Yeah, that scare tactic is indeed not very effective. But sure you expect Trump to use it.
As pointed before, the neo nazi and white genocide guys from tweeter demonstrate the kind of people he likes to associate with, and then there is Joe Arpaio too.
That excuse is not going to work, many over here are not dumb. Trump is the one who is or he just loves to have many of his followers fall down on their faces by failing to find reasonable explanations for the crazy things he says and it amuses him. And I’m not talking that he is amused by what their opponents find, but by how his followers never get it. He knows who is supporting him.
In the clip I watched this “unelaborated number of groups” was mentioned only once. It was mentioned after Trump already refused to condemn David Duke by feigning ignorance (mentioning him by name, so there’s no doubt he knew exactly who he was talking about). And when Trump switched to talking about those other groups, Tapper specifically said “I’m just talking about David Duke and the Ku Klux Klan here”.
No idea who Banks is either, but the “I want a President who will take on big business therefore I’m voting for the big businessman” argument has a few obvious flaws in it…
Trump showcased one of his political weaknesses on Meet the Press yesterday. When Chuck Todd kind of subtly needled him about not knowing the origin of a famous quote by Mussolini, typically insecure Trump couldn’t handle any implication that he was not knowledgeable about history, so he insisted that sure, of course he knew it was a Mussolini quote, but he just thought it was interesting and worth sending out there.
That may be, Slacker, but the man drew (according to reports) about 3-4 times the crowd Rubio did (if you see claims for 30,000+, that is a fantasy; I know that stadium and it wouldn’t hold that many–but 10,000-12,000, yes it can). And he got an endorsement from Sessions, an Alabama Senator, so Meet the Press or not, I’m betting on him sweeping through Alabama.
But an asshole shouldn’t be elected president. Right?
So either Trump is so fucking stupid and ignorant that he doesn’t even know these groups and their history, or he’s lying for political gain so as not to piss off racists.
Either way is unforgivable.
Bullshit. He wasn’t asked to apologize for anything, he was asked to repudiate racists.
How does that follow? With Clinton, the conflict of interest is with her son-in-law. With Trump, the conflict of interest is with himself. And in between you’ve got Ted Cruz and his Goldman Sachs investment manager wife. I realize that your internal narrative requires you to spin Hillary as the worstest person ever but by this metric she’s *maybe *third from the bottom.
I don’t think Hillary is going to “take on” Wall Street for a hot second but compared to Donald Trump she looks like Bernie Sanders.
I’m not saying his campaign is about to collapse. I’m saying it’s another example of how he is vulnerable, and why his appeal will be limited outside of a plurality of the GOP primary electorate. It’s not even just that it leads him to take very questionable positions (“I knew I was quoting Mussolini, I did it on purpose because I like the quote”). It’s because I have a little higher opinion of the general, non-GOP public than many others here do, and I think for most people, Trump reeks of defensive insecurity, which is very unattractive. He’s like Kristen Wiig’s SNL character Penelope.
That this personality characteristic of his, on its own, doesn’t tank his campaign within the GOP is a little surprising and is to that party’s discredit (although to be fair, plenty of people in the GOP establishment roll their eyes at him for exactly this reason). I have no doubt, however, that it will be disqualifying for him among the wider electorate.
On the latest about not denouncing David Duke and the kkk.
Why the heck should he? The kkk has exactly zero influence on todays society, politics, or culture and he isnt wort a fart let alone real words. But lets see who wants to make a big deal of it?
Because they have a monstrous ideology, and a monstrous history of violence against black people and others. Whether the KKK itself has any influence, racism and white supremacy still do (though there are significant disagreements on how much influence) to some degree, and it’s entirely reasonable to expect a candidate to denounce specific prominent white supremacists when those white supremacists endorse their campaigns.
Doesn’t matter, it’s too late. Trump’s not losing 15 points in two days over a Meet the Press interview. He’s going to blow through the primaries tomorrow and the new-news will be all about how Trump dominated and is the presumptive nominee, not what he said three days earlier on a Sunday news show.
This is the same audience that goes into conniptions over a Youtube clip of a black woman saying “Obamaphone”, who wants to build a Muslim database, thinks “Heritage not Hate” is a valid motto for flying the Confederate battle flag and who thinks that we need a 40’ wall to stop murderous rapist Mexican druglords from streaming the border. Thinking that failing to denounce the KKK is going to shed them off Trump is absolutely quaint.
But it’s not too late for him to get wiped out in November, by a much *larger *group of people who do not go into conniptions over “Obamaphone” et al.
Further illustrating what I was talking about upthread in terms of Trump’s insecure, thin-skinned defensiveness is this segment of John Oliver’s takedown of Trump last night. Think about what it says about Trump that nearly thirty years after being called a “short-fingered vulgarian” in one magazine piece, he continues to send the article’s author pictures of himself with his hands circled and notes reading “See, not so short”?!? Good lord.
I’m only about a third of the way into that video, but I also love how Trump claims to be “self funding” but has actually raised $7.5 million dollars thanks to a website that has *two *“Contribute” buttons on the front page! If he were really as rich as he claims, I’ve got to think he would actually self-fund, just to look all strong and be able to back that smack talk up.
No defense of Trump intended but I thought his “self-funded” campaign meant that he wasn’t using superPACs. There’s been multiple stories before about how he hasn’t spent any of his own wealth yet, being able to get by on private contributions (and free media advertising).
