I’m of the opinion that Trump knew exactly what Cruz was planning and he planned his counterattack perfectly. It Cruz doesn’t speak, that becomes part of the story. If Cruz speaks, he is going to get some digs in at Trump. The best way to manage this is to let Cruz speak and orchestrate a response with Cruz being booed offstage at the same time that Trump appears to triumphant cheers. This follows with the reports that Trump staffers were in the audience, whipping up the boos. This is how this entire campaign has been run and is has been wildly successful. Trump’s supporters eat this stuff up (reference the “lock her up” stuff). This whole thing was planned to whip up the Trump supporters and although the media states that it will hurt Trump, they have been wrong on everything he has done so far. Like it or not, Trump seems to have the pulse of a lot of Americans better than the conventional media does and I really believe that there are a lot of people who would never admit it publicly, but love the drama and will probably vote for Trump for that reason. Frankle, I’m worried that he is actually going to win this thing.
Yeah, this photo really screams “brilliant political puppet-master delighted to see his prey stumble right into his nefarious trap.”
IIRC, someone observed the other day that “Hillary Clinton” was getting said more often than “Donald Trump” – and he doesn’t seem to have minded so far, and so he could’ve plausibly looked for the attacks on her and found 'em; and he could’ve seen the bit about ISIS not being the Junior Varsity, and about keeping out refugees who might be terrorists, and about Building A Wall, and about Uniting The Party – and figured, hey, that stuff he’s against, that’s them; and that stuff about building a wall, that’s me; so, uniting the party, that’s uniting the party around me, and against them.
I still prefer my other read of the situation, but I can’t rule this one out.
I caught maybe five minutes of it before I had to hit mute. I have apparently drunk a different flavor of Kool-Aid than Pence, because I had the irresistible urge to slap him with a trout while crying “bullshit!”.
I came in just before the part that goes “In so many ways, the Democratic Party has abandoned those and used to protect. Maybe they’ve become to entrenched in power. So comfortable at times but they lose patience with the normal legislative process. It’s so much simpler to impose their values by executive order or court action, and make no mistake about it: Hillary Clinton has big ideas along those lines.”
Um, I seem to recall that right now, the majority of states have Republican legislatures and the Senate and House are all Republican controlled. So if America is truly the festering hellhole that they’ve been describing for the past three days, the people who need to be flung out of the trench are not Democrats. And maybe people wouldn’t be losing patience with the normal legislative process if the legislators were actually doing something besides holding endless votes to repeal healthcare for poor people.
Perfect analogy.
The Daily Show put together a montage of Trump insulting and reviling Ted Cruz, under the heading of Why Cruz Didn’t Endorse Trump. In other words, “Duh”.
Yeah, I don’t think Laura Ingraham intended to perform a nazi salute, but jeez it makes a perfect meme, doesn’t it?
You have to see this. Ya Got Trouble.
So tonight is Trump’s chance to right the ship, clearly enunciate his message, and unify the party and fire up the troops. But given that he is actually a lousy speaker and his writers are not A-team quality, there’s not much chance of this happening.
The race is not tied. It hasn’t been since, well, never. I do believe the only poll in which Clinton was behind was the race between her and Gen. Eric R. E. Publican. And he isn’t running.
Compare and contrast with an actual example of this situation.
I think what we saw was basically the end product of two self-obsessed sociopaths trying to outscheme one another.
It likely worked out something like this;
- Cruz threatens a floor fight for the nomination that he’ll lose but will embarrass Trump
- Trump offers him a primetime speech in exchange for playing along
- Cruz “complies” by not putting his name up for consideration at roll call, thus forcing the delegates to unanimously elect Trump
- Cruz then drafts a speech where he doesn’t endorse Trump and calls on the delegates (who are now pissed that they were forced to vote for Trump) to vote their conscience
- Trump sees the speech and tells his people to get the audience to boo him, then literally upstages him at the conclusion
The end result? I think they both lose, really. Trump comes off as an idiot who gave Cruz a platform to denounce him with, and Cruz comes off as a scumbag party-crasher.
Wait now. A big deal was made of Trump entering the hall at the end of Cruz’ speech, while the crowd was booing. How could he do that and we also end up with that picture of him watching the speech? We can’t.
Trump was watching and glowering from the VIP box. Towards the end of the speech, he left the VIP box and went down to the convention floor.
As off the rails as this thing is, can you imagine what would be going down if this had ended up as an actual contested convention?
Late-night talk-show host James Corden did a Top Ten list of Melania’s excuses for plagiarism, including, “I thought all First Ladies gave that speech” and “The drugs I have to take to get through sex with my husband hadn’t quite worn off.”
I would’ve added, “Joe Biden assured me the speech was fine.”
Donald Trump Jr. Speech. Clearly very nervous. I predict he has a future in politics. If he wants it.
If my dad have jumped into politics. Would I have delivered a speech this well? Not a chance. All of Trump’s children have turned out remarkably well. I’ve NEVER seen any of them in the tabloids. No drug allegations. Bar hopping. Sex scandals. Sex tapes or the other filth we see in spoiled rich brats like Paris Hilton or Kim K. Nothing. Donald and his wives did something right.
I don’t know if she did or didn’t salute. What I do know is that I’m horrified that she hasn’t commented to say that she didn’t.
If it was a fascist salute it should be easy to provide a video of the woman giving a fascist salute. Not a still. Otherwise, Jimmy Carter might be a Nazi.
Well that’s a vague remark (and if you are familiar with them, would obviously include people who are not white supremacists.) How many are there? How many neo-Nazis are there running around? If you know, why hold me in suspense?
I mean, my honest impression was that neo-Nazism kind of peaked about twenty, twenty-five years ago. According to most sources the USA’s biggest such organization effectively died ten years ago. Trump’s actual base of voters does not care for or about Nazis except insofar as they serve as villains Indiana Jones can send careening off cliffs.
Do you really believe some West Virginian in a dying coal mining town voting for Trump because s/he thinks it’s how things will somehow get better would be impressed by him being a Nazi? Come on. That’s not at all what he’s tapping into. I realize the “Trump appeals only to bigots” thing is comforting from the perspective that it might serve to convince that he can’t win the election… but he doesn’t, and he CAN win, as the polls demonstrate.
I dunno. Imagine if they included Dwarf Tossing, Foxy Boxing, bear baiting or dog fights? I kinds surprised they didn’t at least throw in a Trump family Wet T-shirt contest.
This is true, but he can’t win WITHOUT bigots either.
Here’s a video.
She holds the “salute” for just a split second-just long enough to be awkward.
one of my all time favourites. i do so enjoy etiquette as a razor sharp zing.
Here’s video. She turns with a stiff-armed salute to her left, holds it for just a beat, and then immediately turns back with bent elbow and waving hand.
It’s just a beat, and might be a coincidence, but I find it, um, odd that she is locked-elbow, palm upright and unmoving, and then so suddenly shifts to bent elbow and waving.
My honest opinion is that the explicit “we call ourselves Nazis” school is likely on the wane, but the less explicitly Third Reich version is on the rise, and has been for a number of years. “European America is under attack! Those others, those Mexicans and blacks and Muslims, are all rapists and thieves and terrorists. They didn’t build this country, and they don’t deserve to have what we have built. We White Americans have to defend our homeland from the assaults of those Others Who Aren’t White, who are trying to take from us what we built! When America was dominated by White Americans, the country was great, and we will make it great again!” Oh yes, those ideas are very much what Mr. Trump is tapping into, and if those don’t represent Naziism and white supremacy and bigotry, what term would you use?