Tag: Trump

  • Bolting

    Republicans continue to flee Trump. I doubt that his antics this afternoon will turn that around.

    In what seems like a nearly daily occurrence, Republicans are bolting their party’s nominee. But if not him, who? Some are going so far as to endorse Democratic rival Hillary Clinton; others, like Maine Sen. Susan Collins on Tuesday, are just saying they can’t stomach supporting the GOP nominee.
    …
    Last week, Rep. Adam Kinzinger of Illinois announced he will not back Trump, telling CNN’s Wolf Blitzer: “I’m an American before I’m a Republican.”

    Kinzinger, however, will not vote for Clinton either. Instead, he may write in a candidate. He joins Mark Kirk, an Illinois senator, who in June withdrew his endorsement of Trump.

    On Monday in the Washington Post and Tuesday on CNN, Collins, a moderate GOP senator, said she would not support Trump because he “does not reflect historical Republican values nor the inclusive approach to governing that is critical to healing the divisions in our country.” She didn’t say whom she’d vote for in November, but told CNN it won’t be Clinton.

    Yesterday there was the letter from the security boffins:

    Fifty of the nation’s most senior Republican national security officials, many of them former top aides or cabinet members for President George W. Bush, have signed a letter declaring that Donald J. Trump “lacks the character, values and experience” to be president and “would put at risk our country’s national security and well-being.”

    Mr. Trump, the officials warn, “would be the most reckless president in American history.”

    The letter says Mr. Trump would weaken the United States’ moral authority and questions his knowledge of and belief in the Constitution. It says he has “demonstrated repeatedly that he has little understanding” of the nation’s “vital national interests, its complex diplomatic challenges, its indispensable alliances and the democratic values” on which American policy should be based. And it laments that “Mr. Trump has shown no interest in educating himself.”

    A short way of putting it is that he’s not a grown-up. He’s not campaigning as a grown-up but as some kind of frat boy. I always felt that way about Bush Junior, too, but Trump is even worse than that.

    While foreign policy elites in both parties often argue among themselves — behind closed doors, or politely in the pages of Foreign Affairs magazine — it is extraordinarily rare for them to step into the political arena so publicly and aggressively. Several former midlevel officials issued a similar if milder letter in March, during the primaries. But Monday’s letter included many senior former officials who until now have remained silent in public, even while denouncing Mr. Trump’s policies over dinners or in small Republican conclaves.

    …

    The letter underscores the continuing rupture in the Republican Party, but particularly within its national security establishment. Many of those signing it had declined to add their names to the letter released in March. But a number said in recent interviews that they changed their minds once they heard Mr. Trump invite Russia to hack Mrs. Clinton’s email server — a sarcastic remark, he said later — and say that he would check to see how much NATO members contributed to the alliance before sending forces to help stave off a Russian attack. They viewed Mr. Trump’s comments on NATO as an abandonment of America’s most significant alliance relationship.

    Mr. Trump has said throughout his campaign that he intends to upend Republican foreign policy orthodoxy on everything from trade to Russia, where he has been complimentary of President Vladimir V. Putin, saying nothing about its crackdown on human rights and little about its annexation of Crimea.

    Why wouldn’t we want a pig-ignorant condo-developer and reality tv performer upending everything about current foreign policy? What’s the down side?

    “We agreed to focus on Trump’s fitness to be president, not his substantive positions,” said John B. Bellinger III, who was Ms. Rice’s legal adviser at the National Security Council and the State Department, and who drafted the letter.

    He said that among the signatories, “some will vote for” Mrs. Clinton, “and some will not vote, but all agree Trump is not qualified and would be dangerous.”

    …

    Yet perhaps most striking about the letter is the degree to which it echoes Mrs. Clinton’s main argument about her rival: that his temperament makes him unsuitable for the job, and that he should not be entrusted with the control of nuclear weapons.

    Well that aspect does jump out at us. Then again I always thought that of Bush, too, though not to the same extent.

    “He is unable or unwilling to separate truth from falsehood,” the letter says. “He does not encourage conflicting views. He lacks self-control and acts impetuously. He cannot tolerate personal criticism. He has alarmed our closest allies with his erratic behavior. All of these are dangerous qualities in an individual who aspires to be president and commander in chief, with command of the U.S. nuclear arsenal.”

    Some of that describes Bush.

    I do think we have a bad habit of putting desperately underqualified and unsuitable people in this job. Trump is just the worst, he’s not unique.

  • Trump suggests someone should kill Clinton

    I go outside for an adventure for a couple of hours and look what happens – Trump suggests assassination for his opponent.

    At a rally here [in Wilmngton, North Carolina], Mr. Trump warned that it would be “a horrible day” if Mrs. Clinton were elected and got to appoint a tiebreaking Supreme Court justice.

    “If she gets to pick her judges, nothing you can do, folks,” Mr. Trump said, as the crowd began to boo. He quickly added: “Although the Second Amendment people — maybe there is, I don’t know.”

    …

    Even those in Mr. Trump’s audience appeared caught by surprise. Video of the rally showed a man seated just over Mr. Trump’s shoulder go slack-jawed and turn to his companion, apparently in disbelief, when Mr. Trump made the remark.

    My jaw dropped when I read it in a friend’s Facebook post.

    Senator Chris Murphy, Democrat of Connecticut, who has made gun reform his signature issue after the Sandy Hook shooting in his state, took to Twitter to castigate Mr. Trump, calling his remarks “disgusting and embarrassing and sad.”

    And frightening. This reckless sociopathic narcissist must not be president of the US.

    “This isn’t play,” Mr. Murphy wrote. “Unstable people with powerful guns and an unhinged hatred for Hillary are listening to you, @realDonaldTrump.”

    And Representative Eric Swalwell, Democrat of California, wrote on Twitterthat the Secret Service should investigate Mr. Trump for making a death threat against Mrs. Clinton: “Donald Trump suggested someone kill Sec. Clinton. We must take people at their word.”

    That was my first thought. The Secret Service is supposed to investigate all threats of that kind, and Trump’s doing it is way more dangerous than some schmuck on Twitter.

    Mr. Trump’s campaign events and rallies have grown increasingly vitriolic, with angry chants and jeers directed at Mrs. Clinton, some of them led by the candidate himself. On Tuesday, Mr. Trump called Mrs. Clinton a “liar” and “wacky.”

    Chants of “lock her up,” which first gained traction during the Republican National Convention, were loud and frequent in Wilmington before Mr. Trump took the stage. One speaker, former Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani of New York, tried to steer the crowd away from the chant.

    “No, no, we’re here to beat her, and keep her out of Washington,” Mr. Giuliani said as he waved off the chants. He was interrupted by the same chant minutes later, and again paused and tried to wave off the crowd.

    Which, again, is fascism. That’s how you get fascism.

    Dangerous times.

  • Correct. O.K.?

    Trump has decided that the thing to call his foreign policy is America First. I heard that on NPR a couple of days ago and was stunned. Hello Colonel Lindbergh? We’re going openly pro-Nazi now? Seriously?

    Plus also it’s just hideous on its face, for the obvious reasons? It’s like sitting down at a crowded dinner table and shouting “Me first!”

    I’m late in noticing this, but you know how it is – I was hoping to be able to get away with ignoring Trump, until the convention made that no longer tenable.

    The New Yorker was on it a couple of weeks ago.

    When the New York Times interviewed Donald Trump in March, one of the reporters, David Sanger, suggested that Trump’s foreign policy could be summed up as “America First”—“a mistrust of many foreigners, both our adversaries and some of our allies, a sense that they’ve been freeloading off of us for many years.”

    “Correct. O.K.? That’s fine,” Trump responded. Sanger pressed him to be sure. “I’ll tell you—you’re getting close,” Trump said, in his typically staccato style. “Not isolationist, I’m not isolationist, but I am ‘America First.’ So I like the expression. I’m ‘America First.’”

    So he adopted it and ran with it. Ok then, says Louise Thomas.

    Sixty-five years ago, the spokesman for America First was another celebrity, Charles Lindbergh, who was famous for his historic solo nonstop flight across the Atlantic, and because of the kidnapping and murder of his child, which was reported so exhaustively and sensationally by the press that it became known as “The Crime of the Century.” In 1935, Lindbergh and his family fled to Europe. Unlike Trump, he didn’t want the notoriety. He was a man of secrets. He sought privacy.

    But he also wanted order. In the years immediately before the outbreak of the Second World War, he visited Germany, and it impressed him. While the rest of the world seemed to crumble, Germany struck him for its “organized vitality.” “I have never in my life been so conscious of such a directed force,” Lindbergh recalled in his 1978 memoir, “Autobiography of Values.” “It is thrilling when seen.” He toured the Luftwaffe, the German Air Force, and became convinced that no power in Europe—or the United States—could defeat it. A war with Germany would be bad for the United States, he believed. And it would be bad for “the white races.” He condemned Kristallnacht, but he wrote, in an infamous essay published by Reader’s Digest in November, 1939, weeks after the war in Europe began, that Western nations “can have peace and security only so long as we band together to preserve that most priceless possession, our inheritance of European blood.”

    That’s what Trump is aligning himself with.

    In 1940, Lindbergh, who had by then returned to the U.S., was recruited to speak on behalf of America First, an antiwar group founded by several Yale students (including Gerald Ford, the future President, and Potter Stewart, the future Supreme Court Justice) who saw the Second World War as an awful consequence of the First—and who were determined to avoid another disastrous war. The group attracted a wide range of supporters, from celebrities to pacifists (including the leader of the Socialist Party, Norman Thomas, who was my great-grandfather); America First also included more than its share of people whose views had less to do with the catastrophes of the First World War than with their nativism and xenophobia. At its peak, it had eight hundred thousand dues-paying members, many in the Midwest. Lindbergh was the ideal spokesman: charismatic, handsome, brave, sympathetic. His appeal was democratic—until it wasn’t.

    On September 11, 1941, Lindbergh gave a speech to a huge crowd in Des Moines, in which he described the agitators for the U.S. to enter the war. There were three groups: the British, the government, and “the Jewish race.” “Their greatest danger to this country lies in their large ownership and influence in our motion pictures, our press, our radio, and our government,” he told the audience.

    That’s what Trump is aligning himself with.

    Anti-Semitism was prevalent in Lindberg’s time; his attitudes were not fringe. He had not made a secret of his interest in eugenics, nor his racial attitudes, which today seem reprehensible. But with that 1941 speech he seemed to cross a line. He was strongly and swiftly condemned for his anti-Semitic and divisive words—not only by interventionists who were opposed to America First but by those who had lionized him. The Des Moines Register called his speech “so intemperate, so unfair, so dangerous in its implications that it cannot but turn many spadefuls in the digging of the grave of his influence in this country.” The Hearst papers, which were generally sympathetic to the non-interventionists—and open about their hatred of Franklin Roosevelt—condemned Lindbergh, calling his speech “un-American.” His home town took his name off its water tower. Three months later, the Japanese attacked at Pearl Harbor. Lindbergh, who had resigned his commission in the Air Force at the demand of Roosevelt, asked to be recommissioned; Roosevelt denied the request. In the public’s view, too, Lindbergh was disgraced. His reputation did not fully recover.

    I hope Trump will join him in that fate.

  • Guest post: He would survey the smoking ruins and announce that they were losers anyway

    Originally a comment by A Masked Avenger on The classic symptoms of medium-grade mania.

    Adult child of narcissist here. While I’m not qualified to diagnose, and Drumpf is not my patient, he checks every box for narcissistic personality disorder. This idea of mania is interesting, but I’d suggest that if so his mania is comorbid with NPD.

    Although the specifics are sometimes surprising, all of his behaviors are either predictable or explainable by this hypothesis. The fact that he became jealous of a baby stealing attention from him is classic. ACoNs can tell stories of their parents visiting and losing it because a new baby stole their show. “She actually believed I love when a baby cries while I’m speaking.” That’s right: I’M speaking, you rude fucking baby.

    He recently accused fire marshals of turning away supporters from in-filled halls. It reads to me as random bullshit triggered by this same stream of consciousness. First he brags about his many fans; then it occurs to him to comment that this is only a small sample of his many many more fans; then he suggests that many more fans were disappointed not to be present; then it hits him that someone must be to blame for that; and of course all detractors and other ego-threats are ultimately manifestations of a single entity (Not-Me), just as most of us are extensions of his ego; therefore the fire marshals can only thwart him if they’re supporting Hillary and probably acting on her direct orders…

    For me it’s quite triggering. I’ve rid my life of one malignant person for whom I don’t exist except as an extension of and food supply for his ego, and who will do anything, cause unlimited harm, in service to his ego, without any conscience at all. And here another who wants to run the entire country I live in, and get his hands on the nuclear football. (My hypothesis predicts that if it were up to only himself, he would nuke a country–or a US city–without hesitation if he perceived it as a threat to his ego. He would survey the smoking ruins and announce that they were losers anyway.)

    And worse are the enablers–all the family members who tell you it’s you, not him, and who validate his every narcissistic fantasy. Partly to stay on his good side, and partly because he has made that kind of narcissistic behavior the new normal. We’re now surrounded by millions who simultaneously believe he will build a wall and are prepared to tell us we’re idiots for ever thinking he meant that literally.

  • So many that are talented people

    When asked what women he might appoint to his cabinet, Trump can’t think of any except his daughter.

    “I want to know just as a female, who you would actually put into office as one of the first females in your cabinet?” asked Angelia Savage, a reporter with “First Coast News.”

    “Well there are so many different ones to choose, I can tell you everybody would say — ‘Put Ivanka in! Put Ivanka in!’ You know that, right?” Trump said.

    “She’s very popular, she’s done very well. And you know Ivanka very well. But there really are so many that are talented people, like you,” he said to Savage, “You’re so talented, I don’t know if your viewers know that.”

    Ok, he can’t think of any except his daughter and the one sitting in front of him at the time.

  • Flirtations with fascism

    The Harvard Republican Club has “for the first time in 128 years” declined to endorse the Republican candidate for president.

    The club gives policy reasons but the real energy is in the problems with Trump the human being.

    Perhaps most importantly, however, Donald Trump simply does not possess the temperament and character necessary to lead the United States through an increasingly perilous world. The last week should have made obvious to all what has been obvious to most for more than a year. In response to any slight –perceived or real– Donald Trump lashes out viciously and irresponsibly. In Trump’s eyes, disagreement with his actions or his policies warrants incessant name calling and derision: stupid, lying, fat, ugly, weak, failing, idiot –and that’s just his “fellow” Republicans.

    He isn’t eschewing political correctness. He is eschewing basic human decency.

    That’s good. That’s a good line. Mind you, people who make a show of “eschewing political correctness” usually are eschewing human decency, but Trump is doing it on a national stage.

    Donald Trump, despite spending more than a year on the campaign trail, has either refused or been unable to educate himself on issues that matter most to Americans like us. He speaks only in platitudes, about greatness, success, and winning. Time and time again, Trump has demonstrated his complete lack of knowledge on critical matters, meandering from position to position over the course of the election. When confronted about these frequent reversals, Trump lies in a manner more brazen and shameless than anything politics has ever seen.

    Millions of people across the country are feeling despondent. Their hours have been cut, wages slashed, jobs even shipped overseas. But Donald Trump doesn’t have a plan to fix that. He has a plan to exploit that.

    Donald Trump is a threat to the survival of the Republic. His authoritarian tendencies and flirtations with fascism are unparalleled in the history of our democracy. He hopes to divide us by race, by class, and by religion, instilling enough fear and anxiety to propel himself to the White House. He is looking to to pit neighbor against neighbor, friend against friend, American against American. We will not stand for this vitriolic rhetoric that is poisoning our country and our children.

    Trump will say they’re losers.

  • Standing apart

    CNN is all in a lather because Obama has broken precedent by coming right out and saying that Trump is in no way qualified to be president.

    It’s one more historic barrier President Barack Obama has shattered.

    His vehement warnings that GOP nominee Donald Trump is temperamentally and intellectually unfit for the Oval Office leave Obama standing apart from almost all of his 43 predecessors in the extent to which he has publicly expressed a hostile attitude to a potential successor.

    Yes but why is that? Because Trump stands apart in his lack of relevant education or experience, his lack of relevant skills and character traits, his lack of intellectual skills and basic compassion, his lack of seriousness and responsibility.

    Obama’s withering dismissal of the opposing party’s nominee in such explicit terms is unique in the modern presidency, historians say.

    “This is as aggressive as we have seen. (Obama) is the strongest president in recent decades in terms of intervening in the campaign,” said Julian Zelizer, a professor of history at Princeton University. “Not only is he active; he is making incredibly tough statements.”

    Robert Smith, a professor of political science at San Francisco State University, agreed: “Obama’s remarks are unprecedented in modern times for sure.”

    As are Trump’s. Horses for courses.

  • What it looks like

    The New York Times did a 3 minute compilation of the sexist racist xenophobic homophobic dreck people shout at and after Trump rallies. “Fuck that nigger,” “Trump the bitch,” “fuck political correctness,” men (and a few women) swelling with rage like water balloons.

    It’s worth watching.

  • The classic symptoms of medium-grade mania

    Even chronically insipid David Brooks sees it.

    Trump has shown that he is not a normal candidate. He is a political rampage charging ever more wildly out of control. And no, he cannot be changed.

    He cannot be contained because he is psychologically off the chain. With each passing week he displays the classic symptoms of medium-grade mania in more disturbing forms: inflated self-esteem, sleeplessness, impulsivity, aggression and a compulsion to offer advice on subjects he knows nothing about.

    I hadn’t thought of mania…except maybe subconsciously I had, since I had thought of grandiosity, which tends to remind me of mania. Anyway yes – the guy is high on himself.

    His speech patterns are like something straight out of a psychiatric textbook. Manics display something called “flight of ideas.” It’s a formal thought disorder in which ideas tumble forth through a disordered chain of associations. One word sparks another, which sparks another, and they’re off to the races. As one trained psychiatrist said to me, compare Donald Trump’s speaking patterns to a Robin Williams monologue, but with insults instead of jokes.

    There’s the Beckett-Joyce style. Oh look, a squirrel!

    He also cannot be contained because he lacks the inner equipment that makes decent behavior possible. So many of our daily social interactions depend on a basic capacity for empathy. But Trump displays an absence of this quality.

    That, I suppose, is why I keep pointing out, in fear and wonder, that there’s nothing good about him. It’s that complete and utter lack of basic empathy.

    He looks at the grieving mother of a war hero and is unable to recognize her pain. He hears a crying baby and is unable to recognize the infant’s emotion or the mother’s discomfort. He is told of women being sexually harassed at Fox News and is unable to recognize their trauma.

    …

    Trump is underdeveloped and unregulated.

    He is a slave to his own pride, compelled by a childlike impulse to lash out at anything that threatens his fragile identity. He appears to have no ability to experience reverence, which is the foundation for any capacity to admire or serve anything bigger than self, to want to learn about anything beyond self, to want to know and deeply honor the people around you.

    That’s more insight than I expect from David Brooks.

    It’s also why this whole thing is so hideously depressing. It depresses me that so many people are not only not repelled by Trump, they actually like and admire him. As I’ve said before, that’s not even the politics, it’s the nature of the guy himself – the lack of empathy and capacity to admire or serve anything bigger than self.

  • Qualifications

    A striking opinion piece in the NY Times by a former honcho at the CIA. When he was a government official he kept his presidential preferences to himself; he’s voted for both Democrats and Republicans; he’s not a member of either party. Now, he wants to explain why Hillary Clinton is a better choice than Donald Trump. Better. Not just preferable, but better.

    Two strongly held beliefs have brought me to this decision. First, Mrs. Clinton is highly qualified to be commander in chief. I trust she will deliver on the most important duty of a president — keeping our nation safe. Second, Donald J. Trump is not only unqualified for the job, but he may well pose a threat to our national security.

    I spent four years working with Mrs. Clinton when she was secretary of state, most often in the White House Situation Room. In these critically important meetings, I found her to be prepared, detail-oriented, thoughtful, inquisitive and willing to change her mind if presented with a compelling argument.

    Two questions. Could anyone possibly claim that final sentence could be uttered to describe Trump? When he’s neither prepared nor detail-oriented nor thoughtful nor inquisitive nor willing to change his mind? And could anyone deny those are all vital qualities for the job Trump is applying for?

    In sharp contrast to Mrs. Clinton, Mr. Trump has no experience on national security. Even more important, the character traits he has exhibited during the primary season suggest he would be a poor, even dangerous, commander in chief.

    These traits include his obvious need for self-aggrandizement, his overreaction to perceived slights, his tendency to make decisions based on intuition, his refusal to change his views based on new information, his routine carelessness with the facts, his unwillingness to listen to others and his lack of respect for the rule of law.

    But then, to balance that a little, there are his good qualities…Except that there aren’t. He has none. His bad ones crowd them all out – there’s no room left.

    The dangers that flow from Mr. Trump’s character are not just risks that would emerge if he became president. It is already damaging our national security.

    President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia was a career intelligence officer, trained to identify vulnerabilities in an individual and to exploit them. That is exactly what he did early in the primaries. Mr. Putin played upon Mr. Trump’s vulnerabilities by complimenting him. He responded just as Mr. Putin had calculated.

    Mr. Putin is a great leader, Mr. Trump says, ignoring that he has killed and jailed journalists and political opponents, has invaded two of his neighbors and is driving his economy to ruin. Mr. Trump has also taken policy positions consistent with Russian, not American, interests — endorsing Russian espionage against the United States, supporting Russia’s annexation of Crimea and giving a green light to a possible Russian invasion of the Baltic States.

    In the intelligence business, we would say that Mr. Putin had recruited Mr. Trump as an unwitting agent of the Russian Federation.

    There’s more, but that’s a slam dunk right there.

  • Because we’re a little disadvantaged

    Slate picks out a sentence uttered by Donald Trump as a glowing example of his way of changing the subject every six words or so. It’s very…what it is.

    Look, having nuclear—my uncle was a great professor and scientist and engineer, Dr. John Trump at MIT; good genes, very good genes, OK, very smart, the Wharton School of Finance, very good, very smart—you know, if you’re a conservative Republican, if I were a liberal, if, like, OK, if I ran as a liberal Democrat, they would say I’m one of the smartest people anywhere in the world—it’s true!—but when you’re a conservative Republican they try—oh, do they do a number—that’s why I always start off: Went to Wharton, was a good student, went there, went there, did this, built a fortune—you know I have to give my like credentials all the time, because we’re a little disadvantaged—but you look at the nuclear deal, the thing that really bothers me—it would have been so easy, and it’s not as important as these lives are (nuclear is powerful; my uncle explained that to me many, many years ago, the power and that was 35 years ago; he would explain the power of what’s going to happen and he was right—who would have thought?), but when you look at what’s going on with the four prisoners—now it used to be three, now it’s four—but when it was three and even now, I would have said it’s all in the messenger; fellas, and it is fellas because, you know, they don’t, they haven’t figured that the women are smarter right now than the men, so, you know, it’s gonna take them about another 150 years—but the Persians are great negotiators, the Iranians are great negotiators, so, and they, they just killed, they just killed us.

    There actually is a train of thought there at the beginning, heavily disguised though it is by Trump’s limited vocabulary and syntax. He’s saying that it’s a lefty canard that right-wingers are stupid, and he’s not stupid, dammit, he went to a Name business school and got good grades there and then made a lot of money.

    Sure, it no doubt is a left canard, though there’s also an equivalent canard on the right – lefties are all sentimental mush-heads who can’t see what’s right in front of them.

    Anyway. Trump is not bright.

  • He has never served any other cause except for his own greed and wealth

    Some veterans are unhappy with Trump. The Guardian reports:

    The backlash against Donald Trump escalated on Thursday as angry US military veterans arrived on Capitol Hill urging Republican leaders to withdraw their support for the party’s nominee.

    The protest came after a torrid week for the maverick candidate, whose criticism of Khizr and Ghazala Khan, the parents of an American Muslim soldier killed in Iraq in 2004, triggered a Republican revolt.

    “Maverick”? That’s a stupid word for what he is. (It was a label for Palin, too. I guess it’s a euphemism for totally unqualified and unfit?)

    The veterans presented a petition on Thursday to the office of Senator John McCain , a Vietnam war veteran and former prisoner of war who was the Republican presidential nominee in 2008. McCain joined the condemnation of Trump this week, but stopped short of withdrawing his endorsement of him.

    Let’s not forget, though, that McCain allowed Sarah Palin to be his running mate. She was barely more qualified than Trump.

    “Donald Trump and his surrogates have demonstrated that their bigotry and hate speech know no bounds,” Nate Terani, the first Muslim American to serve in the US Navy Presidential Honor Guard, told reporters. “Donald Trump is a racist and bigot and wholly unfit for this position.”

    Yes, yes he is.

    The petition on MoveOn.org was started by Perry O’Brien, who served as a medic in Afghanistan with the 82nd Airborne Division and was discharged as a conscientious objector in 2004. “Every vet I know is absolutely outraged,” he said on Wednesday. “Trump is someone who clearly does not share core American values and the values that we in the military hold dear: respect, sacrifice, selflessness.

    “When he said he’s always wanted a Purple Heart, it showed he doesn’t know what a Purple Heart is. It’s like saying: ‘I want to be shot in the face’ or ‘I want to be blown up’. He doesn’t have a certain awareness that there are some things you don’t do or don’t say in this country.”

    Well except that’s the whole thing about Trump – he wants the Purple Heart without the injury. He just wants the Purple Heart. It’s very comparable to the way he wants to be president, if you think about it. He doesn’t want to do the job, he doesn’t want to do the work, he doesn’t want to do what it takes to qualify for doing the job – he just wants to have it, like a toy or a bauble.

    Asked about the prospect of Trump as commander-in-chief, O’Brien remarked: “His recklessness, his instinct towards authoritarianism, his unhealthy attraction towards dictators – all these things raise questions. Why would a soldier go to fight knowing that, if they’re killed, President Donald Trump would slander their family? Who would enlist knowing he would attack their mother if she disagrees with him?”

    …

    David Callaway, a former Marine corps physician who served in Iraq and Kuwait in 2003, said: “For me it boils down to this: when you are in the military, you swear this oath and it’s service above self. For Trump, it’s all about service to self.

    “He has never served any other cause except for his own greed and wealth, and for veterans the idea that this man would support and defend the constitution and the ideals on which our country was founded – that being liberty, equality, opportunity – initially was comical and now it’s just frightening.”

    The point about serving any other cause is an important one. Trump is all about Trump: Trump as billionaire winner. Money is all he knows. He has all the depth of a dollar bill. He’s like that awful guy at the party or the restaurant, who keeps erupting with his awful opinions while everyone else tries hard to look away. His looming presence is a nightmare.

  • Clint Eastwood says “We’re really in a pussy generation”

    Yeah. Goddam women everywhere, saying things. It was better in the good old days when they never left the kitchen. Fucking them on the linoleum was a little uncomfortable, but worth it for the silence.

    He said it in an interview for Esquire (Please come in, Sir, your pussy will be with you shortly). He said it while endorsing Trump.

    Eastwood, who said he hasn’t officially endorsed anyone yet and admitted “I haven’t talked to Trump,” also railed against what he perceives as a culture of “political correctness” in America. “We’re really in a pussy generation. Everybody’s walking on eggshells. We see people accusing people of being racist and all kinds of stuff. When I grew up, those things weren’t called racist,” said Eastwood.

    Yes, and they should have been. Good-bye, Rowdy Yates.

  • Trump says nukes are on the table

    That item about Trump’s wanting to use the nukes? I didn’t post about it yesterday because there was only one source, but ThinkProgress has collected examples of his saying it in public on the record, so.

    On Wednesday, MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough passed on an intriguing piece of gossip: Donald Trump, speaking with a “foreign policy expert,” repeatedly asked “why can’t we use nuclear weapons.”

    Scarborough’s claim was thinly sourced. He didn’t reveal the identity of the expert advising Trump or even where he learned the information. Information attributed to anonymous sources is inherently suspect.

    But one need not rely on anonymous sources to glean Trump’s views on nuclear weapons. He has broached the subject repeatedly on the campaign trail. Several of his public comments are similar to Scarborough’s account while others are terrifying in their own way.

    They provide a video clip.

    And transcribe it:

    MATTHEWS: Well, why would you — why wouldn’t you just say, “I don’t want to talk about it. I don’t want to talk about nuclear weapons. Presidents don’t talk about use of nuclear weapons”?

    TRUMP: The question was asked — we were talking about NATO — which, by the way, I say is obsolete and we pay a dis —

    MATTHEWS: But you got hooked into something you shouldn`t have talked about.

    TRUMP: I don’t think I — well, someday, maybe.

    MATTHEWS: When? Maybe?

    TRUMP: Of course. If somebody —

    MATTHEWS: Where would we drop — where would we drop a nuclear weapon in the Middle East?

    TRUMP: Let me explain. Let me explain.

    Somebody hits us within ISIS — you wouldn`t fight back with a nuke?

    …

    MATTHEWS: OK. The trouble is, when you said that, the whole world heard it. David Cameron in Britain heard it. The Japanese, where we bombed them in 45, heard it. They`re hearing a guy running for president of the United States talking of maybe using nuclear weapons. Nobody wants to hear that about an American president.

    TRUMP: Then why are we making them? Why do we make them?

    [MSNBC, March 30, 2016]

    You can watch him saying it:

    https://youtu.be/jCHQPCXbt1w

     

  • A much higher state of Red Alert

    Exactly.

    Republicans nominate dangerously insane person to lead America, then panic when he proves he’s dangerously insane

    They knew that about him when they nominated him. It’s too late to freak out about it now. They should have done that before they nominated him, not after.

    Republicans have shifted into a much higher state of Red Alert because Trump’s erratic antics are revealing just how reckless their decision to nominate him really was, and how reckless their continued support for him really is. In other words, Trump is now threatening to damage the party in far worse ways than Republicans had bargained for, because he’s revealing in inescapably clear terms the real character and qualifications of the person they knowingly nominated to run the country and continue to support for the presidency.

    All that was plenty obvious enough before the convention. He’s a terrible human being; he’s not subtle about it.

    Trump’s pathologically abusive tendencies, his hair-trigger overreaction to criticism and slights both real and imagined, and his mental habit of sorting the world into the strong and the weak — the dominant and the submissive — render him temperamentally unfit for the presidency. He lacks basic knowledge of the world and doesn’t appear burdened by any curiosity about the complexities of foreign affairs or domestic policy. He is at worst a genuine bigot and at best a charlatan who has actively sought to stoke reactionary hostility to culturally and demographically evolving America. He is indifferent to the inner workings of the American system and instead promises authoritarian glory.

    …

    What’s really happened in recent days is that Trump’s ongoing battle with the Khan family only made all of these traits — the unhinged response to criticism, the bigoted attacks on Muslims, the naked abusiveness directed at a grieving family — more glaringly obvious. By extension, this has made nominating this man even more impossible politically for Republicans to defend. But Republicans knew who they were nominating. They themselves had repeatedly acknowledged that his personal traits were alarming and had castigated many of his positions as cruel and at odds with fundamental American values. Voices from all across the political spectrum, from liberals to centrists to Never Trump conservatives, warned that he would only get worse.

    Now Republicans want to stage an intervention?

    My point exactly.

  • Lunging from one controversy to another

    Republicans are reacting with shock and horror to the sudden news that their candidate for the presidency is none other than real estate tycoon and “reality” tv star Donald Trump.

    The Republican Party was in turmoil again Wednesday as party leaders, strategists and donors voiced increasing alarm about the flailing state of Donald Trump’s candidacy and fears that the presidential nominee was damaging the party with an extraordinary week of self-inflicted mistakes, gratuitous attacks and missed opportunities.

    Well stone the crows! It turns out the candidate is not a responsible competent grown up who knows how to behave, but instead, it’s real estate tycoon and “reality” tv star Donald Trump.

    Trump’s top campaign advisers are failing to instill discipline on their candidate, who has spent the past days lunging from one controversy to another while seemingly skipping chances to go on the offensive against his Democratic opponent, Hillary Clinton.

    How could the Republicans possibly have known this would happen? What hint was there beforehand?

    Reed, who managed Bob Dole’s 1996 presidential campaign, recommended that Trump “stop doing silly interviews nine times a day that get you off message” and deliver a major address seeking to reset the campaign establishing himself as the change candidate.

    If only the Republicans had nominated a candidate who wouldn’t want to do silly interviews nine times a day – but alas for them, they didn’t, they nominated real estate tycoon and “reality” tv star Donald Trump.

    Friends and allies of Manafort disputed reports that the top adviser had given up on Trump, describing him as fully committed to waging a successful campaign. But they said Manafort has been frustrated by Trump’s apparent lack of discipline on the stump and in his many media interviews.

    But Manafort, being Trump’s campaign manager, must have known this all along, unlike the innocent Republicans who had no idea what he was like until just a day or two ago. Manafort must be well familiar with Trump’s lack of discipline and microscopic attention span.

    “Paul has good influence with Donald,” said Charlie Black, a longtime GOP strategist and former business partner of Manafort. “But he’s Donald and he’s going to operate stream of consciousness a lot of times. You just hope he’ll have more days on message than days on consciousness.”

    You just hope he’ll have more days when he doesn’t freak out and launch the nukes than days when he does.

    From Washington to state capitals around the country, a feeling of despair and despondence fell over the Republican establishment. Two weeks ago at the party’s national convention in Cleveland, GOP leaders were buoyed by what they saw in Trump. But Trump quickly reverted to his old ways, setting off alarm bells in some parts of the party.

    They were “buoyed” by that? By that orgy of fascism and egomania?

    I hope the alarm bells burst their fucking eardrums.

    Gingrich said Trump is continuing to operate on instincts that helped him in business and in the primaries but said the GOP nominee doesn’t realize those skills are not adequate for a general election.

    Of course he doesn’t. He’s not bright. He doesn’t think.

    “He can’t learn what he doesn’t know because he doesn’t know he doesn’t know it,” Gingrich said.

    So he’ll be a fabulous president then. I don’t see what could possibly go wrong.

  • Baby baby baby

    This has been going around since yesterday when Trump got peevish about a crying baby at one of his appearances.

    Obama’s a baby-whisperer. Trump not so much.

    https://youtu.be/uqhzWlqN3uc

  • This isn’t a situation where you have an episodic gaffe

    Yesterday Obama pointed out that Trump is unfit to be president.

    Speaking in the East Room of the White House while Mr. Trump rallied supporters in a nearby Virginia suburb, the president noted the Republican criticism of Mr. Trump for his attacks on the Muslim parents of an American soldier, Capt. Humayun Khan, who died in Iraq.

    But Mr. Obama said the political recriminations from Republicans “ring hollow” if the party’s leaders continue to support Mr. Trump’s campaign.

    “The question they have to ask themselves is: If you are repeatedly having to say in very strong terms that what he has said is unacceptable, why are you still endorsing him?” Mr. Obama said. “What does this say about your party that this is your standard-bearer?”

    The thing about Trump is that it’s not just his views or his policies (if he actually has anything that can really be called a policy) – it’s his nature, his character, his way of being. It’s how horrible he is in every visible way.

    Has anyone come forward to say anything like, “Look, I know Trump seems rude and abrasive in public but behind the scenes he’s actually a warm, caring, decent guy”? Not that I know of. As far as I can tell what you see is exactly what you get – a rude, abrasive, belligerent asshole.

    Mr. Obama lamented what he called an attack on a “Gold Star family that had made such extraordinary sacrifices on behalf of our country.” He said he did not doubt that Republicans were outraged about the statements Mr. Trump and his supporters had made about the Khan family in the last several days.

    “But there has to come a point at which you say somebody who makes those kinds of statements doesn’t have the judgment, the temperament, the understanding, to occupy the most powerful position in the world,” Mr. Obama said.

    The president did not limit his criticism to Mr. Trump’s treatment of the Khan family. Mr. Obama said the Republican nominee had repeatedly demonstrated that he was “woefully unprepared to do this job.” The president said Mr. Trump had proved he lacked knowledge about Europe, the Middle East and other parts of Asia.

    “This isn’t a situation where you have an episodic gaffe. This is daily,” Mr. Obama added. “There has to be a point at which you say, ‘This is not somebody I can support for president of the United States, even if he purports to be a member of my party.’ The fact that that has not yet happened makes some of these denunciations ring hollow.”

    As hollow as Trump himself.

  • Trump put the Purple Heart in his pocket

    My friend Tasneem Khalil asked some probing questions about the whole “soldier killed in battle” thing yesterday.

    Worshipping the dead soldier is one of the highest rituals of a national security state. Like many other places, we actually have special monuments for this in Bangladesh and India. It is then not surprising to see that even a petulant scumbag like Donald Trump can not get away after insulting two Gold Star parents whose son died in Iraq. This is the same guy, mind you, who got the GOP nomination after calling Mexicans rapists and advocating a blanket ban against Muslims.

    Captain Khan was undoubtedly a brave man but was he a hero? A hero for whom? Would any of my Iraqi friends consider him a hero — the fallen soldier of an invading army that waged an illegal war and devastated their country? Which little big book an Iraqi father would pull out of his breast pocket when he gives a speech about his child’s deformed body, thanks to depleted uranium dropped as part of Operation Iraqi Freedom? Are we all free and safe now, because of the sacrifice by young men and women like Captain Khan?

    If you are a US citizen, please try to ask yourself these questions. I, herewith, propose a possible answer. If you really are grateful to soldiers like Captain Khan, the best tribute you can pay to their memories is by ensuring that your rulers do not send your children to die in illegal wars in the future.

    PS. Those who know me well know that I do not share the lazy anti-Americanism of the Chomsky-quoting, Assange-worshipping left. I, also, do not belong to the flag-waving, soldier-worshipping right.

    I think he’s right. I had and have some qualms about the dead soldier worship in connection with the Iraq war. At the same time…I do see the merit of demonstrating that American Muslims are woven into the fabric of the country just like any other citizens, and dying in battle is the ultimate way of demonstrating that. Given a blatantly xenophobic candidate like Trump who talks of banning all Muslims from entry, I can see why that ultimate demonstration was felt necessary.

    So, having said that – I give you Khizr Khan on Anderson Cooper’s show:

    Khizr Khan on Tuesday accused Donald Trump of dodging the Vietnam War draft, and said he shouldn’t have accepted a Purple Heart given to him at a rally earlier in the day, deeming it the latest sign of his inability to empathize with parents of fallen soldiers.

    “You dodged the draft,” Khan, a Muslim whose son was slain in the Iraq War, said of Trump to CNN’s Anderson Cooper. “Put that Purple Heart back on that person’s chest.”

    A military veteran supporting Trump had gifted the Republican presidential nominee his Purple Heart, prompting Trump to say he “always wanted to get the Purple Heart” and this was “much easier” than serving in combat.

    He did; he said that. He said it cheerfully and flippantly.

    “You had the time. You did not serve,” Khan told Cooper. “You should have pinned that back to that veteran’s chest and should have hugged him and thanked him.”

    I recommend watching the video clip. Khan gets very heated, then apologizes for getting heated, then gets heated again. I know the feeling. It’s hard not to get in a rage when talking about Trump. Khan is disgusted by Trump’s flippancy and lack of empathy.

  • Missing: kindness, honesty, dignity, compassion and respect

    The first Republican Representative to ditch Trump.

    Rep. Richard Hanna (R-NY) is the first Republican member of Congress to announce he’ll vote for Hillary Clinton this November.

    …

    Regarding the reasons he was resolved not to support Trump in the first place, Hanna wrote that they “were simple and personal. I found him profoundly offensive and narcissistic but as much as anything, a world-class panderer, anything but a leader.”

    “I never expect to agree with whoever is president, but at a minimum the president needs to consistently display those qualities I have preached to my two children: kindness, honesty, dignity, compassion and respect,” he continued. “I do not expect perfection, but I do require more than the embodiment of at least a short list of the seven deadly sins.”

    That’s what’s so astonishing about this whole thing – he’s such a terrible human being, and he makes it so obvious. He’s mean, rude, a bully – and an ignoramus, and loud with it, and boastful, and grandiose. How did this happen? What’s wrong with us?

    In the interview with the Post-Standard, Hanna says Trump’s criticizing of Gold Star parents left him “incensed.”

    “I was stunned by the callousness of his comments,” he added. “I think Trump is a national embarrassment. Is he really the guy you want to have the nuclear codes?”

    No, he is not.