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Racists, Bigots, and Trump

There are many theories of why people support Donald Trump. One theory is that the voters are angry and hate the political establishment. Middle class workers have been hurt by the economy and are desperate to find someone who can shake things up. Or at least stand up to the special interests who are sucking our country dry for their own benefit. For example, an article in The New Yorker summed up Trump’s appeal this way:

The base of the [Republican] Party, the middle-aged white working class, has suffered at least as much as any demographic group because of globalization, low-wage immigrant labor, and free trade. Trump sensed the rage that flared from this pain and made it the fuel of his campaign.

But a detailed analysis of the 2016 American National Election Study has a simpler explanation. First, the analysis found that there is little correlation between how people feel about the state of the economy and whether they support Trump.

What the analysis found was surprising, but ultimately already right in front of our eyes. If people answer yes to the following two questions, there is a (stunning) 94% probability that they are a Trump voter:

  1. Are you white?
  2. Do you believe Barack Obama is a Muslim?

The next best predictors are the person’s level of resentment toward blacks, and whether they feel that Muslims are “violent”.

That’s right. You can predict (with 94% accuracy) whether someone is a Donald Trump supporter by determining if they agree with racist statements and (slightly delusional) racist theories about the president.

The analysis also found a strong correlation between racial resentment and how much they disapprove of the job Obama is doing as president. This in turn leads to a strong correlation between a person’s job approval rating for Obama, and whether they support Hillary Clinton. These correlations hold true regardless of how people feel about the economy.

Indeed, because racist statements and actions can be socially unacceptable, it appears that people use statements about the economy as a (more acceptable) proxy for expressing their racist feelings.

The more things change, the more they stay the same.

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White Entitlement?

I’ve been having conversations recently with Bernie Sanders supporters and have felt a kind of desperation coming from them. Like if Sanders doesn’t win (and most of them are still holding out hope for that unlikely outcome) they will be very depressed or angry. Some are saying that they plan to vote for Trump if Sanders doesn’t get the nomination, and many of them are saying that they just won’t vote.

It isn’t like I don’t understand. I feel depressed and angry when I think about Donald Trump becoming president. Ironically, the Sanders supporters I’ve talked to all admit that Trump is much worse than Clinton, but that doesn’t seem to matter.

Is the prospect of Hillary Clinton becoming president really that horrible? Up until two years ago, Bill Clinton was the favorite president of most Democrats. But recently his popularity has been slipping. What’s going on?

But today I read an interesting article by Barrett Holmes Pitner titled “The White Entitlement of Some Sanders Supporters“. Now, Pitner is a Sanders supporter and even interned for Sanders. But he is noticing the same things I have — Sanders supporters trash talking Clinton, talking about how “Killary Clinton” has stolen the nomination, that she is cheating, and that she can’t be trusted. But Pitner has a theory:

The main source of their frustration was merely the fact that they had lost. The fact that she is ahead in the popular vote, has won more primaries and caucuses, and has earned more delegates was to them a minor nuisance. They had their absurd talking points and were unwilling to deviate into reality.

The more I reflected on them, the more I realized the key point: They felt entitled to win, and a defeat meant that someone must have cheated or that their opinions did not matter, which of course couldn’t be true. They preferred to suspend reality and fabricate injustices rather than concede that Sanders has lost fair and square.

Essentially, we disagreed on what America supposedly promised or owed us. They felt success was promised to them. The entitlement to believe that you should always win allowed them to overlook how the system in many ways has always been unjustly rigged in their favor because they’re white.

This could explain why Sanders supporters are predominantly white, while most minority voters favor Clinton. Could it be that Sanders (if even unintentionally) is benefiting from the same white tribalism that appears to be the driving force behind Trump’s appeal?

Well, I expect some of my readers to strongly disagree with this idea. I’m not even totally convinced of it, but so far it is the only explanation I’ve heard that makes any sense.

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Trump Attacks Trump

Steven Rosenthal and Peggy O’Brien took 142 audio clips from 37 different Trump interviews and edited them together to solve the mystery of what would happen if Donald Trump attacked Donald Trump (like he has attacked anyone he doesn’t like or who threatens his ascension to the presidency). Because ultimately, Trump himself may be the only person who can stop Trump.

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Good Egg

Bernie Sanders responded to the anti-Trump violence on Thursday with a statement that bears repeating:

I understand how reprehensible and disgraceful Donald Trump’s positions are, how ignorant they are, how much he is appealing — and I can understand the anger, I surely can. The bigotry that is coming from his mouth, the insults to the Mexican community, the Latino community and the Muslim community, and women, and African-Americans, and veterans. I understand the anger.

But we are not going to defeat Trump, you know, by throwing eggs or getting involved in violence of any kind. We defeat Trump when we stand together as one people and fight for a progressive agenda.

The only thing I would have added is to point out not just the insults to protesters, but the violence that has been committed against protesters (and encouraged by Trump). The media reports seem to be focusing exclusively on violence against Trump supporters, but at a Trump rally in San Diego last week, Trump supporters pepper-sprayed non-violent protesters in the face. And we’ve all seen the video of a Trump supporter who sucker-punched a protester who was already in custody. Unfortunately, it looks like violence against his supporters is exactly what Trump wants. I hope our side can show more restraint.

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The Art of the Deal

Dan Wasserman
© Dan Wasserman

The ironic thing about being conned is that you don’t know you are being conned until it is too late.

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The Continuing Scam of Veterans

Some people might argue that the Trump University scandal is old news. That Donald Trump did that back when he was a businessman, so it was ok to swindle people out of their money for his own enrichment. But if he becomes president, he will be our scumbag swindler, using his evil powers to make America great again (whatever the hell that means).

And yet, even now, Trump continues to con people. Remember when he decided to skip one of the Republican debates because Fox News had been mean to him? He held a “fund raiser for veterans” instead, which he claimed had raised $6 million dollars. Then the Washington Post checked into it, and found that far less had actually been disbursed to veterans groups.

So caught lying by the media, Trump did what he always does — he demonized the messenger and called them names. But as Trump had made support for veterans a cornerstone of his campaign, he was caught red handed, so he was forced to make good on his lie.

And for good measure, he had to come up with another lie. He claimed that they hadn’t disbursed the money because they had to vet all the veterans groups before they could give them money. Really? I would think that most large charities are pretty well known by now. But Trump insisted, saying “You have to go through a process. When you send checks for hundreds of thousands of dollars to people and to companies and to groups that you’ve never heard of, charitable organizations, you have to vet it. You send people out, you do a lot of work.”

But here’s the best part. Let’s assume that Trump was not lying, and that his people (you know, the best people) were working very hard vetting these groups. Who did they come up with?

Well, it turns out that at least one of the veteran’s groups that received money from Trump is itself a sham. The “Foundation for American Veterans” has an “F” (fail) rating from CharityWatch.

Why? Because that supposed charity spent only a small fraction of its budget, you know, actually helping veterans. The rest went to executive salaries, fundraising, and a quarter of their entire budget was spent on “other expenses”. For all we know, that money was used to pay off people. (Wouldn’t it be great to find out that Trump used the veteran’s money to pay off the three people he got to say nice things about Trump University?)

What’s more, the Better Business Bureau issued an alert just this year against the charity, because of a “high volume of complaints and customer reviews”, and charges that people received “harassing phone calls” from them. As Trump might say, “real beauties”.

That’s what veterans get when Trump carefully vets charities for them: Used as political pawns and then screwed.

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University of Scams

The evidence is building that at best, Trump is a charming con man who has hit upon the ultimate con: getting himself elected as the leader of the free world (with his finger on the nuclear trigger).

I’ve been watching the unfolding scandal around “Trump University”, whose very name is itself a scam. Calling an educational program a “university” without going through an accreditation process is like calling yourself a medical doctor without going to medical school. It is illegal. As the Attorney General of New York puts it “It’s fraud. This is straight up fraud.

And Trump knows it is fraud because he has tried to reach an out-of-court settlement in the case, despite the fact that he has loudly proclaimed that he “never settles” cases. More lies.

Trump has now doubled down by fighting allegations of fraud with more fraud. The Trump campaign released a video “The Truth About Trump University” featuring three former students saying they benefited greatly from their courses there. Trump has claimed that 98% of the people who attended liked the school. However, the three students featured in the video are all beholden to Trump through business and personal connections, and none of them are actually in the real estate business, which was the subject matter of Trump University. One of the three even claims in the video that “because of Trump University I ultimately enrolled in 2007 in the Wharton Business School.” Sounds great, but it turns out that he was never enrolled as a student there, he just attended a two-week seminar held by the school. This same guy has often described himself as an alumnus of the prestigious business school. I wonder where he learned to misrepresent himself and lie like this?

But what I’m really curious about is, will any of this make Trump supporters realize that they are being conned?

Trump claims to be an expert deal-maker who will make America great again by negotiating better deals for us. But many of his “deals” have been transparent frauds that only seem to have benefitted Trump himself. Are world leaders really so stupid and gullible that they will fall for that?

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Primary Paralysis

Tom Tomorrow
© Tom Tomorrow

So, when reading this did you find yourself agreeing with all the panels, except the ones that criticize your side? Hopefully, it won’t be too long before we look back at this whole mess and laugh (or yawn).

Well, either that or we’ll be kicking ourselves because we have to live with President Trump.

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Late Night Political Humor

[Jokes from May 18, 2016]

“Megyn Kelly interviewed Donald Trump last night. The important thing is that wounds have been healed, which is good. It was difficult to watch Donald and her fight. It’s hard to watch a fight between two people with such similar hair styles.” – Jimmy Kimmel

“Fox News host Megyn Kelly addressed rumors about Donald Trump’s hair in a new interview and said, ‘It’s not a wig and it’s not a comb-over, either.’ So, what is it? It’s a mystery, wrapped in a riddle, inside an enigma.” – Seth Meyers

“Last night, Fox premiered its new reality dating show ‘Coupled’. I watched it for ten minutes and I thought, these two are not going to make it. Then I realized I was watching the Megyn Kelly-Donald Trump interview.” – Jimmy Fallon

“A new poll has 87 percent of Republicans supporting Trump. The other 13 percent are currently standing on bridges looking vacantly into the distance.” – Stephen Colbert

“It seems Donald Trump is integrating himself into the Republican Party establishment, and making amends with those he steamrolled during the race, including the increasingly sleepy Dr. Ben Carson.” – Jimmy Kimmel

“He is slowly unifying the Republican Party. All it took was no other options.” – Stephen Colbert

“In a recent interview, ‘Shark Tank’ host Mark Cuban predicted that if Donald Trump is elected, it would be bad news for Wall Street. And in related news, Donald Trump just got endorsed by Bernie Sanders.” – Jimmy Fallon

“On the Democratic side, Bernie Sanders won Oregon. It’s funny with Oregon. If recreational marijuana is legal in your state, you can pretty much guarantee Bernie will win it.” – Jimmy Kimmel

“Bernie Sanders won last night’s Oregon Democratic primary and this was a surprise. Hillary came in third — behind a bag of weed.” – Seth Meyers

“In last night’s Democratic primaries in Oregon and Kentucky, Bernie won Oregon. No surprise there. If you look at it on a map, Oregon is pretty much as far left as you can get.” – Stephen Colbert

“So Clinton won Kentucky and Sanders won Oregon, and now this will be settled by whose supporters can be most annoying on Facebook. Good luck, everybody.” – Jimmy Kimmel

“Meanwhile, in Kentucky, Hillary Clinton declared victory after winning by less than 1 percent. So there’s another 1 percent for Bernie to be mad at.” – Stephen Colbert

“Democrats are concerned that Sanders’ campaign could alienate enough voters to hand Donald Trump the election. Bernie said, ‘Listen, I’m 74 years old. I’m surrounded by college girls screaming my name. Don’t ruin this for me.'” – Jimmy Kimmel

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Let’s Change the Rules!

#ImWithHer

So, do you believe in democracy or not?

The Washington Post couldn’t find any change in the rules that would give Sanders a win. Right now, the only way he could become the nominee is if most of the superdelegates ignore the will of their voters, abandon Clinton and decide to vote for Sanders. Sanders has been touting this argument since March, but so far not a single superdelegate has switched (none have even talked about doing it).

To his credit, Bernie Sanders himself is starting to make some motions of coming around. He is spending more time attacking Trump — even giving Trump the nickname of “Mr. Macho“:

Let me not worry about Hillary Clinton right now. Let me worry about Donald Trump — this big, brave, macho guy, my goodness. He said he wanted to debate Bernie Sanders, then he said he didn’t, and then he said he did, and then he said he didn’t. So I say to Mr. Macho that I am open to a debate anytime, any place here in the state of California, hopefully before the June 7 primary.

Sanders also hasn’t ruled out being Clinton’s pick for vice president.

And for those of you who still have an uneasy feeling about Clinton, here are two posts from Facebook. The first is from Gavin Newsom, the current Lieutenant Governor of California and formerly the mayor of San Francisco:

In 2004, after I ordered the city clerk to give same-sex couples marriage licenses, I quickly became a pariah in the Democratic Party. I was accused of endangering Sen. Kerry’s campaign for president, my speech at the national convention was cancelled, and most hurtful, major democratic candidates and elected officials — some of whom were my friends — refused to be photographed with me or even be in the same room with me. I was being demonized by the left and the right. Only one major figure in the Dem party was willing to be photographed with me: Hillary Clinton. In 2004, we did an event together down at Delancey Street in San Francisco. I’ll never forget that moment — that when I was being attacked for my position on same sex marriage and what we did in San Francisco, she was willing to stand with me in public when no one else was. ‪#‎ImWithHer‬

The second Facebook post is from someone named Scott Wilson:

Just who were you expecting? Seriously. When a woman finally captured the nomination of a major party for President, what kind of a woman did you think she would be? Did you think that she might be tough-minded and pragmatic, someone who knows how to work the system and who is willing to do that? Did you think she might be someone flawed, who has made mistakes, but who is also resilient enough to withstand two and a half decades of relentless attacks? Did you think she might be a fighter, carrying the scars of a fighter? And if you thought she would be any of those things, did you really expect that anyone would like her, given what we demand of women in this culture? Let me tell you something: I have not liked this woman, either. I don’t agree with some of the things that she’s done, and some of the things that she stands for now. But I admire her. I am moved by who she is, given what we have put her through. And I am absolutely for her.

Matt Bors
© Matt Bors

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Late Night Political Humor

[Jokes from May 17, 2016]

“I read that a new super PAC is actually trying to convince Amish people to vote for Donald Trump. And those people were like, ‘We’re not Amish – we just got rid of our TV’s so we could stop hearing about Donald Trump.'” – Jimmy Fallon

“Donald Trump’s ex-girlfriend says her quotes in the New York Times expose this week were twisted to sound negative, but that she didn’t have a negative experience with Trump. Then she said, ‘Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m gonna go drive the new Porsche I can suddenly afford.'” – Jimmy Fallon

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Scott Adams on Donald Trump

Scott Adams, the creator of the Dilbert comic strip, explains to Bill Maher why Trump will win the election:

I’m not sure I buy what Adams is selling — that Trump is really an evil genius and knows exactly what he is doing. But I could easily believe that Trump is a charming sociopath who lucked onto an election where people are extremely willing to vote for someone who constantly tells them what they want to hear (even if what they want to hear is a pack of lies). And unfortunately, Adams is also right that Clinton has not been very good at marketing herself.

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Late Night Political Humor

[Jokes from May 16, 2016]

“A New York Times exposé on Donald Trump reveals some pretty questionable interactions with women. Including claims that when Trump ran the Miss USA Pageant, he would frequently rate women’s appearances right to their faces while they just stood there. Which is really sexist. And also pretty much the definition of any beauty pageant.” – Jimmy Fallon

“Despite the fact that it was freezing here today, climate scientists say that April was the hottest month on record. It was so hot, Donald Trump tried to make out with it.” – Stephen Colbert

“The article makes the point that Donald Trump has hired many women to run his businesses and even quotes him as saying, ‘A good woman is better than 10 good men.’ And Hillary was like, ‘Thanks for the new campaign slogan.'” – Jimmy Fallon

“The article goes on to detail how Trump bragged about his sexual prowess, as well as his daughter’s hotness, and had a preoccupation with women’s bodies. Which means Trump could be the first president to appoint an actual ‘federal bikini inspector’.” – Stephen Colbert

“RNC Chairman Reince Priebus said yesterday that Donald Trump will ‘have to answer for’ his behavior towards women. Said Trump, ‘I’ll have my girl write something up.'” – Seth Meyers

“The New York Times emailed a news alert reading: ‘Special report: Donald Trump has repeatedly unnerved women in private encounters over 40 years.’ Unnerving women for 40 years? That implies there were 29 years where he was not unnerving women. I’m going to want a fact check.” – Stephen Colbert

“A restaurant in Lithuania is stirring up controversy by displaying a mural on its wall that shows Donald Trump kissing Vladimir Putin. Trump said he’s not mad that it shows him kissing a man, he’s mad that it shows him kissing someone over 40.” – Jimmy Fallon

“Audio has surfaced showing that in the 1980s and ’90s Donald Trump may have used a fake name to pose as his own publicist. Or, maybe a little-known publicist named John Miller used a fake name to pose as a New York real estate mogul and run for president.” – Seth Meyers

“Former Republican hopeful John Kasich said today that ‘somebody’ had called him to encourage him to run as a third-party candidate, but declined to say who. Oh my God, John, the calls are coming from inside the house!” – Seth Meyers

“Tomorrow is the Kentucky Democratic Primary. And, in an act of desperation, Bernie is now going by ‘Colonel Sanders’.” – Seth Meyers

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The Good Old Days

Do you remember the “good old days” that Donald Trump speaks about? I do.

If that’s what Trump supporters hanker after, I want nothing to do with it.

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Scandals and Conspiracy Theories

To help refresh your memory, The Guardian has put together a comprehensive list of all the scandals that the Clintons were involved in in the 90s. I say “involved in” facetiously, because pretty much none of them actually turned up anything substantial directly on the Clintons themselves (other than the fact that Bill Clinton, like many presidents before him, slept around).

Donald Trump has mention a few times the Vince Foster suicide (claiming that the Clintons had him bumped off), but Foster’s suicide was investigated by two separate Whitewater independent counsels and two bipartisan congressional panels, and all of them concluded that Foster took his own life. Even his sister says that he had been severely depressed before his suicide.

And speaking of Whitewater, in the end several prominent politicians were convicted of various fraud charges, while Hillary Clinton herself was cleared of all charges. But that won’t stop the Republicans (including Trump) of continuing to bring it up.

Now let’s look at the other side. Here’s a list of all the conspiracy theories that Donald Trump has tried to spread. There are a stunning 58 of them. Some are real doozies.

We all know about Trump being a “birther”, but did you know that Trump claims that a Hawaiian official was murdered covering up Obama’s birth certificate? Or that Trump asserts both that Obama never attended Columbia University, and that Obama was radicalized while attending Columbia! Trump also claims that “net neutrality” is actually a “top down power grab” of the internet by Obama. And that Obama was running guns from Libya to Turkey in order to arm ISIS terrorists? Oh, and the US is also purposely importing terrorists. He also argues that both Obama and Clinton are planning on “taking your guns away”. Trump has also repeated the false claim that vaccines cause autism.

If you’ve heard a crazy conspiracy theory recently, Trump probably passed it on, and may have even originated it. If this doesn’t convince you that Trump is a nutcase, nothing will.

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