;)
The Commentariat -- August 10, 2016
Afternoon Update:
** Paul Waldman: "If you're arguing to your angry, heavily armed supporters, who already think the federal government is tyrannical, that there's a conspiracy afoot to steal the election and that your opponent will be sending jackbooted government thugs to confiscate their guns, you don't get to pretend that when you say that the 'Second Amendment people' might be able to stop the next president's judges from subverting their gun rights that it's all innocent and you would never contemplate something as irresponsible as encouraging violence.... It doesn't matter whether Trump really believes that people should use their guns against the federal government if it enacts policies they don't like. What matters is that he's encouraging them to think they should, just like he's encouraging them not to accept the results of the election if their favored candidate doesn't win. That's what so malignant...." -- CW
Tim Darragh of NJ.com: "A former aide to Gov. Chris Christie said in a text that the governor 'flat out lied' about senior staff members not being involved in the Bridgegate scandal, according to court filings released early Wednesday." ...
... Matt Friedman & Ryan Hutchins of Politico do a better job of explaining the significance of the text exchange, which was a real-time critique of Christie's remarks during a press conference. A lawyer for one of the Bridgegates defendants filed a court brief alleging that the aide "deleted the texts after the Democrat-led Legislature began issuing subpoenas in the case, and never told lawmakers about them. The filing claims she 'testified under oath before the Legislature in a manner not consistent with the existence and deletion of those texts.'" See also Akhilleus's comment in today's thread. -- CW
Tami Luhby and Jim Sciutto of CNN: Secret Service chatted with Trump: "A US Secret Service official confirms to CNN that the USSS has spoken to the Trump campaign regarding his Second Amendment comments. 'There has been more than one conversation' on the topic, the official told CNN. The campaign told USSS Donald Trump did not intend to incite violence."
... Akhilleus: Of course, given the virulent antipathy so many Secret Service agents have for the president and Hillary Clinton, it's likely that the conversation drifted into "Gee, Mr. Trump, we're with you all the way. We'd like to shoot the bitch too, but you just can't say it out loud, dude, okay?
Surprise, surprise! Juliet Linderman and Eric Tucker of the AP: "With startling statistics, a federal investigation of the Baltimore Police Department documents in 164 single-spaced pages what black residents have been saying for years: They are routinely singled out, roughed up or otherwise mistreated by officers, often for no reason...Among other findings: Blacks account for 63 percent of the city's population and roughly 84 percent of all police stops. From 2010 to 2015, officers stopped 34 black residents 20 times, and seven African-Americans 30 times or more.... The direction often came from the top: In one instance, a police supervisor told a subordinate to 'make something up' after the officer protested an order to stop and question a group of young black men for no reason."
... Akhilleus: Abject apologies forthcoming from Confederate politicians and winger pundits who blamed Baltimore's black community for all the problems they outlined and questioned their honesty about police interactions. Any day now...waiting, waiting....
Rem Reider of USA Today: "Time after time, Trump creates widespread fallout with his latest outrage, whose fault is it? Yep, the media. Remember the flap over a Trump tweet that many considered anti-Semitic, featuring a Star of David, $100 bills and Hillary Clinton? That wasn't on him. 'Dishonest media is trying their absolute best to depict a star in a tweet as the Star of David rather than a Sheriff's Star, or plain star,' he tweeted. That time he said Sen. John McCain wasn't a war hero? The media's fault. His racist remarks about the judge in the Trump U. case? The media again. The ejection of the crying baby? You guessed it.
Akhilleus: The Party of Personal Responsibility has another winner!
Regulation works? Unpossible! Ryan Miller of USA Today: "... the rate of earthquakes in [Oklahoma] in 2016 is down from last year. The state has been shaken by 448 magnitude-3.0 and greater quakes so far this year, down from the 558 it experienced in the same time frame in 2015. Increased regulation on wastewater disposal related to oil and gas extraction could be one reason behind the decline, said Robert Williams, a geophysicist at the United States Geological Survey. Wastewater disposal is linked to quakes in Oklahoma and other states.... In March, a USGS report linked activities related to oil and gas extraction, notably wastewater disposal, to seismic activity. The report found that Oklahoma along with five other states -- Kansas, Texas, Colorado, New Mexico and Arkansas -- faced the highest potential for earthquake hazards."
Akhilleus: Must be Obama's fault! Oh, wait....no...we didn't mean that...
*****
Presidential Race
Nick Corasaniti & Maggie Haberman of the New York Times: "Donald J. Trump on Tuesday appeared to raise the possibility that gun rights supporters could take matters into their own hands if Hillary Clinton is elected president and appoints judges who favor stricter gun control measures. Repeating his contention that Mrs. Clinton wanted to abolish the right to bear arms, Mr. Trump warned at a rally [in Wilmington, N.C.,] that it would be 'a horrible day' if Mrs. Clinton were elected and got to appoint a tiebreaking Supreme Court justice. 'If she gets to pick her judges, nothing you can do, folks,' Mr. Trump said, as the crowd began to boo. He quickly added: 'Although the Second Amendment people -- maybe there is, I don't know.'... Mr. Trump and his campaign ... insisted he was merely urging gun rights supporters to vote as a bloc against Mrs. Clinton in November.... But at his rally..., Mr. Trump had actually been discussing what could happen once Mrs. Clinton was president, not before the election." -- CW ...
... Isaac Stanley-Becker & Sean Sullivan of the Washington Post: "The denouncements came swiftly from Clinton's campaign and her allies -- and from outside politics. The insinuation, critics said, was that Trump was inciting his followers to bear arms against a sitting president. And Trump's response was just as swift: He'd said nothing of the sort but was merely encouraging gun rights advocates to be politically involved. The pattern has repeated itself again and again. First come Trump's attention-getting expressions. Then come the outraged reactions. The headlines follow. Finally, Trump, his aides and his supporters lash out at the media, accusing journalists of twisting his words or missing the joke.... And with each new example, Trump's rhetorical asides grow more alarming to many who hear them.... One common thread linking many of Trump's more controversial comments and actions is that he denies having said or done them.... The Secret Service acknowledged Tuesday in a tweet that agents were 'aware' of the episode." -- CW ...
Nobody who is seeking a leadership position -- especially the presidency, the leadership of the country -- should do anything to countenance violence, and that's what he was saying.... I think Donald Trump revealed again, many other statements have revealed the same thing, it just revealed a complete temperamental misfit with the character that is required to do the job. I don't find the attempt to row it backward persuasive at all. -- Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va), Clinton's running mate, in Austin, Texas
Don't treat this as a political misstep. It's an assassination threat, seriously upping the possibility of a national tragedy & crisis. -- Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.), in a tweet ...
... Zack Beauchamp of Vox: "Jokes about socially unacceptable things aren't just 'jokes.' They serve a function of normalizing that unacceptable thing, of telling the people who agree with you that, yes, this is an okay thing to talk about. Trump is signaling that assassinating Hillary Clinton and/or her Supreme Court nominees is an okay thing to talk about. He's normalizing the unacceptable." -- CW ...
... CW: One of the reasons "joking" about assassinating Hillary Clinton is so "funny" is that jokes about violence against women are delightful. ...
My favorite part [of 'Pulp Fiction'] is when Sam has his gun out in the diner and he tells the guy to tell his girlfriend to shut up. Tell that bitch to be cool. Say: 'Bitch be cool.' I love those lines. -- TrumpNation: The Art of Being The Donald, 2005 ...
... New York Times Editors: "... one day after his running mate promised 'specific policy proposals for how we rebuild this country...,' Americans find themselves asking whether Donald Trump has called for the assassination of Hillary Clinton.... Was it a threat? Mr. Trump's campaign has been marked by extraordinarily combative rhetoric. At another rally, he said he would like to punch a protester in the face and see him leave 'on a stretcher.' His supporters have shouted 'kill her' when he mentions Mrs. Clinton.... A New Hampshire delegate, Al Baldasaro, called for Mrs. Clinton to 'be put in the firing line and shot for treason.' That comment wound up on the Secret Service's radar. Mr. Trump's comment should as well. Seldom, if ever, have Americans been exposed to a candidate so willing to descend to the depths of bigotry and intolerance as Mr. Trump.... The time has come for Republicans ... to repudiate Mr. Trump once and for all." -- CW ...
... Washington Post Editors: "By seeming to encourage armed insurrection against a Hillary Clinton administration, Mr. Trump has recklessly magnified the danger of his previous claim that the election is being 'rigged' against him. And encouraging armed resistance against the federal government is not the most worrisome of possible meanings. Other listeners assumed that Mr. Trump was encouraging supporters to train their weapons on Ms. Clinton herself. As is often the case, Mr. Trump was incoherent enough to permit more than one plausible interpretation of his words.... A spokesman’s after-the-fact explanation did not clear the bar of plausibility." -- CW ...
... New York Daily News Editors: "Donald Trump must end his campaign for the White House in a reckoning with his own madness, while praying that nothing comes of his musing about an assassination of Hillary Clinton. In the event that Trump fails to abandon his candidacy -- as he seems determined to -- the Republican Party, including vice presidential nominee Mike Pence, must instead abandon Trump for toying with political bloodshed." -- CW ...
... Charles Pierce: "Is that The Line? You know, The Line, the one that He, Trump has to cross before the entire Republican Party, not to mention a good portion of the human race, finds him too revolting for their delicate stomachs? What say you, Paul Ryan? Is that the line? John McCain? Mitch McConnell? All you clowns in the tricorns and the Watering The Tree Of Liberty tank tops? What say you all? Do you stand by this?" -- CW ...
... Dan Rather on Facebook: "No trying-to-be objective and fair journalist, no citizen who cares about the country and its future can ignore what Donald Trump said [Tuesday]. When he suggested that 'The Second Amendment People' can stop Hillary Clinton he crossed a line with dangerous potential. By any objective analysis, this is a new low and unprecedented in the history of American presidential politics.... This is a direct threat of violence against a political rival. It is not just against the norms of American politics, it raises a serious question of whether it is against the law." -- CW ...
... Steve M.: "Today, Donald Trump was talking about shooting (or threatening to shoot) somebody. The only question is whether it was Hillary Clinton or judges she'll appoint as president." Steve doesn't think Republican "leaders" have the fortitude to repudiate Trump. -- CW ...
... Tom Friedman: "And that, ladies and gentlemen, is how Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin got assassinated. His right-wing opponents just kept delegitimizing him as a 'traitor' and 'a Nazi' for wanting to make peace with the Palestinians and give back part of the Land of Israel.... A U.S.-based columnist for Israel's Haaretz newspaper, Chemi Shalev, wrote: 'Like the extreme right in Israel, many Republicans conveniently ignore the fact that words can kill. There are enough people with a tendency for violence that cannot distinguish between political stagecraft and practical exhortations to rescue the country by any available means. If anyone has doubts, they could use a short session with Yigal Amir, Yitzhak Rabin's assassin, who was inspired by the rabid rhetoric hurled at the Israeli prime minister in the wake of the Oslo accords.'" -- CW ...
... Ed Kilgore: "... even as they condemn the shocking utterance, a lot of observers seem to be missing the fact that Trump is adapting a dangerously common right-wing claim. It's that the most important purpose of the Second Amendment is ... to create a heavily armed populace prepared to undertake revolutionary violence if the government tries to impose 'tyranny.'... The most common use of this 'right to revolution' argument, however, is to threaten anyone who doesn't bend the knee to the Second Amendment itself. So it makes even the blandest support for gun-safety legislation self-evident proof of 'tyranny' justifying even more stockpiling of lethal weapons to be used against 'government.'" ...
... CW: And, as Stanley-Becker & Sullivan of the WashPo point out (linked above), "Clinton has never said she wants to eliminate the Second Amendment. Even if she did, neither the president nor the Supreme Court nor lower-level federal judges have the power to do so."
... Kevin Drum: "This is yet another example of Trump stepping all over his own message. Yesterday's big economic speech was supposed to be the latest of his endlessly promised turning points toward greater seriousness, which would allow the news cycle to move off of Trump's latest gaffe-of-the-day.... But within 24 hours of being unchained from his teleprompter, all that was toast. Nobody cares about his economic policies anymore. They just want to know why Trump thinks it's OK to rally his supporters in favor of murdering Hillary Clinton." -- CW
Alex Altman & Zeke Miller of Time: "Donald Trump said Tuesday that he will commit to three debates this fall with ... Hillary Clinton, but may try to re-negotiate the terms that have been agreed upon by a bipartisan commission. 'I will absolutely do three debates,' Trump told Time in a phone interview. 'I want to debate very badly. But I have to see the conditions.'... The [Commission on Presidential Debates] ... has already ... set ... the format of each 90-minute debate. But ... [Trump] noted that he had haggled with television networks over the terms of debates held during the GOP primary and might do so again.... Trump said he reserved the right to object to the commission's choice of moderators, which have not yet been announced." -- CW ...
... David Graham of the Atlantic: "Trump's approach to the debates so far suggests that he either does not understand the difference between the structures of primary and general-election debates, or he believes he can bend the general debates to his will just as he did the primaries.... For Trump, the danger is that he could look cowardly for refusing to debate Clinton, especially if he's already trailing in the polls. Given the tough-guy image he's worked to cultivate, that would be particularly embarrassing." -- CW
Ezra Klein: "Donald Trump's big economic speech ... clarified the precarious place his campaign has come to rest. Trump has merged the weaknesses of an unqualified, outsider candidacy with the unpopular, plutocratic tilt of the conservative billionaire class's policy preferences. It's a worst-of-both-worlds campaign.... What Trump has done is crib the basic structure of the House GOP's tax plan, which is one of the single most unpopular policy documents that exists in American politics.... Trump's health care plan follows the same grooves.... Meanwhile, his polls show that he's a singularly poor messenger for any kind of policy plan, because he's managed to position himself as the kind of outsider who Americans think can't understand the political system, rather than the kind of outsider who can fix it." -- CW
CW: I don't pay much attention to polls till close to an election, but Eric Levitz of New York points to an interesting one: "Nearly one-fifth of registered Republicans wish they hadn't invited Donald Trump to this party and are praying he'll just leave now, before embarrassing them further. In a Reuters/Ipsos poll released Wednesday, 19 percent of GOP voters say they want Trump to drop out of the presidential race, while another 10 percent say they don't know whether or not their standard-bearer should take the unprecedented step of ending his campaign four months early. Among all registered voters, 44 percent would like Trump to go fire himself. Until recently, the Republican rank and file has been (relatively) unified behind their party's nominee." -- CW
Mark Murray of NBC News: "Nearly $100 million has been spent on general-election TV advertisements in the presidential race since the primary season ended, but Donald Trump's campaign still hasn't spent a single cent on one of them. This lack of advertising is all more striking given Trump's deficit in the polls -- as well as the recent influx of campaign contributions he's reportedly raked in." -- CW
Eric Lichtblau of the New York Times: "A new batch of State Department emails released Tuesday showed the close and sometimes overlapping interests between the Clinton Foundation and the State Department when Hillary Clinton served as secretary of state. The documents raised new questions about whether the charitable foundation worked to reward its donors with access and influence at the State Department, a charge that Mrs. Clinton has faced in the past and has always denied. In one email exchange, for instance, an executive at the Clinton Foundation in 2009 sought to put a billionaire donor in touch with the United States ambassador to Lebanon because of the donor's interests there. In another email, the foundation appeared to push aides to Mrs. Clinton to help find a job for a foundation associate. Her aides indicated that the department was working on the request." -- CW
... Isaac Stanley-Becker of the Washington Post: The papers of Diane Blair, Hillary Clinton's long-time friend, provide "one of the most comprehensive portraits" of Clinton. -- CW ...
... Amy Chozick of the New York Times: Hillary was long the breadwinner in the Clinton family & took responsibility for domestic matters while Bill was concerned onlyabout himself. The article focuses on the period after Bill Clinton lost his 1980 race for re-election.
CW: If anyone's eyebrows were raised by yesterday's story that Seddique Mateen, the father of the Orlando mass murderer, was seated behind Hillary Clinton at her Orlando-area rally Monday (I wasn't; I ignored the story), Adam Kelsey of ABC News explains how that happened.
Congressional Races
Craig Gilbert of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: "House Speaker Paul Ryan routed political newcomer Paul Nehlen Tuesday in a lopsided GOP primary that was overtaken in its closing days by the endless drama and discord around Republican nominee Donald Trump. Ryan was leading Nehlen by almost 70 points in Wisconsin's 1st Congressional District with most of the ballots counted. He will face Ryan Solen, who won the Democratic primary over Tom Breu." -- CW
Brian Early of SeacoastOnline: "Sen. Kelly Ayotte affirmed her decision to support Donald Trump a day after fellow Republican and Maine Sen. Susan Collins wrote in an op-ed that she could not support the party's presidential nominee." Thanks to MAG for the link. -- CW ...
... CW: New Hampshire doesn't have a Senate candidate with guts. Last November, Gov. Maggie Hassan (D), who is challenging Ayotte, "call[ed] for a complete freeze of Syrian refugees entering the United States until the government can 'ensure robust refugee screening.'" -- CW
Other News & Views
Sens. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) & Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), in a Washington Post op-ed: "For years, ExxonMobil actively advanced the notion that its products had little or no impact on the Earth's environment.... Now the attorneys general of Massachusetts and New York are investigating whether ExxonMobil violated state laws by knowingly misleading their residents and shareholders about climate change.... House Science, Space and Technology Committee Chairman Lamar Smith (R-Tex.) and his fellow committee Republicans have issued subpoenas demanding that the state officials fork over all materials relating to their investigations. They also targeted eight organizations ... with similar subpoenas.... So far, both AGs and all eight organizations have refused to comply. We say, good for them.... Smith has received nearly $685,000 in campaign contributions from the oil and gas industry during his career. Now he is using his committee to harass the investigators and bully [others]...." -- CW
Peter Hermann, et al., of the Washington Post: "The Baltimore Police Department has engaged in years of racially discriminatory policing that targeted black residents, illegally detaining and searching people and using excessive force, the Justice Department concludes in a report released Tuesday." -- CW
Peter Hermann & Clarence Richards of the Washington Post: "On Tuesday, WikiLeaks shoved ... conspiracy theories into the mainstream when it announced on Twitter a $20,000 reward for information leading to a conviction in" [the murder of Seth Rich]..., a staffer with the Democratic National Committee.... D.C. police believe [he] was [killed in] an attempted robbery.... The editor of WikiLeaks, Julian Assange, said in a statement issued through an intermediary that he would not confirm or deny whether Rich or any person was a source for the organization...." -- CW
Beyond the Beltway
Charlotte, Florida Sun: "A Punta Gorda police officer accidentally shot and killed a woman during a Citizens Academy on Tuesday evening. Mary Knowlton, 73, was shot during a roleplay scenario in which the officer was playing a 'bad guy' and fired several times at the woman who was supposed to be playing the victim, according to ... a photographer who was covering the event for the Sun and witnessed the incident." The Washington Post story, by Katie Mettler, is here. CW: You are never safe from the cops.
Lauren McGaughy of the Dallas Morning News: "Three professors duking it out in court for the right to ban guns in their classrooms were told Monday they will be punished if they do.... 'Faculty members are aware that state law provides that guns can be carried on campus, and that the president has not made a rule excluding them from classrooms,' attorneys representing the University of Texas at Austin and Attorney General Ken Paxton wrote in a legal brief filed Monday. 'As a result, any individual professor who attempts to establish such prohibition is subject to discipline.'" -- CW
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Reader Comments (18)
Talk about parsing! It's a contagion! Talk about dissembling!
Talk about UTTER nonsense.
The ship is sinking! Lash the lady to the mast. " Standing by your madman " ...one more example of no convictions, no courage, no guts.
Ayotte said, as she has in the past, that she is voting for Trump but “not endorsing him because I have disagreements with him.
Say what? (I'll marry you, but no sex. OK, we'll have sex, but...?)
Then, per Gloria's assessment under yesterday's "Six Degrees of Stupid,"on the PBS NewsHour's interview with "mealy-mouthed" Sen. Susan Collins—we appear to get still another sideways, one-step forward, and two-steps backpedaling. Let me see, she's NOT voting for Trump, she's NOT voting for Clinton...(from a strong WaPo OpEd piece one day to more Profiles in Political Perfidy another). Right!
Trump did not tell gun owners to kill Clinton (although some might use it as an excuse). No, he just tried to attach his loud mouth to his tiny brain. Add that to the fact that he absolutely never thinks about what he is about to say. Plan? Why plan when you are perfect.
Just another Trump day. Lots more to come.
On another matter, Trump will only debate if the panel is all from FOX
'news'.
@Marvin Schwalb: but not Megyn Kelly. More like, "will only debate if the panel is all from Breitbart News. Matt Drudge possibly negotiable."
Marie
.... and have great asses.
"Political Perfidy!" Nice, MAG. Very nice, and those so bon mots cover so much.
Checked in last time with reference to the Greedy Old Party and see today we have Lamar Smith and his cronies doing what they can (in this case political perversion added to perfidy, using their investigative powers to obscure, not reveal) to protect their Big Oil donors, dutifully providing cover for their huckster masters, these yapping lapdogs running around the medicine wagon, distracting with their noise anyone who wants to know what their masters are really selling.
Pretty much covers it, I think. A few cliches, but no more pretensions to seriousness. The GOP sells nothing but snake oil. Put the mishmash of Trump aside if you can, and we still have economic balderdash, innumeracy and scientific illiteracy, a foreign policy mired in a flat earth view of the world, and a morality that would puzzle a pink-cheeked catechist about to receive his first communion.
The GOP is today (thanks, Jerry) the Party of Nothing.
Nothing but money, of course.
@Ken. Thanks, it felt 'inspired' as I wrote Political Perfidy, but just decided to do a Google search and drat: (it's so hard to be original these days!...or among the first) :
The History of Germany: From the Earliest Period to 1842 " Wolfgang Menzel " 1908 - " ...with which they emulated the sovereigns of France in the art of political perfidy, of diplomatic falsehood, of insidious ..."
I think it's way past time for the media and others to stop asking
"what do you think trump said?", or "what do you think trump meant?
Anyone with ears and eyes can hear and see exactly what he says.
We don't need to analyze and analyze and wonder what he meant.
He said that after Mrs Clinton gets elected and gets to pick her justices the 2nd amendment people could do something.
He didn't say the 2nd amendment people should get out and vote
against her, Period.
And if a peon like me suggested something like that, the FBI would
be on my doorstep pronto.
Trump is not the only GOP liar, just the biggest one
But he certainly has a knack for surrounding himself with other Confederate liars, of whom there is no dearth. In fact, there must be a kind of Dollar General store for GOP liars, they are so plentiful. And cheap, too!
As a public service, I am offering a momentary respite from Assassination Encourager in Chief, Trvmpvs, toward the guy who hopes to be able to grab hold of the tiny Trumpy member and keep it warm while the AE in C moves into the new gold plated bunker that will be constructed somewhere under the White House.
Bridgegate (remember that?), is back in the news this morning. The news? Christie lied about the involvement of at least one of his aides. Okay, not really news; the possibility that Christie has been telling the truth about his non-involvement and/or knowledge of a very nasty, childish, and bullying bridge closing that resulted in the death of a NJ resident is about on a par with Donald Trump owning a lifetime subscription to Ms. Magazine.
According to new court filings "Christina Renna, who worked under deputy chief of staff Bridget Anne Kelly, texted [Christie aide, Peter Sheridan]: 'Are you listening? He just flat out lied about senior staff and (former deputy chief of staff Bill) Stepien not being involved.' Renna...added that if emails were uncovered in court discovery, 'it could be bad.'"
Oh gee, ya think?
Trials start in September for the flunkies Christie threw under the bus to protect his substantial posterior. This revelation might put Christie in Dutch with the Big Liar. Just as Donaldo doesn't cotton to war heroes being tortured in a prisoner of war camp (while he fought the good fight back in NYC, bounding from bedroom to bedroom), he doesn't like lying liars who get caught telling lies. At the very least, Christie should blame the bridge closing on Clinton and Obama.
Wondering if the Human Genome Project has located the genes for "flat out lying" on Republican politician DNA. The sequence must be enormous.
Forrest,
Hear, hear. The pusillanimous parsing of Trump's direct statements so as to deflect the light of truth has become an outrageous affront to decency, not to mention responsible journalism. A piece on NPR (among many other outlets) asks "Whatever could Trumpy have meant? We wonder!" and this morning a "news" report helpfully quoted Paul Ryan (talk about liars!) who wagged his finger at any Trump critics by whining that "It was just a joke".
No, it wasn't. And reporting it that way is no joke either. And this is from fucking NPR, fer crissakes. The rest of the media is in a tizzy about how to report this and, of course, it's necessary to dutifully play back the lies and fabrications of Trump's many Confederate supporters of assassination as a political tool.
Trump wondered aloud whether it might not be a bad idea for Confederate whackos to murder Hillary Clinton, and maybe a few judges, while they're at it.
That's it. That's what he said. It wasn't some exercise in "unification" whatever the fuck that means (who came up with that bullshit excuse?). It wasn't a hypothetical either (even though that would be plenty bad enough to have the FBI knocking down anyone else's door). It wasn't a fantasy and it wasn't a joke. Trump point blank stated that "second amendment" people could take care of business and not have to worry about Clinton or any SCOTUS judges she might appoint if elected. The simple solution is to shoot her.
That's what he said. But there must be several thousand stories out there that obsequiously diminish the lede with an immediate quote from one of the Trvmpvs body servants calling any reporting of the truth of his statement "ridiculous".
And we all know what would happen were one of the gun knobbers to take Trump up on his suggestion of murdering Hillary Clinton. Plenty of disavowals and "prayers for the family", and hand wringing, and "Oh isn't that too bad".
The only thing Trump left out this time was the rhetorical protection he typically uses to insulate him from the consequences of his worst lies, the "many people have said" gambit, as in "I've heard many people say that there wouldn't be much we could do once Hillary was elected, unless, of course, someone decided to murder her."
And still, the moral pygmies sit on their hands and decline to retract any endorsements from this disgrace of a human being.
This is several parsecs beyond "unhinged". Louie Gohmert is unhinged. Sarah Palin is unhinged. These are the thoughts of the criminally insane. This is not far off from the Speaker of the House and the Senate Majority Leader supporting Ted Bundy for president.
Akhilleus,
I remember the days when I feelingly referred to Bush II as Liar in Chief, as if it were something new. Rightly or not, in response to all the obvious lies that led to the Iraq debacle, my outrage at the GOP of that time grew to new proportions.
I knew that since Nixon (surely an aberration), lies had certainly not been foreign territory for the GOP, but over the years what they said did occasionally have the ring of truth, in part because the domestic world they appealed to, the world of white, economically successful, upwardly mobile small businessmen and first-step-on-the-ladder professionals, even if unimaginative, did exist in large enough numbers to support them. No longer. So even the social and economic truths spouted by the GOP that once possessed an air of truth are now obvious fabrications. The GOP is truly OLD. Conservative now means clinging to things that don't exist, left gasping and flopping on the beach by history's receding tide.
Now that the GOP is nothing but the unabashed party of naked greed and nativism, its adherents must reside in a counter-factual universe. What truth could they possibly tell that would not reveal them (to others and, worse, themselves) to be what they are?
If it reveals nothing but ugly, a forthright look in the mirror is just too tough to take.
Although there is a very interesting sidebar consideration to Trump's calls for assassination as the answer to a political contretemps.
He seems to be assuming that gun owners are naturally bloodthirsty kooks, unstable enough (or maybe he doesn't consider such actions unstable at all) to jump at the chance to use their brand spankin' new murder machines to annihilate his political rival and her inconvenient policies.
Isn't this 180 degrees off from the usual NRA crap about gun knobbers being peaceful, fun-lovin', Jesus fearin' family type critters who just use their large caliber, high capacity automatic weapons for hunting squirrels and for home protection from that mom and dad and their ISIS loving 9 year old next door?
"Oh man, when them Second Amendment types hear about this, your ass is grass, baby."
How much longer can Trump continue getting away with his vile statements? If, as Ak pointed out that Paul Ryan said, "It was just a joke." looks like the GOP aiding & abetting will continue, yet...
This is scandalous? " SOS e-mails outrage again " the latest much-ado-about-nothing that was found in new e-mails:
"In one email exchange, for instance, an executive at the Clinton Foundation in 2009 sought to put a billionaire donor in touch with the United States ambassador to Lebanon because of the donor’s interests there.
In another email, the foundation appeared to push aides to Mrs. Clinton to help find a job for a foundation associate. Her aides indicated that the department was working on the request."
Shoulder-shrugging requests that seem like business-as-usual as to how the world works stuff to me. Give me a break. There's far more insidious, real pay-to-play that goes on behind the scenes in DC—from lobbyists and fat cat contributors.
Whereas, Trump gets away with figurative murder.
Here's an interview with some 2nd-A gunknobbers and ammosexuals here in the Yoo Ess by Germany's Der Spiegel. Although the page text is in German (if using Chrome, right click and select "Translate to English"), the video is in English.
Ken,
It's quite true that lying is not the sole province of Republicans. Bill Clinton, for one, was a pretty disgusting liar when it suited him. But here's the difference. Clinton lied about a blow job. He lied to save face. Bush--and Nixon before him--lied in order to kill people. Thousands of them. Yes, both Democrats and Republicans lie, but Democrats' lies tend to be of the ass-saving variety. Lies, yes, but scurrilous, nation and world changing, shock and awe, death from the skies lies? Hell, no.
Republicans lie to fuck people over, to steal their money, and to drape themselves in glory and rancid, faux patriotism.
But the progression of Republican lying, in number and scale, which scandalously and ignobly pinned the needle under The Decider and his pet leg breaker, has, under the reign of the King of Lies, become so ubiquitous and outrageously transparent as to make any measuring scale a useless abstraction. It would be like trying to use a Geiger counter to measure radiation at the core of the Big Bang.
But you're right. In order to stave off the inevitable psychotic break that must occur when one's fantasy world has become manifestly unsupportable, the lying must arise unbidden. It must ever reside in the most accessible, but carefully guarded pockets of the lizard brain, able in an instant to provide cover, no matter how dirty, no matter how disgracefully baseless, no matter how indecent, or inhuman, for the astonishingly prevalent moral turpitude that befouls nearly all words and actions spewing out of the filthy maw of Right-Wing World.
And their electoral supporters are right behind them.
Just keep watching Fox, pay no attention to the real world just outside the window. It's all Obama's fault. All Hillary's fault. All the media's fault. All the fault of blacks, of women, of immigrants, of Muslims, of unions, of environmentalists, of scientists, of...
@MAG & Akhilleus: According to Rachel Bade of Politico, "Speaking at a news conference Tuesday night in Wisconsin after his landslide win in a GOP primary, Ryan said he hadn't actually heard Trump's remarks but he had heard about them.
"'I've been a little busy,' Ryan said. 'It sounds like a joke gone bad. You should never joke about that. I hope he clears it up quickly.'"
Sorry, Pauly, I'm not buying the BS answer. First, there's not much for a politician to do on election day except show up at his local polling place & smile for the cameras. Second, Ryan certainly knew that when the presidential candidate he endorsed made history by promoting armed sedition & bloodshed, including assassination, reporters just might ask him about that.
The only way to deal with Ryan is up to the people in his Congressional district: they should vote for Democrat Ryan Solen, (even if he seems to have bought into Pauly's "concern" about the "national debt"). It's not impossible; the district went for Obama in 2008.
Marie
As a NJ resident who has watched Christie wreak the State, I am seriously looking forward to Bridgegate trials starting in Sept. They are going to expose Christie and hopefully send him to jail where he belongs. Of course that would qualify him as Trump's Attorney General.
Marie,
Not to mention the fact that Ryan, one of the putative "leaders" (I realize that "putative" is a sufficient enough question mark, but I'm using the quotes to double down on the spurious nature of the Lying One's status as someone more principled and incorruptible than a three card monte street hustler) of the Confederate Party must have eyes and ears on Donaldo at all times to be able to concoct some embarrassing lie or obvious obfuscation to defend himself against the guilt by association to which his cupidity and moral infirmity have condemned him.
He didn't actually hear the remarks?
That's like saying the flight director in NASA's Mission Control really wasn't paying attention when a message saying "Houston, we have a problem" spilled out over the box.