So apparently, Corey Lewandowski, Trump’s campaign manager (his Martin Bormann), grabbed a Breitbart reporter named Michelle Fields and yanked her to the to the ground:
When Donald Trump descended into the crowd after speaking Tuesday night, the instinct to defend kicked in.
As security parted the masses to give him passage out of the chandelier-lit ballroom, Michelle Fields, a young reporter for Trump-friendly Breitbart News, pressed forward to ask the GOP front-runner a question. I watched as a man with short-cropped hair and a suit grabbed her arm and yanked her out of the way. He was Corey Lewandowski, Trump’s 41-year-old campaign manager.
Fields stumbled. Finger-shaped bruises formed on her arm.
“I’m just a little spooked,” she said, a tear streaming down her face. “No one has grabbed me like that before.”
She took my arm and squeezed it hard. “I don’t even want to do it as hard as he did,” she said, “because it would hurt.”
Unfortunately, there is no video of the account, so all we have are dueling narratives (mind you, I’m completely convinced this happened, but I am working towards a point, so bear with me), which means the Trump campaign can send out memos like this:
Not that the Beitbart crew or anyone will learn anything from this whatsoever, but this is an opportunity for what some in the bizness call experiental learning. This is what has happened to countless black and minority protesters every single day at Trump rallies, and unless there is an actual video of the assault, as there was in this other case, nothing happens and it is denied.
Now let’s broaden the scope here, reflect on our current situation, and generalize to other situations, white people. This is what happens every hour of every single day to black people around the nation in their encounters with police and other figures of authority. They are abused, assaulted, and degraded, their rights are denied or violated, and then when they make the charge that something happened, the power structure will do precisely what has happened here. They will deny it happened because there is no video. They will attack the integrity of the victim. They will question the motives of the victim. They will question the way the incident was reported -“Why did they mention it on twitter first?” They will suggest that you are lying or not even there. They will suggest ulterior motives.
They will even deny your humanity and fail to address you by your name. You are now “this individual.” And to top it all off, your own alleged support structure will not come to your defense.
Congratulations, Michelle Fields. For a brief moment, you now know what it is like to be black in America. I hope you learn something from it, but I’m not holding my breath.
GregB
They are obviously just mimicking the behavior they have learned from the liberal fascists and President Obama’s Chicago thugs.
Both sides!
gwangung
Yeah, Cole’s been on fire, lately.
Betty Cracker
Women (of all colors) know a little something about being shoved around by men and being called hysterical or otherwise having their motives questioned when they complain. But since the woman in question works for Breitbart, it would be WrongThink for her to draw any larger lessons from that either, I suppose.
the Conster, la Citoyenne
Thanks for pointing this out, John Cole. The whole white male privilege thing will not be relinquished without some real ugliness. Unfortunately, white males will have to do the work to talk to each other about their privilege, like only Nixon could go to China. The rest of us will be brutalized and/or dismissed for acknowledging what’s under all of our noses.
raven
They busted this asshole:
Hungry Joe
Can someone explain to me how that guy who decked the black protester at the NC Trump rally hasn’t been arrested for (what I assume to be felony) assault and battery? It’s possible, I guess, that he hasn’t been identified yet, though that doesn’t account for his not getting busted on the spot.
On the other hand, if it’s now legal to walk up to people and punch them in the face, I should get to work on my list. (This could take a while.)
Germy
@raven: 78 years old.
raven
@Germy: The “Korean War Vet” dude was 75 I think.
JPL
@raven: Did they have a choice, since the video was in most papers? I’m glad that they followed up, though.
Major Major Major Major
Off topic: 300 hours!
raven
@JPL: Just so they arrested him.
“The department has also opened an internal investigation probing whether the officers in the video, who did not detain or arrest McGraw on site, should have done so, Swain said.”
Mike in NC
It’s only a matter of time until somebody gets badly beaten — or worse — at a Drumpf rally. He’ll do his best to shrug it off and the media will do their best to look the other way.
Iowa Old Lady
@Hungry Joe: Is this the guy Raven was talking about in #24 of the previous thread? There’s an arrest mentioned there.
ETA: And in comment #5 of this thread. Sorry. I was too slow.
raven
@Mike in NC: Too many cameras.
Iowa Old Lady
@Major Major Major Major: Congratulations to you!
raven
@Iowa Old Lady: Yes, I reposted it here.
Hungry Joe
Damn you, Raven!
raven
@Hungry Joe: I went to the sheriff’s Facebook and it was on there. It has hit the wire since.
redshirt
Scarily enough, if Trump is the nominee, this is only going to get worse. We haven’t even approached fever pitch yet.
That said, the Repubs aren’t running against a black man this year, so maybe things won’t be so terrible.
Hungry Joe
@Iowa Old Lady: YOU were too slow? I’m the slow (and clueless) one around here.
raven
Marc
There is some technical glitch in the post; at least for me, the first paragraph is truncated and the image in the first link is odd.
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
@Hungry Joe: This is supposed to be a happy occasion. Let’s not bicker and argue about who killed who.
Finally one of the Trumpsterfires gets arrested because there was video evidence and a few LEOs right there when it happened. Also, too I read that some other Breitbartians claim they never saw her get shoved. Assholes.
Major Major Major Major
@Marc: same here. iOS, Safari
SoupCatcher
@Marc: Looking at the page source, the close tag for the link to the article is inside the quote mark for the url, so the link doesn’t close until later and a lot of text doesn’t get displayed. Here is what is missing.
Isobel
@Marc: Me too. Part of the last sentence of the first paragraph is cut off.
Mnemosyne
@Major Major Major Major:
Good job! There’s something very motivating about being on a streak. After a while, you don’t want to break it just on principle.
Isobel
@SoupCatcher: I missed a lot. Thanks!
Davebo
This is why you should never read comments at the Breitbart “news” site.
But you can learn a lot. For instance..
Did not know that.
clone12
@raven: I’m missing something here. If you’re 75 years old and you’re a Korean War vet, that means you were 12 years old when the war ended in 1953.
Were we sending tweens to the front line or something?
Peale
@clone12: We went over this this morning. Since the Korean War technically isn’t over, the group allows in service members who spend time in Korea, whether it was in 1952 or 1992. No difference.
JPL
@redshirt: hahahahaha They will always run against Obama. He’s left a legacy and they want to undo it, no matter the cost to the American public.
Hungry Joe
I’m not sure it’s a good idea to attend a Trump rally, then interrupt it with protests. For one thing, it’s (increasingly) dangerous; for another, it gives Trumpsters a little high ground to stand on — “Hey, let ideas be heard, no one’s shouting down Bernie or Hillary,” etc.
Still, I’m not sure it’s a bad idea, either.
raven
@clone12: We talked about it earlier. The organization he belongs to, Korean War Veterans of America, takes anyone who served there. At least they said this”
The Moar You Know
They’ll learn nothing. Not even Fields. She’ll excuse it as a one-off.
I don’t. Used to get the ol’ “stop and frisk” treatment back when I was a working musician with hair down to the middle of my back. Every fucking week at a minimum. Only reason it never ended in arrest/shooting is that I was white and very well spoken – and clean as a whistle. Confused them enough to not take it further (i.e. planting drugs, which is also a real thing).
The last time it happened? The day before my 30th birthday, when I cut it all off. Never been pulled over for anything since then. I’m invisible to cops now. That’s a strange thing after years of being a target.
Race/class privilege is a real thing. It’s too bad a lot of people will never experience, and therefore never believe, that it actually happens.
Gin & Tonic
@clone12: This was discussed elsewhere. Apparently if you were in the military and served in Korea *at any time* you can be a Korean War vet. The Koreas are still technically at war.
The Moar You Know
@Hungry Joe: Getting your head kicked in can have permanent side effects. And the worst anyone gets for turning you into a cripple for life is a couple years for assault, tops. Not a risk I would take. The folks who do are very brave.
Punchy
They’re not allowed to. Good Old Man was wearing a cowboy hat, which makes him immune to local laws and statutes. That hat is Cop Kryptonite, rendering cops from approaching or even questioning the wearer.
Meanwhile, the guy who got popped got body slammed and cuffed. Welcome to Trump’s America!
the Conster, la Citoyenne
@The Moar You Know:
If you’re oblivious, you’re soaking in it.
John Cole
Code should be fixed now. Sorry.
nutella
@redshirt:
They’ll be running against a woman or a Jewish socialist so yes, it will be terrible.
scav
Instead of Trump Rallies, should we start calling them Trump Rumbles?
(mmmmm. A rumble of grumbles. works on multiple levels.)
JPL
@scav: We could call it a meeting of tiny fingers and small hands.
gogol's wife
I hope Lady Edith’s new husband stays away from Trump rallies!
JPL
OT.. I’m watching a replay of Justin Trudeau’s and Barack Obama’s news event. Gosh they are hot.
I might watch it again.
Sad_Dem
@redshirt:
They are running against Obama’s record and legacy. Things are already terrible.
redshirt
@nutella: I don’t think either of those groups stir the animal id that a black man with an arabic name did.
But have no doubt: Trump will do his best to rile them up to maximum fervor.
aimai
@Betty Cracker: Yeah. I see what JC is trying to say here but I’d like to just throw out there that many, many, many women know EXACTLY what it is like to be groped or struck by men–even men in their own families, in their school groups, in their friend groups–and not be taken seriously by other people when they complain. Or be blamed when they complain on having been out at the wrong time, wearing the wrong thing, provoking with their shrill voices, etc…etc…etc… Its not women who are unaware of how the world works and how indifferent it is to your suffering or your experience.
brendan
@redshirt: If it’s Hillary – it’s even worse – (gasp!!) a woman !!!!
redshirt
@brendan: I know they’ll hate on her, but I just can’t agree it will be with the same fervor of the hate against Barack. He challenged everything they know and believe, whereas a white woman has some traditional respect in the hatespace.
trollhattan
Trump will get his comeuppance over this just as Rand Paul did after his campaign dude head-stomped that young lady protestor on video, during the senate campaign.
Oh, wait….
Shall I invoke “Feature, not bug”? Yes, I believe I will.
schrodinger's cat
@aimai: So true, cuts across cultures too. When a woman complains, its usually dismissed by saying that boys will be boys.
Iowa Old Lady
@redshirt: If Clinton becomes president, it will be interesting to see the extent to which misogyny plays out. I would never have believed the election of Obama would result in pictures of the POTUS with a bone in his nose. I apparently lack sufficient imagination. Maybe you’re right and some respect will remain, but the Obama hatred has left me leery.
NickM
Robert Reich called Trump out as a fascist in a pretty good piece: http://robertreich.org/post/140705539195
trollhattan
@redshirt:
Yes they will, because she’s 1. a woman 2. a Democrat 3. a Clinton.
“Lucky” for us, I do believe we’ll all find out firsthand.
NickM
I have two kick-ass daughters in elementary school. Something that struck me is how early boys are taught to look down on girls — it starts when they’re no older than 5 or 6. One of my daughters heard a boy call a second grade girl a “slut” for kissing another kid on the cheek while they were on the bus. She gave him a piece of her mind, but I was really surprised young elementary boys had already learned how to slut-shame girls.
Matt McIrvin
People were having this same discussion in 2008, the other way around: could they possibly hate President Obama more intensely and grotesquely than they already do Hillary Clinton?
Yutsano
@redshirt: @Iowa Old Lady: Not for THAT WOMAN. Nothing gets their hackles up like the thought of THAT WOMAN coming anywhere near the White House again. Most of my family believes she’s a criminal who’s never been caught.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Oh my god. The old goober who punched the protestor at a Trump rally is playing the ISIS card. Clicking around I can’t find a transcript yet, heard the MSNBC bot reading it aloud
Chris
Fryman in the Hizzy wid da Shizzy! Obligatory ATHF shoutout…
Sande in St Louis
@the Conster, la Citoyenne: Too true. “You spoke up too aggressively, not aggressively enough, complained to the wrong people, are too shrill, not shrill enough for it to have really occurred, overly sensitive, not sensitive enough to others”, etc. Been in this position and every time someone is complaining about how something is said instead of what is being said, it is a marker of someone with a strong incentive to dismiss the message by tone policing. Just ugh.
jl
Thanks for a good post, Cole.
Cole is right that, even if we can’t be sure yet how accurate the stories from the respective sides are for this specific incident, there is surely enough evidence concerning others to know that this kind of thing is happening in the Trump campaign.
And the crummy behavior of the Breitbart organization makes it worse, and brings up Cole’s parallel.
Trump has said that he understands that he has to be a different person for the general election than the primary. But the thuggish behavior of his fans and his staff indicate that Trump moving towards civilized behavior and presidential gravitas will be far more difficult than he thinks it will.
John Revolta
@The Moar You Know: I had the same experience. Wore my hair long for 30+ years. When I finally cut it short(ish) a lot of things changed. I kinda feel like a spy now, wandering around at large without getting the fuckeye from cops and fellow citizens alike. I also hear a lot of crap from other white guys that I didn’t hear before………………
Mnemosyne
@The Moar You Know:
Since I grew up in a lily-white suburb, my first experience with profiling was in college, when a security guard followed me and a group of friends all the way across the Beverly Center. We were, of course, very suspicious-looking: a bunch of young minority (mostly Latina) women in their early 20s with only one white person (me) to supervise them.
They just ignored it, but I was shocked, because that had never, ever happened when I was shopping with white friends. Never even occurred to me that it would happen, but it was commonplace for them.
Steve in the ATL
@raven:
(1) I hope that John Franklin “Thug” McGraw has to share a cell with some black dudes; and
(2) it probably worked in the victim’s favor that HE was the one restrained and removed, because he would most likely be in jail for battery right now if he had defended himself.
Mnemosyne
@Matt McIrvin:
Oh, they will. It will be in a slightly different way, and for slightly different reasons, but the hate will be just as strong.
Though it still won’t be quite as bad for either of them as it’s been towards Michelle Obama, who gets splashed with both racist *and* sexist shit 24/7.
The Moar You Know
@Iowa Old Lady: You and me both. An American president? Photoshopped with a spear and a bone through his nose? Would have bet everything I owned that never would, never could have happened.
Think that one was out the first week he was in office.
Don’t know about the rest of you (the white rest of you, anyhow, I suspect the Juicers Of Color knew this just fine), but the Obama presidency has been a real lesson for me in just how racist this country still is. I simply would not have believed it, beforehand.
Citizen_X
Here is a Daily Beast story about how Breitbart is not really standing by their reporter. It includes the following bit (my bolding), which kinda contradicts the statement above. Oh, and a link to Field’s tweet showing her imaginary bruises.
So it’s OK to rough up someone who’s an “adversarial” reporter!
The Moar You Know
@John Revolta: Thank you. That is EXACTLY the word I was looking for, just didn’t know it.
It is like being a spy, innit? And yeah, when you look like they do, they assume you think like they do, and speak accordingly. Very educational.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
There’s video of the Trumpeter who punched the kid, they didn’t get the ISIS/terrorist comments, but he seems to be a talkative dumbfuck, whose eventual lawyer will probably lose some hair by the fistful
Next time we might have to kill him. Have to. Kill him.
jl
@The Moar You Know:
” I would never have believed the election of Obama would result in pictures of the POTUS with a bone in his nose. I apparently lack sufficient imagination. ”
And HOW could Obama NOT be responsible for THAT? (snark tag here, and added caps for fun)
scav
@Citizen_X: Duh. Candidate’s in favor of punching people out that disagree, so this is a surprise?
trollhattan
@The Moar You Know:
Finding myself being ever more pointed as this campaign progresses in noting the longterm idle racism directed at the president in “polite circles.” It’s how I combat the de facto belief in said circles that the only racists these days are those po folks acting stupid on the teevee machine and that the rest of us are evolved beyond such nonsense. Some things just has to be said.
elftx
This whole thing is so ironic as Breitbarf is in the tank for Trump. Her boyfriend, can’t recall his name works for Daily Caller and tweeted about it but supposedly was told to back off.
A BrietbarF reporter whose tweets were deleted questioned it even happening. But finally Ben ahole Shapiro stated that Lewandowski should be fired.
Aleta
@Betty Cracker:
On the other hand, this incident is just beginning for her, and the effects are hard to predict over time.
PurpleGirl
@Iowa Old Lady: Can I remind people that Hillary Clinton has been the butt of jokes and Republican scorn since she and Bill moved to DC when he became president. The media decided that her hair was horrible, she wore headbands, they didn’t like what she wore, that she had worked for a law firm, they investigated her investments, and on and on and on. Congress spent over 40 million dollars investigating the Clintons.
I’m reminded of a song from the movie Postcards from the Edge… “I’m Still Standing”. Hillary Clinton is still standing despite all she’s been subjected to by the Republicans.
ETA h/t to Yutsano: And she’s a lesbian who had her hetero lover (Vince Foster) killed.
Patricia Kayden
@raven: Color me shocked that any violence at a Trump KKK Rally has resulted in an arrest. Of course, this is the first such arrest even though other Protesters have been assaulted at Trump events. I guess it’s a step in the right direction though.
Patricia Kayden
@JPL: Yes Law Enforcement had a choice because there are videos of other protesters being assaulted at other Trump rallies and no arrests have been made in those situations.
Iowa Old Lady
@PurpleGirl: Yes, indeed. She and I are about the same age, and I took a lot of that stuff personally. She’s tough.
Bill Murray
@Hungry Joe:
Conveniently forgetting a few months ago when they were shouted down
SiubhanDuinne
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Hardly a day passes now without someone at a Trump event being punched or knocked down or manhandled in some way. The name-calling and mocking is bad enough, but I seriously fear that before this is over someone is going to be badly injured or even killed as a result of Trump’s inflammatory rhetoric and the unleashed id of some of his followers.
I’m going to watch the GOP debate tonight, in large part because I really want one of the other candidates, or ideally one of the moderators, to recite a litany of these violent events and call on Trump to address them. One isolated incident here or there, he might be able to claim he knew nothing about it; but there must be at least a score of these on the record at this point.
Of course, the moderators are Jake Tapper, Dana Bash, Hugh Hewitt, and someone from the Washington Times, so that’s pretty much a non-starter. L’il Marco and Lyin’ Ted, a nation turns its lonely eyes to you….
Patricia Kayden
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: So this is what America has come back to — beating up Black Protesters and threatening to go back to the good old days when you could lynch them in broad daylight and send the photos around to your family and friends for kicks? How nice that Republicans have taken us back to that happy time.
Need to see more politicians denouncing Trump loudly and making it plain that this type of politicking isn’t acceptable in 2016. Hell, I wish President Obama would address this even though I know it would only spur on Trump’s racist supporters.
redshirt
@PurpleGirl: My very Republican father who otherwise is a smart man just idly listed the fact that Hillary is a murderer as a reason she won’t win in November. I said nothing, because what’s the point? But the offhand, “everyone knows” manner in which he said it got to me. This poison is in all our water supplies.
I hope during Hillary’s second term we can actually address the issue of the media as propaganda channel. It’s too dangerous not to.
Patricia Kayden
@trollhattan: Rand Paul only had to face conservative White voters though who were apparently fine with his supporters’ thuggery. Trump has to face the entire nation in November and his stock among minority voters is already very low and can only go down given all these videos of his supporters’ violence against POC at his rallies.
Anne Laurie
@Iowa Old Lady:
You don’t remember the 1990s photoshops of Hillary as a dominatrix, even in ‘respectable’ news publications, just because she had the nerve to be married to a Democratic president? Because I sure do.
Every basement-dweller has the capacity to produce & distribute such pics now. Keep the brain bleach in stock & at hand.
Technocrat
@redshirt:
You can argue against someone’s conclusions, but their premises are gospel.
TaMara (BHF)
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Is this the video you’re looking for? Old guy says he might have to kill him, “We don’t know who he is. He might be with a terrorist organization.”
Iowa Old Lady
@Anne Laurie: I’m actually kind of curious to see what results. Obama’s era has been an education for me in how racism manifests subtly as well as insanely in the open. I expect to be similarly educated (and appalled ) by treatment of Madame President.
I don’t actually recall the dominatrix thing. I was pissed off enough that she had to bake cookies.
jl
I guess some black kids sitting quietly at a Trump rally and being called the N word by Trump fans was serious provocation, and something had to be done about them.
Trump thinks he can pivot to the general by toning down his language and not yelling and insulting people so much. Good luck with that, Donny.
Anne Laurie
@Patricia Kayden:
Yeah, but those protestors weren’t already ‘in physical custody’ of local LEOs. Much easier to shrug off ‘who knows what really happened when a bunch of amateurs scuffle at a crowded rally’ than ‘we were escorting this guy & let him get sucker-punched’.
TaMara (BHF)
@jl: I’m fairly certain there is enough video footage to make some great, “here is Trump’s America” ads, that should scare just about anyone with half a brain and a thimble full of empathy.
gogol's wife
@Mnemosyne:
OT, did you see this in Vanity Fair?
Anne Laurie
@Iowa Old Lady:
Not gonna google, for reasons, but I think it may have started with a cover on National Lampoon or Spy — safely within the ‘parody’ protection parameters — that was seized upon & circulated by every other news outlet even before the issue hit the newstands/mailboxes (this being effectively pre-internet). The NYTimes felt compelled to raise the question! of what That Woman must’ve done to inspire such resistance!!! among decent people, because everyone knows it’s always the woman’s fault when she’s attacked…
Mike in NC
Trump’s a bully and a blowhard, so there’s no way he can tone that down. It’s why they love him.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Anne Laurie: I don’t remember that form the nineties, but I think I gave up reading MoDo regularly when she started on “Obambi and the Dominatrix” in ’07 or ’08
the Conster, la Citoyenne
@PurpleGirl:
“Tomorrow Belongs To Me” is what comes to my mind.
@The Moar You Know:
I naively keep hoping that our educated citizenry has learned something from our racist past, but we’re doomed to repeat it over and over and over.
MomSense
@JPL:
INORITE!
trollhattan
@Anne Laurie:
Limbaugh would not have had a career had it not been for the Clintons. He would have eventually burned out from local (Sacramento, and you’re welcome, America) talk radio and gone on to multi-level marketing or somesuch. Attacking the Clintons daily was his whole schtick.
Kathleen
Thank you and bless you, John Cole! Your last two posts have warmed my heart (more than usual).
Anne Laurie
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Yeah, I assumed Dowd was using ‘Hillary the dominatrix’ because the guys in her front office had made it part of ‘history’. “You can’t wrist-slap me when you were using the same slur on the front page 20 years ago, guys!”
Citizen_X
Here (Politico link, sorry) is a transcript of the incident and aftermath, where she discusses what happened with a reporter who saw the whole thing. It sounds like the Trump campaign is full of shit. (Surprise!)
Kathleen
@Sad_Dem: And Hilary Clinton. They may even hate her more than President Obama in some ways. Maybe someone should poll them.
Shana
@redshirt: Not a white woman who dares to live her own life on her own terms. Their own wives might get ideas.
PurpleGirl
@the Conster, la Citoyenne:
I’m reminded of a song from the movie Postcards from the Edge… “I’m Still Standing”.
“Tomorrow Belongs To Me” is what comes to my mind.
Well, Tomorrow Belongs to Me is a good reference for Trump and a number of other situations. But I was thinking of Hillary is still standing despite all she’s been subjected to.
bemused
I hope Michelle Fields had someone take some photos of her bruises even if she has no plans to do anything with the evidence.
SiubhanDuinne
@Anne Laurie:
Sometime during the 2008 primary season, I was in an airport gift shop killing time and saw a huge display of “Hillary Nutcrackers” made to resemble HRC. The idea was, in case you never saw these abominations, that you would place a walnut or pecan between her “thighs,” squeeze her feet together, and voilà! Really disgusting on so many levels, but I’m guessing that it will seem quaintly tame before the current campaign is over, especially if she ends up running against Trump.
Shana
@bemused: Somewhere, I think it may have been the post by the WaPo reporter who witnessed it, had a picture of her arm with four bruises, evidently from where Cory’s fingers grabbed her.
chromeagnomen
@The Moar You Know: it’s not so much that the racism surprised me, as it was the lack of shame. hanging out with white boys most of my life (like me), i heard countless times the thoughtless, casual off-lines, and even, long ago, indulged in somewhat myself. but i grew up, i lived in the bronx, i’ve lived among a lot of poor white trash, and i left that infantile shit behind. but for a lot of white boys my age (60s) it was so ingrained as to become second-nature, and that, combined with either a lack of shame, self-reflection, peer pressure, or just plain blind white privilege, has led them to what i consider to be a dangerous place in regard to their soul. and just for the record, i am a virulent atheist/agnostic. what i thought were just throw away lines for laughs turned out to be what they are. i have two brothers with whom i can’t even speak anymore over this problem. and they just don’t/refuse to see it
bemused
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
This is why so many of those boneheads love Trump so much. He gives them permission to finally hurl invective at and beat up anyone they label unamerican which is pretty much almost everyone.
bemused
@Shana:
Trump is really stupidly irresponsible along with all his other odious behaviors. He doesn’t seem to be the least bit concerned that he is encouraging violence or that one or more of his supporters could maim or even kill a protester in an instant.
stinger
@jl:
Did you see where Steve Benen said today that Trump
So it’s just the ladies who don’t like that kind of behavior. We delicate flowers will like Trump better when his minions quit throwing us to the ground.
Tom Q
@stinger: This whole idea that Trump can “pivot to the center” is ridiculous, and a remnant of the era when presidential nomination fights took place well out of public view, making it possible for candidates to refashion themselves for the general election.
Today, it’s all on somebody’s camera. One off-hand quote. replayed endlessly, was enough to take George Allen from potential future presidential prospect to losing his Senate seat. With Trump, there are literally hundreds of such clips. Does Trump and the credulous press truly think everyone’s going to forget about them, just because Trump tones it down some from Memorial Day on?
redshirt
@Tom Q: But Trump doesn’t care. He could contradict himself from one day to the next and not face repercussions.
Lizzy L
@redshirt: And this is the core of what we are all betting the farm on: that while it’s true, he will not face repercussions from the 27-34% of the Republican party which truly does not care what he says or does — hell, they like him better the more outrageous he is — there’s a lot of other people — Republicans and Independents — who find Trump’s behavior and statements appalling, and they won’t vote for him.
Hoping…
redshirt
@Lizzy L: That’s my bet too. With large margins. And with enough drag on down stream races that the Senate is taken away from the monsters and even the House balance is substantially changed. I mean surely there’s a few folks out there who’ve noticed the Repugs are always trying to shut down the government and make everyone’s life a lot worse?
How is that accepted, from a political party?
jl
@stinger: Thanks. Trump has said in interviews that he can very quickly and easily change himself into what he wants to change into in order to win the election.
Your comment is more welcome evidence to me that it won’t be as easy at it looks, and Trump does not understand himself or his popularity nearly as well as he thinks he does.
Tom Q
@redshirt: I recognize Trump doesn’t care (about anything). What amazes me is the credulous reporting, telling us Trump is going to be doing this, as if it’s a workable strategy. Hell, Mitt Romney wasn’t able to walk away from his primary statements, and he hasn’t been 1/10 as offensive as Trump.
And, really, the idea that Trump is suddenly going to turn into some sober, dignified individual…dream on. Asshole is as asshole does.
redshirt
@Tom Q: It’s an utter farce and yet here we are!
Shit’s real.
Citizen_X
@stinger: Oh, bullshit. (What Trump said, not you.) Trump has to maximize angry white voter turnout. HAS to. And conventional Republicans could have toned it down, because they use only dog whistles during the campaign. But Trump has gleefully blown up the whole dog whistle structure as too “pc.” The only thing he could do is increase his appeal to white women–and he has shown that anything even slightly critical from women is to be treated as an attack on his very being. He’s stuck being his own asshole self.
Truegster
@Punchy:
I witnessed that effect during the recent LaVoy Finicum video