Trump supporters and conspiracy theory - Part 2

[Paul May]

Dangerous’ Trump is ‘going down in flames’ and wants to take the country with him: conservative

Tom Boggioni

In his column for the Daily Beast, conservative commentator Matt Lewis claimed that Donald Trump’s professed desire to delay the November election is a sign he knows he’s “going down in flames” and that should worry Republicans and Democrats alike because that makes the president dangerous.

Under a headline proclaiming “Trump Finally Admits That His Election Is Swirling Down the Golden Toilet,” Lewis — who abandoned the Republican Party due to Trump — said the president likely ramped up his claims of a “rigged election” because of terrible economic news on Thursday as a distraction, only to make it obvious to all that he knows he’s going down to defeat.

As Lewis notes, there is little good news on the horizon that will save the president with the coronavirus pandemic still raging across the country and the economy still in collapse, adding that “…changing campaign managers isn’t going to shake things up, and there won’t be a convention ‘bounce’ to help, either.”

After stating Trump is “going down in flames,” Lewis suggested that Trump is at his most dangerous now since he has already shown he cares about nobody but himself.

“If this is Trump conceding to the apparently inevitable, it’s also a dangerous time. People who are forced to finally admit imminent defeat are prone to outbursts and desperate behavior. When those people are the president, and especially this president, things can get dicey,” he wrote before adding, “If the choice is between Trump’s political ambitions and the preservation of this great experiment, there isn’t much of a contest. That’s why Trump thinks it’s safe to send kids back to school amid a pandemic (that helps his re-election chances) but not safe enough to have an election on November 3 (that hurts his re-election chances).”

 Writing, “it’s worth remembering that even if Trump is admitting to the evidently inevitable here, he’s still going to go down swinging,” Lewis wrote now it is just a matter of time for Republicans to flee the president, oppose him and try and save their themselves.

“Trump’s tweet is an open invitation to wavering Republicans to finally jump ship. In recent days, I have noticed commentators like Rich Lowry and Erick Erickson (both originally Trump critics who sidled up to him after the election) create some distance and start to hedge their bets,” he wrote before suggesting, “For the rest of us, it’s important to keep things in perspective. Trump said something truly shocking on Thursday. But it’s mostly shocking because it signals that even he can’t deny that the jig is finally up. It’s now just a matter of time. “

[Paul May]

Everything we suspected about Donald Trump has come true

Lucian K. Truscott IV


There were 65,853,514 of us who voted for Hillary Clinton in 2016, and it didn't take long to prove how right we were. Donald Trump waited less than 24 hours after he was inaugurated as the 45th president of the United States before he dispatched his press secretary, Sean Spicer, to the White House briefing room — attired in a tent-like garment reminiscent of David Byrne's "Big Suit" in the Talking Heads documentary, "Stop Making Sense" — to lie about the size of the crowd at his inauguration. Trump's inaugural ceremony and parade had "the largest audience to ever witness an inauguration, period, both in person and around the globe," Spicer told the White House press corps, which was already showing photographs of the sparse crowd on the National Mall and Trump waving to entire blocks of unoccupied bleachers along the inaugural parade route. Spicer's lie about Trump's crowd size was so blatant, it was shocking.

And the shocks kept coming.

By the time Trump got around on Thursday to his proposal to postpone the November election, the only proper reaction was to say, We told you so. We saw this coming. 

It's too late for people like Steven G. Calabresi, co-founder of the arch-conservative Federalist Society, who wrote an op-ed in the New York Times on Thursday calling Trump's proposal "fascistic and … grounds for the president's immediate impeachment again by the House of Representatives and his removal from office by the Senate."

That ship sailed in February, pal. Trump was a fascist last year when he openly solicited help from a foreign nation, Ukraine, in his campaign for re-election. He was a fascist when the House voted to impeach him in December. He was a fascist when the Senate voted against removing him from office at his impeachment trial in February. He was a fascist on June 1 when he ordered armed troops and other federal agents to use force to remove peaceful protesters from around Lafayette Park so he could march across Pennsylvania Avenue for his infamous Bible-waving photo-op in front of St. John's Church.

Trump was a fascist when he ordered his attorney general, William Barr, to drop the charges against his first national security adviser, Michael Flynn, for lying about his collusion with the Russian ambassador to lift sanctions against Russia. Hell, Trump was a fascist back in 2017 when he fired FBI Director James Comey for refusing to "go easy" in his investigation of Flynn and the rest of Trump's campaign for colluding with Russians in the 2016 election. He was a fascist when he commuted the sentence of his longtime pal and political fixer Roger Stone, who had been convicted of obstruction of justice and lying to the Congress. 

Trump was a fascist way back in 1989 when he advocated bringing back the death penalty in New York after the young men known as the "Central Park Five" were wrongfully convicted of gang-raping a jogger. He was still a fascist last year when he refused to apologize for his harsh comments about the innocent men. "You have people on both sides of that," Trump told reporters at the White House in June of 2019, again deploying "both sides" in refusing to back down from yet another fascistic position he had taken. He was a fascist every time he called journalists "the enemy of the people" at his rallies.

See, that's the thing about Donald Trump. He's a fascist, and he comes right out and admits it. He did it again on Thursday when he suggested at a White House press conference that the only votes that should count are those tallied on Election Day, thus invalidating mail-in ballots, which can take days to count after elections. "So many years, I've been watching elections. And they say the 'projected winner' or the 'winner of the election' — I don't want to see that take place in a week after Nov. 3 or a month or, frankly, with litigation and everything else that can happen, years. Years. Or you never even know who won the election."

There he goes again, telling you who he is. He wants to pick those who are allowed to vote using various laws enabling voter suppression, and then pick which votes are counted. This isn't the way elections are held in a democracy. It's the way elections are held in a fascist dictatorship.

Trump is beginning to react in real time to an inexorable shift that has taken hold among the electorate. He can't budge his waning in the polls no matter what he does. Fox News has lost its ability to rescue his political standing, even among his own base. He's been in a political slide for two months, and nothing he does to catch up is working.

There were reports on Thursday that the Trump campaign has pulled its TV advertising from the key swing state of Michigan. By Friday, his campaign admitted that it had hit "pause" in its national advertising strategy. Almost no Trump ads have been scheduled to run in August, the month the Republican National Convention is scheduled to take place. And plans for September are on hold as well.

Trump began to hold daily coronavirus briefings again last week and his poll numbers haven't budged. People aren't reacting to his bluster and lies. They haven't been moved by Trump calling Portland protesters "anarchists" and "agitators" who "hate our country." Nothing Trump says about the coronavirus matters. What matters is what's happening out there in the country, where red states are experiencing steep spikes in cases and deaths from the virus.

People aren't affected by Trump anymore. They're affected by reality. They are worried about the virus. They're worried about their jobs. They're worried that they can't travel to visit their relatives. They're worried about their rent and their mortgages. They're worried about losing federal unemployment benefits, which ended this week. They're worried about whether or not to send their children back to school. The things people have done to protect themselves aren't working. Being a citizen of a red state doesn't work. Living in suburbia rather than an inner city doesn't work. Private schools are as vulnerable as public schools. Corporate jobs are as vulnerable as blue-collar or gig economy jobs. Graduating from Harvard won't keep you from getting sick. Being a politician or a professional athlete or a famous entertainer won't protect you.

People want to know when they're going to get their lives back, and Donald Trump doesn't have an answer for them. 

What's going to happen over the next 95 days? What's happening right now gives us a pretty good answer. The virus is out of control and will continue to spread. Trump is desperate and will continue to act in increasingly unstable ways. He will reward his friends and use the levers of power, such as the Department of Justice, against his enemies. He will continue to act like a fascist because he is a fascist.

Trump is losing it because he is losing. He doesn't know anything else. It's who he is.

[Paul May]

Nobody likes me,’ Trump complains, as even his allies fade

Kevin Liptak

Lamenting his plunging popularity this week, a self-pitying President Donald Trump wondered how it all went wrong.

"Nobody likes me," he said, confounded at how his administration's health experts could be receiving accolades while he is accused of ignoring and denying the raging public health crisis.

"It can only be my personality," Trump said, "that's all."

That's one answer.

In a week that saw a devastating global pandemic worsen, a record economic meltdown confirmed and an all-out bid to stoke racial tensions for political gain deepen, Trump is finding himself more and more the odd man out: absent and detached from the leadership of either party, locked in antique cultural battles and increasingly unpopular among voters.

By Friday, the President's blunt assessment of his own popularity seemed to have manifested in a litany of other ways:

Even his staunchest Republican allies flatly rejected his suggestion that November's voting be delayed, some actually laughing at what, by most accounts, was a serious (if toothless) proposal from the President to undermine the election.

The nation's civic leadership, including three of Trump's four living predecessors, gathered without him in Atlanta to honor the late Rep. John Lewis, making the sitting president's absence conspicuous if unsurprising.

Stimulus talks on Capitol Hill have proceeded almost entirely without his participation, and have been notable mainly for the disarray they have exposed among Republicans, many of whom were unpleasantly surprised to learn the President's demand for a new FBI building was included in the final proposal.

In a closed door hearing on Friday, intelligence officials working in Trump's own administration discounted the possibility of foreign countries mass-producing fake ballots to interfere in the November elections -- a claim Trump seemed to be making simultaneously from the Cabinet Room.
And the concerted push by Trump to delegitimize mail-in ballots is raising alarm bells among Republican operatives, who are worried the President's demand for in-person voting will mainly serve to dampen turnout among his own supporters. Trump's attempts to regain standing have only exacerbated the divorce and led to worries he is weighing down his party's ability to move forward. Long dismissive of the Washington establishment, Trump has shown little concern at how his moves are forcing allies into awkward positions or alienating himself from longstanding norms.

Far from a mere difference of "personality," the examples of "nobody liking" Trump this week suggested a President actively isolating himself in his own bubble of conspiracy theories and questionable science, with fewer and fewer people willing to step inside to join him.

In an attempt to boost his mood, Trump's advisers scrambled to assemble a scaled-down political event on a baking Florida tarmac on Friday, where Trump addressed a mostly mask-less crowd standing inches from one another. Other events in the state that Trump had scheduled for Saturday were canceled as a storm approached.

The event illustrated what White House officials describe as an ad-hoc effort to schedule appearances for Trump that allow him to bask in at least some adulation as his campaign rallies remain on hold and after an in-person convention acceptance speech was scuttled.

White House officials are still weighing their options for how Trump will formally accept the nomination, one person familiar with the planning said, including assessing sites around the country where he might deliver a prime-time address. Yet the task has proven difficult as Trump insists upon something dramatic while aides work to temper some of his expectations about the scale of the potential venues.

Aides say Trump has grown to recognize the extreme political peril he's created for himself less than 100 days until the election. When he speaks with friends, his grievances are long and his complaints are ample but his willingness or ability to alter course seems minimal, according to people who have spoken to him.

Trump has voiced versions of "nobody likes me" for the past several months, those people said, describing an in-the-dumps president brought low by a pandemic he feels he has little ability to control.

Speaking Thursday, Trump appeared resigned to the fact that coronavirus case counts will continue spiking, and said it's probably not anyone's fault, least of all his.

"That's just the way it is," he said.

Top Republicans, many of whom have given up hope that Trump will offer anything resembling a coherent national plan to contain the virus, have long decided to promote mask-wearing and social distancing without taking a lead from Trump. One of those who didn't, Rep. Louie Gohmert, R-Texas, found out he had coronavirus from a test administrated at the White House.

Instead of avoiding the question or denying knowledge about Trump's tweet on Thursday suggesting an election delay -- a tactic they've fallen back on before when the President dispatches something inconvenient or embarrassing -- nearly every Republican this week rejected the idea out of hand.

"I don't think that's a particularly good idea," said Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham, an informal adviser to the President.

"I read it. I laughed. I thought my gosh this is going to consume a lot of people," said GOP Sen. Kevin Cramer. "I long ago stop being surprised by the things he does that other presidents wouldn't have done, but I also understand why he does it and why his base enjoys it so much."

On Capitol Hill, the ill-fated election day float went over about as well as the administration's proposal to include $1.75 billion for a new FBI building in a coronavirus relief package -- a longstanding fixation for the President that his opponents decry as ethically questionable.

Republicans simply decried it as non-sensical in a bill meant to extend unemployment to the millions of newly unemployed Americans whose lives have been crushed by an out-of-control pandemic.

"There's a number of unrelated things in there," said Republican Sen. John Cornyn of the provision, which he said caught him by surprise.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, who also appeared to be caught off guard by the item, understatedly called it "non-germane." Absent any support, the White House eventually said the new money wouldn't be a dealbreaker.

Yet by Wednesday, Trump's isolation from the leaders of his own party -- who are hoping to salvage what is shaping up to be a tough November -- seemed cemented. Aboard Air Force One, Trump indicated to associates that he would not intervene in the Kansas Republican primary, even after hearing appeals from both his political team and senior Republicans that the seat -- and control of the Senate -- was at risk if conservative firebrand Kris Kobach wins.

The move appeared to some another break from a President whose interests in politics generally don't extend beyond his own self-interest. While his absence from the Lewis funeral on Thursday was not a surprise given the animosity between the two men, it also reflected Trump's general impatience for the rituals of politics that do not revolve around him.

Aides never expected Trump to join his three most recent predecessors -- Presidents Barack Obama, George W. Bush and Bill Clinton -- at the funeral. But even some White House officials were surprised when Trump, on Monday, flatly rejected the prospect of traveling to the US Capitol where Lewis lie in state. Some had quietly been considering a quick trip to pay respects.

As it stood, all three former presidents offered remarks that could be read as oblique rebukes of how Trump has approached the job they all held.

"In the America John Lewis fought for, and the America I believe in, differences of opinion are inevitable elements and evidence of democracy in action," said Bush, the most recent Republican president.

Denied traditional routes of affirmation, Trump has begun looking elsewhere. Frustrated that his once-favorite television channel Fox News is willing to interview Democrats, Trump has adopted the hard-right OAN as his preferred venue and spoke to the outlet's CEO this week about hydroxychloroquine, the anti-malarial that he insists works to prevent coronavirus.

Even amid attempts by his aides to shift his focus back to the pandemic, Trump continues to hear from a wide range of associates who are undermining the administration's health experts and questioning their approach to the pandemic, people familiar with the conversations say.

A group of doctors who have promoted hydroxychloroquine and cast doubt on the decision to enforce lockdowns to contain the virus were invited to the White House for a meeting with Vice President Mike Pence on Wednesday, even though a video of a press conference they delivered was removed from social media for violating rules against misinformation.

[Paul May]

With a president like this, who needs terrorists?

[Rick Plant]

More of those "very fine people"

 https://www.rawstory.com/2020/08/white-power-california-pair-arrested-for-on-biracial-couples-vehicle/

[Paul May]

The corruption from the WH never ends. You may have heard that Trump installed Louis DeJoy, a wealthy GOP donor, to serve as Postmaster General, and that he immediately instituted organizational changes that are slowing mail deliveries and could undermine the integrity of absentee ballots this fall. But the fact that “DeJoy and his wife Aldona Wos, the ambassador-nominee to Canada, have between $30.1 million and $75.3 million in assets in Postal Service competitors or contractors,” according to The Arkansas Democrat Gazette, has largely been absent from reporting on DeJoy’s leadership.

[Paul May]

What you may not have heard....on Fox.

Following the federal crackdown in Portland and elsewhere, the Scottish government “has called for the immediate suspension of exports of riot gear, tear gas and rubber bullets to the United States,” according to The Independent.

Last week, the UN Commissioner for Human Rights warned that Trump’s goons were committing human rights violations by targeting journalists and peaceful protesters with violence.