers who are getting tired of Trump’s whiny, sore-loserism. They can’t all have Fox News Brain Rot. Can they?
Here’s another one:
Fmr. GOP Lt. Gov. Duncan: Lies and conspiracies were spread by Donald Trump and his allies that the election was rigged. Then January 6 happened and that is a huge part of why I am here today. I'm looking at this election as an American who cares more about the future of my… pic.twitter.com/evyJ9nSN8T
Here’s Dan Pfeiffer with a super-interesting newsletter about the Biden team’s message.
[T]he concept of a “message box” … is an exercise every campaign should do at the outset. It’s a simple quadrant filled out to understand the message your campaign and your opponent’s campaign will communicate.
While a little lost to time, a message box is still the fundamental building block of a successful campaign strategy. The best campaigns run every ad, tweet, speech, and statement through this filter to ensure they advance their message and undermine their opponent’s.
For nearly a decade of running against Trump, Democrats have struggled with the lower left quadrant. We never really settled on a consistent argument about Trump. One of my maxims for politics (and life) is that the only thing worse than a wrong decision is no decision at all. That was the collective error our party made when it came to our anti-Trump message. We never picked one.
He goes into the fact that Trump is notoriously difficult to define because he’s just such an asshole (my word not his) on every level. As he says, “it’s like ordering dinner at the Cheesecake Factory with their War and Peace-sized menu. Is he a crook, a clown, a dictator, an asshole, an idiot, a racist, or a Russian sleeper agent? All of these have elements of truth, but they also conflict. Trump has unpopular policies, committed crimes, overturned Roe, tried to overthrow an election, and says and does incredibly crazy things all of the time. Connecting those in a coherent, compelling, believable way is a challenge.”
But the Biden campaign has found the way to do it and Pfeiffer thinks it’s excellent:
They settled on an essential truth that is obvious to everyone who has ever seen or heard Donald Trump — he only cares about himself.
Trump the Selfish Narcissist
Referring to the ad, one Biden adviser told theWashington Post:
It is about why he is a felon. He doesn’t care about the harm that he causes as long as he serves himself.
Pfeiffer writes:
I think it works for several reasons. First, the best messages are the true ones — and Donald Trump putting his interests first is true to all but the willfully blind. Trump is a classic grievance politician in the mold of George Wallace and Pat Buchanan. But with Trump, more often than not, the grievances are personal. The Deep State is after him; the press is unfair to him; the courtroom is too hot; etc. If elected, Trump has pledged to go on a revenge tour against the people who wronged HIM. It’s always about Trump.
Second, it connects Trump’s personal foibles with his policy agenda. Yesterday, the Biden Campaign released another ad that shows how you can use the ”Trump only cares about himself” frame to explain his economic policies.
Here’s the difference: Donald Trump is only out for himself.
He’ll always choose himself. Always. The mere fact that he chose to go ahead and run for president in the midst of all these legal problems and the history of January 6th hanging over his head is a perfect example. Anyone who gave a damn about this country would have laid out rather than choosing to put the nation through all this.
Finally, I will bring this back to the message box exercise for a second. The best contrast messages are the inverse of positive messages. In other words, you want to exploit your opponent’s weakness while amplifying your strength.
Joe Biden is not perfect, but he is a decent, empathetic man more interested in helping others than himself. I saw this up close for years. Biden’s empathy — even in the face of immense personal tragedy — is his political superpower.
I totally agree. Trump’s silly “Crooked Joe” nickname and his endless attempts to paint him as a criminal mastermind are ridiculous and they don’t work. He is a nasty, mean, aggressively hostile piece of work and the contrast with Biden’s innate decency is glaring.
I think this message is good too. It encompasses all the things I loathe about the Trump so I’m sure I’m biased. His narcissism, his endless, overwhelming whining and crying about everything being rigged and unfair drives me up the wall.
Nothing matters to Trump except Trump. Some people apparently find that to be very appealing. But anyone on the fence wondering whether he should be back in the oval office tweeting his grievances all day should be reminded of just was a self-centered head case he really is.
