Apparently, Donald Trump’s campaign manager Corey Lewandowski will be entering the job market, as he has been fired reportedly at the insistence of The Donald’s three adult children. I suppose something had to give, and now the Trump for the Nuclear Codes campaign will be solidly in the hands of Paul Manafort. If you haven’t familiarized yourself with Manafort’s tortured history of lobbying for Human Rights abusers, now is the time to resolve that for yourself.
Lewandowski can comfort himself, I suppose, that he presided over an historically successful primary campaign and even managed to beat an assault rap in the process. But his strategy of “Letting Trump Be Trump” clearly wasn’t working in the general election campaign, as the polling evidence continues to mount that Trump is effectively a dead parrot, pining for the fjords.
Manafort has helped a lot of other controversial political leaders, for example, Jonas Savimbi and Ferdinand Marcos and Mobutu Sese Seko. He also had a neat role in The Karachi Affair, which I guess all Americans should now research considering the prominent role that Manafort will have in the campaign and in any future Trump White House.
I suppose Manafort will try to get Trump not to be Trump, and we’ll just have to give him a few weeks to see if he can succeed in that endeavor. In the meantime, he’ll probably face fewer roadblocks in trying to turn the campaign into something resembling a real presidential challenge.
Can we finally call this Trump 2.0?
When Trump has an audience his over blown ego has to come out of his mouth. There is nothing that anyone will be able to do to stop Trump’s mouth. Trump believes that all the world loves what he says and blames all others around him when things do not turn out the way he wants.
Every day more bizarre. Next we’ll see Trump announce Roger Stone as his VP pick, seriously!
I guess Charlie Sheen is out: http://wonkette.com/603191/charlie-sheen-donald-trump-wedding-gift-cufflinks
That would be too much winning, anyway.
Everyone likes to chatter and gossip about Donald Trump—he likes to talk about himself too—but he has no chance of becoming president. Does anyone really think he does? Where is Hillary Clinton in all of this?
Every blogger and pundit said a year ago that he had no chance of becoming the GOP nominee.
Precisely.
Every blogger but me.
And he outlined to the media how he was going to do it. He was going to be a slowly-moving train wreck that people could not ignore and would vote for to see if he could make
American IdolPresident of the United States.Political discussion is now consumed with him and Democrats are so distracted because they can’t keep from commenting on his shenanigans.
There is no construction of a political mandate going on in this election. That is dangerous. It allows the President to claim a mandate for anything just because they got elected. There is no way for the public to come back with “No, this is not what we voted for.”
Mandates mean absolutely nothing. Neither FDR nor LBJ had any kind of mandate for major liberal reforms – FDR ran on balancing the budget, and LBJ ran on “keep the crazy guy away from the launch codes”. What matters is legislative seats.
FDR ran on ending the Great Depression. The public understood it that way and rewarded him because he did deliver on that mandate.
LBJ did run on keeping Goldwater from the launch codes. LBJ did fulfill that mandate.
Without mandates to hold candidates to, there is no basis for accountability at all.
Without a mandate, citizens really have no reason to vote at all. They are electing pigs-in-a-poke.
You read this crap like the comment you responded to and it is amazing.
LBJ ran on Civil Rights and the War on Poverty in ’64.
He passed a bill before the election, and made promises at the ’64 convention that there was more to come.
The truth is 180 degrees opposite to what the comment you responded to said.
Your comment is historically inaccurate.
VERY inaccurate.
Tarheel, let’s acknowledge the fact that Hillary is running a campaign which identifies a policy agenda, a comprehensive set of proposals. She has provided us the political mandate. It’s false to infer that the public has not been told, and will continue to be told, what Hillary wants to accomplish in office.
That is not the center of her campaign. A policy paper posted to a website does not a mandate make, particularly if your primary message is about Trump.
So how is it that you say LBJ’s platform counts, even though he spent his entire campaign talking about how bad a president Goldwater would be, but when Hillary does the same it doesn’t count?
Your knowledge of 1964 is nil.
You do realize the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was passed in the election year, and LBJ made it clear to everyone that a key component of his next term would be a voting rights act?
And everyone knew it – which was why LBJ lost the South in 1964.
Every speech he gave was about his intent to go after poverty.
Honestly you don’t know what you are talking about.
You mean speeches where he says things like this?:
You really aren’t worth the time arguing with – your knowledge of 1964 is non-existent.
You do realize the start of the War on Poverty began in 1964?
Congress adopted the Economic Opportunity Act of 1964 (EOA) (P.L. 88-452, 78 Stat. 508) when President Lyndon Johnson was in office. In his first State of the Union message, President Johnson declared the EOA would launch the “war on poverty.” At the signing ceremony, the president said the American people were making history:
For so long as man has lived on this earth poverty has been his curse. On every continent in every age men have sought escape from poverty’s oppression. Today for the first time in all history of the human race, a great nation is able to make and is willing to make a commitment to eradicate poverty among its people.
The philosophy behind the statute was not wealth distribution, but the belief that government can and must provide poor people with opportunities to earn a decent living and maintain their families in a comfortable living standard. President Johnson identified the constitutional basis for the legislation, stating, “The Congress is charged by the Constitution ‘to provide … for the general welfare of the United States.'”
Yeah, and LBJ ran heavily and explicitly against a bellicose foreign policy…
…and then promptly got us much more involved in Vietnam.
I disagree with you. Hillary’s policy prescriptions have been at the center of her campaign, to the point that she has received much criticism for being too wonky on the campaign trail.
Look at how she launched her campaign:
Detailed explanations of the problems we face and the ways we can solve them. Sanders supporters would find little to disagree with here.
Right now, Hillary and her campaign surrogates are hammering on Trump, and that’s absolutely the right thing to be doing, because Trump badly need to be redefined. The claim that he will be the defender of the lower and middle classes, white or otherwise, is not supported by his shabby policies, or by anything he has done in his life. It’s particularly productive to be doing this right now, while Trump’s campaign and the Republican Party are spinning their wheels, unable and/or unwilling to positively defend the Republican nominee.
Meanwhile, here’s some media her campaign is running:
You can choose to pay attention to her campaign or ignore it. I just wish you and others wouldn’t make false claims about it.
That’s the “hot hand fallacy” (which I happily admit I only know about from The Big Short).
We went through this yesterday, at some length. The idea is that his ability to do one unlikely thing does not translate at all into an ability to do the other unlikely thing because they’re profoundly different tasks.
The problem is compounded by the fact that Trump himself doesn’t seem to understand this at all. The GOP leaders do, which is why they’ve always been apoplectic about what a disaster his nomination will be, for them — but Trump keeps obliviously saying, “You didn’t think I’d win the primaries, but I did, so you’re therefore wrong about how I’ll do in the general.” It’s the same fallacy.
Interestingly, since so many Hitler comparisons have been made, it’s actually very Hitler like. Because he was right and everyone else was wrong about the Sudetenland and Munich (Hitler thought he’d get away with it; nobody else did; it worked) he used the same fallacious argument to defend his later, disastrous military overreaches. Any time anyone said, “Fuehrer, what you’re planning to do next will be impossible,” he would furiously respond, “So was my initial land grab! And that worked brilliantly, despite you nay-sayers insisting it was ‘impossible’!” It’s exactly the same hubristic false logic.
No one yet is effectively countering him. Moreover no one yet is hanging him around the neck of every single Republican running this year.
Maybe that’s because the RNC convention has not made it a done deal yet.
Narcissists see accomplishment not as a matter of skill but as a matter of personal identity. Those who have successfully bullshitted their way through life mistake their forked tongue for brilliance and omnipotence. The next gull always reinforces that opinion.
“Narcissists see accomplishment not as a matter of skill but as a matter of personal identity.”
That is extremely astute! Thank you for that. I’d never quite conceptualized it that way before…it’s a fascinating train of thought.
Of course, you’re absolutely right about Trump. It’s right there, in his remarks: “That’s what I do…I win.”
And his critiques of others as “losers” (like, say, a newspaper that’s in the red) involve the same idea. You can’t listen to this person or this publication when they criticize me, since they have failed in another area, or in general…so therefore they can’t be correct. They are intrinsically wrong because they’re losers.
Wow! That really fits someone we aren’t allowed to criticize any more.
May be a “hot house fallacy” on Trump’s, but doesn’t address why those here at the Pond that got it completely wrong a year ago about Trump’s chances can now be expected to make better election projection calls.
it’s been addressed repeatedly here.
e.g.
I think she’s playing the “If your opponent is killing himself, leave him to it” game.
That’s rich, that she (her consultants) would think that. Why would they?
her opponent is killing himself (see new fundraising/cash-on-hand report, massive GOP freakout)?
Interesting observation:
They want Trump to drop the themes he won on, stopping illegal immigration, junking trade deals, and keeping Muslims out. Instead they want him to run on free trade, cutting taxes, smaller government, i.e. Romney 2.0. It’s a mistake. It works for Congress because no one holds their Congressman personally responsible for performance as long as he votes for what he said. It’s always the other Congressmen or the President or the Supremes that’s at fault for results. It doesn’t work for the Presidency because the buck does stop there. At least for everyone but Bill and Hill.
No matter how much Liberals hate his themes, a LARGE chunk of the electorate believes in them. If he becomes a chameleon, he’s toast.
Why? Because bait and switch doesn’t work? Or that once people have become true believers, something can shake that faith? He just has to accomplish that within in months instead of the decades his opponent has had to do that.
Because he has nothing to fall back on. Wall Street would rather have their tame poodle than a junkyard dog.
If Bernie were the nominee, all the Republicans would have fallen in line to stop the Socialist, including Wall Street and K street because if he won their free ride would be over.
Oh, come on. It’s bad enough that you live in a fantasy world. Must you drag us all along with you?
You’re still losing me. Why would he need anything to fall back on?
HRC is Wall Street’s gal this time around, but it’s not the only well heeled industry that decides US Presidential elections. Although, HRC does seem to have the bulk of the other industries as well — health insurers and Hollywood and the oil and gas industry is still thinking. Trump has Adelson. Only difference is Adelson is cool with cutting yuuge checks and the others mostly top out at six figures.
“Why would he need anything to fall back on?”
????? If he loses his blue collar supporters, of course he needs someone to fall back on.
At this point most are recognizing that the Trump campaign is broke. Trump refuses to put anything but a minimal effort into calling donors, if that.
Even if the RNC and Trump were able to bend each other to their will and hug it out, time has been awasting and to get ad buys in place and a structure to fight Clinton’s organization is probably too late.
In the end, as I watch Trump already claiming he’s being victimized by the Clinton machine, the simple truth is that she’s doing the job, she’s doing it smart and the DNC is on board. Trump isn’t. No matter if she represents all that I wanted a nominee to be, she’s kickin ass and getting it done.
This is really the point. The idiot is out of money. And the RNC will, I suspect, tell him how this works: Raise the money needed, or we’ll just concentrate on down-ballot races.
Which will provide him with a self-justifying reason to bail.
There is nothing Trump won’t walk away from if he can deflect blame.
New from the NYTimes What Donald Trump Learned From Joseph McCarthy’s Right-Hand Man.
This is actually a good article for those with a command of the background history. The general public never saw Roy Cohn in action. Only elites experienced that and he mesmerized most of them with his outrageous, disgusting, etc. words and deeds. Played a role in Nixon’s ’68 election (and claimed to have been instrumental in ’72), was a player in the ’80 election. And Trump appears to be gathering Cohn’s apprentices into his circle.
June 20, 2016
Democrats voted to subvert the 5th and 14th Amendments as useless 2nd Amendment end-runs. Crackpots on both sides of the aisle now.
Care to write a diary amplifying this post?
Not interested in putting that much time (not that anyone notices, but I put a lot of time and thought into most of my diaries) into dead grandstanding crap legislation.
Billmon provides the necessary skinny. Although it’s been a topic for a few days now.
More on this from Billmon.
Another interesting Billmon;
Billmon @billmon1 8m8 minutes ago
A truly new way of running the GOP grift, running a campaign as a presidential candidate as a grift and winning the primary to grift directly off of the RNC.
Not unique. Mitt used the same one in ’08; only he didn’t get the nomination. A personal $40 million investment becoming POTUS has a great return if it succeeds. And now not just for the principal and spouse but the kids as well. Ivanka alone could probably back that $40 million with a TV gig (like Chelsea’s only with a performance component), increased sales for her business, books, speaking fees, etc.
Thanks, but everyone seems to understand what is being referred to except me. Was there a bill voted on? SCOTUS ruling? Executive Order?
Here: Senate votes down proposal to bar gun sales to terrorism suspects. A lying headline because the federal terrorism watch list which is not synonymous with “terrorism suspects.”
This has nothing to do with the real Second Amendment. Otherwise, not bad.
The real 2nd Amendment has nothing to do with 21st Century life in the US, but that’s not how the courts, NRA, and GOP see it.
Yes, it should be repealed. The repeal should state that the individual states have the right to militias that are well-regulated and subject to federalization in case of war or insurrection. The repeal should state forthrightly that both the individual States and the Congress have the power to limit or forbid the ownership of weapons. Failing that, the power to limit or forbid military weapons, but I would prefer the broader language.
Government suspicion is enough to take away a right – and every Democrat voted for it.
Amazing.
And so completely NOT constitutional.
This SC has at least one Dem 4th Amendment squish and Garland is set to make it worse. (Check out the latest ruling.) Scalia DID have some fondness for that principle.
well…he continued to call Senator Warren Pocahontas this afternoon on Faux News, so no tone change. It would be inauthentic either way. He was awful with the teleprompter a couple of weeks ago when he had a sad from racially attacking a federal judge.
Lots of happy talk. But the polls right now don’t support a blowout.
CNN has it at 5, Quin has PA and OH tied, though Clinton is up 8 in Florida. PPP found the same thing, with the exception that they found Florida tied.
It doesn’t count till Nov. One thing has become painfully clear to this part time observer, I am not (or in my view is the country) ready for 2+ years of 24/7 media “coverage” of the Presidential race at the expense of everything else going on. The only “rest” we get from this is a mass shooting that monopolizes the news cycle for a day or three (depending on how many died). What the networks get out of it is 24hr programming without having to think about it too much. What I get is a massive headache.