Paul Ryan explains his grudging support for Donald Trump as giving people a better path forward. Neither Trump nor his party has ever done that and it doesn’t look like Trump will be changing on that anytime soon. The only path Trump is interested in is the one in which he takes up all the space.
But despite all the negatives that we can ascribe to Trump, he won the primary fair and square. He beat the living hell out of every other candidate. He won thirty-eight states, he won almost 1600 delegates and regardless of what kind of sleazy human being you see him as, you have to honor those accomplishments. The Republican voters voted for him in huge numbers. Isn’t that what democracy is all about?
Jerks like Mark Halpern may think the Dump Trump movement is real but it won’t work. Halpern talks about it being organic but that’s only because he doesn’t have a clue as to what organic means. Organic is getting the most votes from the grass roots, as opposed to having the party elite decide that you embarrass them. Trump got the most votes because even with 17 shots at beating him, the GOP didn’t have the horses to compete. Before the primary all they could talk about was the strength of their field. Then an amateur gutted them all. Now they are all pissed off that an outsider is taking up their space at the convention. Talk about sour grapes! None of these clowns could beat the orangutan, who lies like a rug, knows nothing about the economy, foreign policy, the military, the environment or jobs; who is a bigot and a racist and who has the worst negatives in the history of politics; and yet they still couldn’t beat him. So why don’t they just shut up and step back. They are the party of ultimate losers.
The rules committee wants to change the rules. Mark Halpern thinks they have a right to do it, which just shows you what a schmuck he is. If they ever really try it, they will be drawn and quartered by the voters at the convention. Yes, Trump is the end asshole of all time, but he is the Republican voter’s asshole and they are dying to live with him.
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Then, this week, Trump leaned across his desk, pointed a small chubby finger at Cory Lewandowski, the quintessential “yes man,” and said “YOU’RE FIRED.” The only problem with that is that he fired the wrong guy. Trump’s mouth, not Cory’s inability to say no to the boss is the big problem with Trump’s campaign.
The other problem is that Trump, the big mouth billionaire is running a campaign that is broke. He has less money on hand then Ted Cruz and three other candidates that aren’t even in the race.
To make things worse, Trump is completely ignoring the battleground states. Why? Why is he having rallies in states like Texas, which are already in the bank for him? It’s very simple. Trump is in it for the ego. He needs, not wants but needs, to stand in front of masses of adoring idiots, screaming his name, more than he needs, at this point, to win the presidency. Does that make him short sighted? Of course, but there’s nothing he can do about that. It’s the same problem he has with his mouth. He is emotionally unable to control his murderously damaging mouth. He is just as unable to put the needs of his campaign, or if he won, the needs of this country, ahead of his immediate egomaniacal wants. This is a man who is constitutionally unable to put any long-term strategy or any national good, ahead of the banana in his hand.
Probably Trump’s most amusing proclivity is his habit of referring to Clinton as Lying Hillary. Why is this amusing? Probably because he has been established as the least truthful candidate, after Cruz and Fiorina left the race, in the history of modern politics. Fact Checks of his speeches uncover 59% of his statements as factually untrue. That’s compared to Hillary’s 12%. Actually 12% for a politician is pretty good. I mean, it is after all a profession that tends to lead one away from the truth, but almost 60%? That means six out of every ten things Trump says is a lie. That’s way better than high fair. Is this really the guy you want in the White House? We’d have to paint it black.
Just for laughs, let’s look at a couple of Trump’s factual faux pas. How about:
“I know more about ISIS than the generals do. Believe me.” Or “We don’t even know who the leader of ISIS is.” Maybe you don’t Don but almost everyone else does.
“The concept of global warming was created by and for the Chinese in order to make US manufacturing non-competitive.” Does he even know what global warming is?
“I know Russia well. I had a major event in Russia two years ago.” Of course he’s talking about a beauty contest not a trade deal.
“Our military is a disaster.” Our military is actually the strongest in the world by a multiple of about 10. No one else even comes close. Even Putin admits that.
“We have become a third world country.” Trump thinks anything more than four blocks from Trump Towers is the Third World. If he really wants to see Third World, he ought to glance at that row of future slums he built along the West Side Highway.
“When those restrictions expire, Ira will have an industrial-sized military ready to go.” Politifact has rated this statement False.
This could go on for twenty or thirty pages but that, like Trump, would be repetitive, so why bother. Then too there could be another twenty on top of that that are not lies but just too stupid to accept. It goes on and on. Now, I don’t expect any of the Trump fans to believe any of this. They are too dumb and too lazy to bother to investigate the veracity of what I have stated above, just as they are too dumb and lazy to bother to investigate the plethora of lies that Trump has fed them. That’s why they voted for him in the first place.
But listening to Trump speaking about Brexit from his environmentally disastrous golf course in Scotland we get the greatest of the lies, the one that he recites over and over despite every truth teller condemning it. It is when he speaks to immigration and how we in this country have thousands of refugees we know nothing about, coming in from dangerous places all over the world. This is a lie and Trump knows full well it is a lie. Immigrants to this country go through an arduous and invasive two-year investigation that continues after they have settled in this country. When it comes to refugees, we know who they are, where they come from and to whom they are associated. It’s the tourist, who gets off a plane in NYC with the correct visa, and then disappears into the crowd, that w have to worry about.
But that doesn’t fit Trump’s narrative, so instead of adjusting his narrative to fit reality he just lies to make his point. Yeah, this guy is certainly Presidential material. In Venezuela maybe or Iraq.
He calls her “Crooked Hillary.” It was “Lying Ted.” Of course considering that Trump is using RNC funds to pay himself back for the use of his planes, his Florida resort, and his kids’ friends during the campaign–not to mention his penchant for not paying people who did work for him, his many bankruptcies, and, of course, Trump U, calling anyone “Crooked” is just another case of the pot calling the kettle black.
As I understand it, the presidential nominee is determined by the political party not the people. We have evolved into a very expensive primary process that only gives the voters permitted by the Party the erroneous idea that they are selecting the nominee. When it’s all done, the Republican Party could come out and say “Sorry folks, the Republican Party nominee is Paul Ryan”. The anarchy that would follow such a scenario is hard to contemplate, but the possibility will keep my attention during the Convention.