The MSM, especially some of the emptier teevee suits, are doing what they do and pretending there’s a new statesmanlike Donald Trump. Why? In part because they worship power and winners, but mostly because they cannot help themselves. It’s been happening for a long time. They bought the New Nixon and remember how that turned out; about as well as the New Coke.
We’ve seen this pattern before during this election cycle. The Insult Comedian behaves on election eve-except for the bizarre Trump steaks episode-and immediately relapses. The MSM loves stories of personal growth-even fake ones-and they fall for it like a feral cat baited by a can of tuna. Digression time: why do some people call it tunafish? Seems redundant to me.
Where was I? Oh yeah, the press and the Donald. My esteemed publisher summed it up neatly last night:
Cue a parade of "Donald Trump is acting presidential!" stories from reporters who are supposed to be figuring out if he IS presidential.
— Allison Hantschel (@Athenae) May 4, 2016
Figuring out IF he’s Presidential would be too hard and take them away from the vital task of handicapping the horse race. That’s the same horse shit the punditocracy has been peddling since the dawn of time. Acting is the key word in A’s tweet. The Insult Comedian is always acting, pretending that he’s something he’s not. His insincerity and phoniness are key components of his “authenticity.” The only thing authentic about the Donald is his malakatude.
All the “Trump has grown” crowd has to do is dial the Wayback Machine to Tuesday morning when he was peddling his latest conspiracy theory:
Asked by the “Fox and Friends” crew about the elder Cruz saying not voting for his son could mean “the destruction of America,” Trump veered without warning into conspiracies surrounding Kennedy’s death, without ever mentioning the late President by name.
“It’s disgraceful that his father can go out and do that. And just – so many people are angry about it. And the Evangelicals are angry about it the way he does that. There’s a whole thing,” he said. “You know, his father was with Lee Harvey Oswald prior to Oswald’s being, you know, shot.”
Trump continued: “What is this, right prior to his being shot, and nobody even brings it up. They don’t even talk about that. That was reported and nobody talks about it. But I think it’s horrible. I think it’s absolutely horrible that a man can go and do that. What he’s saying there.”
I have no earthly idea whether Trump believes this nonsense but he *is* a conspiracy buff; remember his birther phase. It was only a matter of time until he cooked up something in conjunction with his fans at the Enquirer. If Cruz hadn’t dropped out, it was only a matter of time until Trump connected the deeply weird Rafael Cruz to Watergate (they were Cubans, right?) or Bigfoot. Isn’t Sasquatch Canadian? The mind reels…
At some point soon, Trump is likely to trot out the Vince Foster conspiracy theory so beloved by wingnuts in the 1990’s. Some of members of Dudebro Nation are so gullible that they’ll believe this specious nonsense. Come on down, Ha Ha Goodman. Lest you think that Senator Sanders would escape the Trumpian smear machine, read this piece by Michelle Goldberg in Slate:
He has never been asked to account for his relationship with the Trotskyist Socialist Workers Party, for which he served as a presidential elector in 1980. At the time, the party’s platform called for abolishing the U.S. military budget and proclaimed “solidarity” with revolutionary Iran. (This was in the middle of the Iranian hostage crisis.) There’s been little cable news chatter about Sanders’ 1985 trip to Nicaragua, where he reportedly joined a Sandinista rally with a crowd chanting, “Here, there, everywhere/ The Yankee will die.” It would be nice if this were due to a national consensus on the criminal nature of America’s support for the Contras. More likely, the media’s attention has simply been elsewhere.
Roger Stone is licking his lips right now. The red baiting bastard is ready to ratfuck the Democratic nominee; at least with HRC we know that her team can take the heat and fire back. I get a kick out of those people who bought Stone’s “separation” from Team Trump. It’s all about deniability when he commences smearing whoever gets in the Insult Comedian’s way. The same people who bought Stone’s cover story are the ones who think Trump will suddenly become Presidential now that he’s the presumptive Republican nominee.
I don’t always agree with New York Magazine’s Jonathan Chait but he nailed it last night:
The paranoid mendacity of Joe McCarthy, the racial pandering of Barry Goldwater, Richard Nixon, and George Bush, the jingoism and anti-intellectualism of Ronald Reagan, George W. Bush, and Sarah Palin — all these forces have embodied the essence of American conservative politics as it is actually practiced (rather than as conservative intellectuals like to imagine it). Trump has finally turned that which was always there against itself.
The next time someone says that Donald Trump has dropped the Insult Comedian shtick and is acting Presidential, remember this:
As I’ve said before, the worst thing about Trump’s ascent is that he’s managed to make me feel sorry for wackos like Cruz father and son. The good news is that my former Governor is now supporting Trump. PBJ’s chosen candidates usually go down to defeat. That’s one reason why Donald Trump will NOT be the first Insult Comedian elected President.
Do you really think you know where the attacks on HRC will come from? I mean, you know they’re going to drag the whole bag of Mena/Vince Foster/Whitewater/Houma/BENGHAZI!!! garbage out to spread around, but did anyone predict that stuff? What makes you so sure they can’t make up new garbage on top of that?
Her team is battle tested unlike the thin-skinned Sanders team. Their reaction is to freak out and preach whenever his purity is question.
Your point did have some merit so I edited the line to reflect my other comment. Thanks for keeping me on my toes.
Preliminary comment: darrelplant is right. While it’s as predictable as rain in April that some of the attacks against Clinton will center on the usual suspects, there will be a passel of new attacks that sprout like mushrooms after those rains.
The breastbeating and rending of garments currently going on among some Republicans puzzles me. Isn’t Trump the apotheosis of everything Republicans have been yammering about for the last 40 years? They’ve gotten the very candidate they’ve craved: Businessman; immune to the blandishments of special interests; proudly politically incorrect; scion of a wealthy family; not an ivory tower egghead; telegenic (that is, can perform glibly in front of the camera, not a stiff like Romney); and so forth.
Now that they have the very man they’ve waited for all these years, they’re not happy! Just baffling.
That’s why I edited that portion. Roger Stone is an experienced and creative ratfucker.
It took me a while to compose my brilliant reply, which was obviously so persuasive that you edited yours even before I posted it.
I’m still not sure why so many Republicans are dissatisfied with their party’s national standard bearer, since he bulls-eyes so many of the characteristics they prize so highly.
I don’t see what all the fuss is about. Trump is a pretty ordinary Republican candidate. He is for the rich and powerful and against everyone else including most of his own constituents. They love that. The only differences are that the Republicans have now completely abandoned the evangelicals and the elites are rethinking their stand on free trade. The evangelicals are played out demographically, and China is too big and nationalistic to be bought and owned by OUR elite. As for the supposed Republican anyone-but-Trump bleating, I call briar patch.
do you REALLY think the stupids who like trump CARE? they do not. rational thinking? that like trump + there are way more stupid unhappy people at the bottom.
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