About the Bounce, and the Dump

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Sam Wang discusses Hillary Clinton’s post-convention bounce poll numbers, which put her ahead of Trump by anywhere from one to twelve points.

You may have been following the fallout from Trump’s reaction to Khizr and Ghazala Khan’s appearance at the DNC convention. After putting his foot in his big mouth in a George Stephanopoulos interview, Trump issued this prepared statement [emphasis added]:

“Captain Humayun Khan was a hero to our country and we should honor all who have made the ultimate sacrifice to keep our country safe. The real problem here are the radical Islamic terrorist who killed him, and the efforts of these radicals to enter our country and do us further harm,” Trump said.
“While I feel deeply for the loss of his son, Mr. Khan who has never met me, has no right to stand in front of millions of people and claim I have never read the Constitution, (which is false) and say many other inaccurate things. If I become President, I will make America safe again.”
You can’t make this up. Note that the Veterans of Foreign Wars has issued a statement condemning Trump’s statements about the Khan family. The Republicans losing the VFW is a serious thing.
We aren’t done yet. An adviser to the Trump campaign accused Khizr Khan of being an agent of the Muslim Brotherhood.
We really aren’t done with the Stephanopoulos interview, which I didn’t watch all the way through but may yet. Trump actually declared that Russia would not invade the Ukraine. Seriously, he said that.
In a discussion about US policy toward Ukraine, Stephanopoulos asked Trump about his campaign operatives’ successful effort to block the addition of a plank to the GOP platform that would have advocated providing lethal weapons to Ukraine to help defend against the Russian-backed insurgency in its eastern Donbas region.

Trump said, “I was not involved” no fewer than five times in trying to avoid the issue, which put him in direct opposition to the majority of the Republican foreign policy establishment.

It wasn’t even clear that Trump knew what the change entailed until Stephanopoulos spelled it out for him and asked why he thought it was a good idea.

Trump again dodged, appearing to claim that there was no need for the weapons by arguing that Russian President Vladimir Putin wasn’t going to take action against Ukraine.

“He’s not going into Ukraine, OK? Just so you understand. He’s not going to go into Ukraine, all right? You can mark it down and you can put it down, you can take it anywhere you want.”

“Well, he’s already there, isn’t he?” asked Stephanopoulos.

“OK, well, he’s there in a certain way, but I’m not there yet,” Trump said, rapidly trying to shift the conversation to the subject of President Obama. “You have Obama there. And frankly, that whole part of the world is a mess under Obama, with all the strength that you’re talking about and all of the power of NATO and all of this, in the meantime, he’s going where — he takes — takes Crimea, he’s sort of — I mean…”

It was a place Trump should not have gone, because Stephanopoulos then asked about a recent suggestion that he would recognize the Crimea as Russian territory and eliminate sanctions imposed after Russia’s invasion of the Ukrainian territory.

“I’m going to take a look at it,” he said. “But, you know, the people of Crimea, from what I’ve heard, would rather be with Russia than where they were.”

 Next time, somebody should challenge Trump to find the Crimea on a map.

The New York Times looks at Trump’s five deferments that kept him out of Vietnam. Meanwhile, WaPo‘s editorial page today seems entirely dedicated to dumping on Trump:

The Republican leaders Michael Gerson addresses are probably realizing that it would be better for the Republican Party if Trump lost.

11 thoughts on “About the Bounce, and the Dump”

  1. If you want to know whether something Trump says is true, flip a coin. Even this method overstates his honesty.

    Ain’t that the truth!

  2. And now, tRUMP is starting to say that this upcoming election is rigged!

    He’s incapable of doing the JOB of POTUS, so this way, if/when he loses, he can whine and pout without accepting any blame.
    You know, the usual tRUMP m-o!

  3. The tRUMPSTER just had a very young child and its parents kicked out of his VA rally, because the baby was crying!

    You can’t make this stuff up…

  4. It seems many people, including myself, would almost rather see a copy of tRump’s Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory than his tax returns. Little chance of either I would guess. It is almost certain that any MMPI profile from the tRump would have extreme elevations on the lie scale and most certainly display a fake good profile and therefore have validity issues. I would place a small wager on that prediction.

    Not being a literary type, I did not know until a recent NYT Crossword of the term camel-case. I had been using tRUMP, but have switched today to tRump which is as I understand is proper camel case. But perhaps in this case it is not supposed to be camel-case but more t with a yelled RUMP which is more properly the later. I would appreciate guidance from those more literate than I which is about everyone who submits to this post.

    I read or at least scanned most of the articles linked. I was a bit surprised that the tRump’s lack of social judgement skills was not an issue. Social judgement here meaning knowing what happens generally after you say or do something. In the most popular recent example, the tRump’s responses to the Khans, he seems to be oblivious to how such statements will be received by independents, veterans, and many members of the republican party. I cannot believe he could know or guess that it would receive general acceptance. I also cannot believe he would think he needs to feed more raw meat to his supporters. By now they all have to be on protein overload.

    Do not miss the Max Boot NYT op-ed. http://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/01/opinion/how-the-stupid-party-created-donald-trump.html?src=me&_r=0

  5. bernie.. I’m not up to knowing the intricacies of proper literary techniques, but verbally I can hold my own. Rather than concern myself with understanding the use of CamelCase I think it’s more effective and more important to understand and express exactly what a big bag of shit Trump really is, and push that truth until the majority of Americans get that concept firmly embedded into their heads and hearts.

    Where’s it going to end when nobody stands up to a bully and a coward who pisses on the sacrifice of America’s veterans. That yellow tuft of hair that nests upon his skull most likely derives its color from the yellow stripe that runs up his back.
    I hope misery and misfortune seeks him out and overtakes him.

  7. On the good ship Donald Trump
    It’s a sweet trip to the city dump
    Where the scavengers pee
    On the remnants of the GOP…

    Anyone up for fleshing this thing out and having Katy Perry sing it on the campaign trail?

  9. Of course I’m glad to see that the NYT and the WaPo are backing HRC & bashing Trump; OTOH, a couple of the names of the writers references above scare the hell out of me:

    – Robert Kagan (Maha link to WaPo):
    – longtime Neo-Con propagandist. Married to Victoria Nuland, who was Dick Cheney’s “principal deputy foreign policy adviser” in between stints in the State department under Bill and then Hillary.

    https://consortiumnews.com/2015/03/20/a-family-business-of-perpetual-war/

    – Max Boot ( linked in Comments above by Bernie), another hardcore Neo-Con:

    http://www.salon.com/2016/05/09/hard_line_right_wing_war_hawk_max_boot_applauds_hillary_clinton_in_op_ed/

    With friends like these, we’re bound to wind up with plenty of enemies.

    I expect to be glad about most domestic policies that HRC would implement (likely big exception: tepid environmental policy), but I’m quite afraid that she will revert to stacking our foreign policy bureaucracies with Neo-Cons. Obama has a mixed record in this regard, but he appears to have blunted the worst of their plans. Hillary’s record is NOT mixed; I can only hope that her hawkishness was a theatrical choice, to prove that she’s as tough as the boys.

  10. Pence: ” I’d like permission to endorse Paulie Ryan,sir. Oh, please,please, pretty please”.

  11. Pence has embarked on his boot licking odyssey. Trump is going to teach him how to fetch and roll over.

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