With apologies to P.T. Barnum, there’s a racist sucker born every minute. Trump only came close to cementing the Republican nomination on Tuesday, but he certainly cemented Republicans as the party who would vote for a serial con artist for president.
In the John Oliver video posted a few days ago, the thing that really got to me was the short clip of Trump selling steaks in pretty much exactly the same way he is selling himself as president. And the same way he sold his “Trump University”. It is just one more attempt to take your money.
It is almost enough to make you feel sorry for the Republican party, except that they are even more to blame than Trump, as they created a 1984-like political climate where lying is routine, hatred is a family value, greed is a virtue, anger is admired, and winning is everything.
Even if Trump doesn’t become president, I fear we are losing our way.
UPDATE: Seth Meyers on Trump’s win:
14 Comments
IK, there is an interesting discussion with the leaders of the Southern Baptist Evangelical Christian Conference today on NPR about how they feel about the Trump’s following. They are distancing themselves from their own following because as it was put that Trump is a moral degenerate and the the people following him are not really Christian. I have decided to call the following group of Christians the “ECINO”s, short for evangelical Christians in name only. My acronym but the sentiment is coming from church leaders. It’s a good listen, sorry that I can’t give you a link from my new phone, still trying to figure this thing out. A Google search of NPR and today’s date should bring up the audio.
[Thanks Dave, here’s the link. –iron]
IK, very appropriate to mention PT Barnum. Trump is certainly taking one of his famous quotes to heart.
“I don’t care what the newspapers say about me as long as they spell my name right.”
This quote was thought eventually to be bunk, as in there IS such a thing as bad publicity. Trump is showing everyone a third way: if you have an audience dumb enough, good or bad publicity makes no difference.
Yes, Trump is really a bigoted, white supremacist, KKK follower. Just ask his orthodox Jewish daughter Ivanka – http://ow.ly/Z2hRx . Or ask Black Muslim leader Louis Farrakhan- http://ow.ly/Z2hZC . The press is obviously just bending over backwards to be fair to Donald, but you can only protect a bigot from himself for so long- http://ow.ly/Z1AEd .
What has Trump actually said over the course of this presidential primary season or the time leading up to it, that differs in any substantial way from what’s been coming out of the Beck-Limbaugh-Hannity-O’Reilly-Coulter-Breitbart-etc. propaganda machine? Or Mitch McConnell or Ted Cruz or Marco Rubio, for that matter? Trump’s message, judging from his support, looks to be exactly on target!
IK, I fear you made use of the wrong tense. The correct word may have been, “lost.”
Carter, I don’t think you read what I wrote. Redjon makes a point — Trump is hardly any more bigoted than most of the other GOP candidates. I’m objecting because he is a con artist, a huckster. He’s been one for a long time. As such, he is only saying things that he thinks will get him elected (or attention, or your money; hard to tell).
But is pretending to be a racist in order to get votes morally better than actually being a racist?
I agree you could argue cogently that the GOP crowd, broadly defined, created the climate that allowed Trump to flourish. That said, when you attack the man for sins that he does not commit, you actually only increase his support among the wider public. Which I would think is the last thing you’d want to do.
Plus, such hyperbole is unnecessary. It’s not like Trump doesn’t have real weaknesses that you could go after. I thought the Lane-Broderick video you posted yesterday did it quite well.
The amount of anger Republican establishment has for Trump shows he must be doing something right to piss them off. The RNC made him promise that he wont run third party, and all agreed that they are going to support the nominee, but they are fighting tooth and nail to stop him. I can assure it is not because his links to white supremacy.
Carter, I agree with you that the establishment Republican attacks against Trump will likely backfire, both because the heart of Trump’s appeal is being an outsider who will challenge the GOP status quo (so having them attack him only strengthens his appeal), and because the last minute attacks seem to largely be tone deaf and reek of the air of desperation.
OMG, did I just agree with Sarah Palin? http://www.rawstory.com/2016/03/sarah-palin-taunts-silly-man-mitt-romney-and-says-gop-rebukes-only-make-trump-stronger/
The Republican Party over the past couple election cycles is like two freaky parallel universes. In one universe long ago and far away, candidate Mitt Romney embraces Trump’s endorsement, since he’s a true American, a successful business man and job maker, not a “taker” like the other 47% (and we know who they are), while Christie slams Trump as a phony casino owner helping bankrupt Atlantic City and embraces Obama in the wake of Hurricane Sandy. In this universe, Romney reappears from his man cave and eight years of riding his car elevator to weigh in that – oops, sorry – his party’s front runner is really a phony and fraud, while Christie is now Trump’s new lapdog. (Did anyone else picture a thought cloud over his head as he groveled behind Trump on stage, thinking “how did I wind up here and WTF was I thinking shutting down that bridge?”)
But like they say, in politics what’s chicken shit today is tomorrow’s chicken salad. Or in this case, Trump Steak v. Trump BS.
Or to use another food analogy, they’ve been brewing this cauldron of vile ingredients for years and are now stewing in their own juices.
Trump is no bigger a con artist than the rest of the GOP contenders. The only difference is that he’s outing one of their time honored cons. Paul Krugman explains:
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/04/opinion/clash-of-republican-con-artists.html
Personally, I have no problem with the human body & I’m sure Melania’s is very lovely but do you think if the nude photos of ‘our next first lady’ were to go viral it might back off some of the evangelical votes?
Just Me, probably not. They might say they were offended but they would not really care. Studies seem to indicate that those from conservatives states are bigger consumers of porn than others.
I’ll be doing a post about this study in the future, but you might want to read this article that explains the difference between Trump and the other Republicans — http://www.vox.com/2016/3/1/11127424/trump-authoritarianism