Here’s something to reflect upon — the men surrounding Donald Trump who are urging him to campaign on Bill Clinton’s marital infidelities include Newt Gingrich, Rudy Giuliani and Roger Ailes.
And no, you can’t make this shit up. Go ahead and clean the spewed coffee off your monitor if you need to.
I read that Trump was up half the night last night tweeting trash about Alicia Machado and advising America to see her “sex tape.” Telling the American people to watch a sex tape has to be a first for a U.S. presidential candidate. The Clinton campaign already is using the tweetstorm against him.
The Alicia Machado saga really was a brilliant move on Clinton’s part. Not only can’t Trump let it go — four days on, and he’s still ranting over something he could have put to rest easily Monday night — but Clinton had Machado in the audience Monday night and also had a video about Machado in the can and ready to be released as soon as the debates were over.
And Trump can’t let it go. Josh Marshall is calling it “Khan 2.0.”
This morning NBC News got a leaked version of the ‘talking points’ the Trump campaign is giving surrogates discussing Alicia Machado. They almost perfectly mirror Trump’s stages of denial dealing with the Khans. Machado is “vicious”, “desperate”, her charges are “baseless and unsubstantiated”, Clinton is a fake feminist, and what about Monica? Any halfway competent campaign would realize the ‘talking points’ on this issue are quite simple: Don’t talk about it! The ‘charges’ against Trump are nothing more than things he said on video. There are no charges. Just quotes. There is nothing in dispute. It’s just showing people what he said.
But ‘not talking about it’ assumes, actually requires you can get Trump to stop talking about it – especially, stop talking about how overweight she was or what a stand up guy he was for trying to get her to lose weight.
I can just see President Trump — Los Angeles could be on fire, and he’d be up all night tweeting because somebody insulted his hair.
See also Joan Walsh.
The Washington Post reports that the Trump Foundations lacks the proper certification for a charity that solicits money. I liked this part:
Experts on charity law said they were surprised that Trump’s foundation — given its connections to a wealthy man and his complex corporation — did not register to solicit funds.
“He’s a billionaire who acts like a thousandaire,†said James J. Fishman, a professor at Pace University’s law school in White Plains, N.Y. He said Trump’s foundation seemed to have made errors, including the lack of proper registration, that were more common among very small family foundations.
“You wouldn’t expect somebody who’s supposed to be sophisticated, and brags about his business prowess, would run his foundation like this,†Fishman said.
It’s possible that a court could order him to return any money he had solicited, which could include $1.67 million solicited this year “for veterans.” He also has a habit of telling people who owe him money to give it to the Foundation instead of him, ostensibly as a way to avoid paying taxes on income. That would probably qualify as “soliciting.”
Howard Stern has spoken out and said Trump expressed support for the Iraq War in 2002.
Fivethirtyeight shows that Clinton definitely got a p0st-debate bounce. The next debate will be Sunday, October 9, in St. Louis. Stay tuned.
I have a question and would be grateful to anyone who has an answer.
Is there a website which has tracked the time of day in which Trump’s tweets are sent? The ones we are looking at today were sent at about 3:30 in the morning. Has he been in the habit of tweeting at that hour in the past?
If he has been sending tweets at 3 AM all along, that means one thing. If this is something new, that would suggest that he is starting to melt down in the way that people with bipolar disorder often do as their thoughts begin to race out of control and their sleep becomes more and more disrupted by mental activity.
Some database must have this information; ignore the content and look at the pattern of the time of day when his twitter activity has increased and decreased.
t-RUMP reminds me of this obsessed stupid weasel, who wants to eat a chicken – or the dog dressed in feathers, and finally, Foghorn Leghorn.
https://youtu.be/wZGCGWadI58
Also, FWIW, there has been an overnight shift of about 3 points in Hillary’s direction in the election betting markets. These people will probably be ahead of the polls when something happens to team Trump; there has been no time for the polls to react to this tweetstorm since it only made the news this morning.
Also, Google super careless fragile ego extra braggadocious Randy Rainbow and see what comes up. Do it now!
Somebody did such an analysis.. Trump’s tweets come from two different phones, one during the day which is fairly normal, and one at night, which is this crazy shit. The speculation is the daytime tweets are done by staff aids, and the nightime ones are Trump’s.
Ed, that’s an interesting hypothesis.
I’m also curious about what constitutes “a lot of weight.” Creepy Uncle Newt said that she gained 60 pounds. She weighed 116 pounds when she won the title and says she had some difficulty overcoming the effects of an eating disorder. So something doesn’t jibe and my money’s on Newt.
I may not be able to really understand a woman’s perspective to a reliable degree. But, I would bet that Rudy Giuliani, Roger Ailes, Newt Gingrich and Donald Trump would all place in the top five creepiest men on the planet. I’d almost bet my goats on it.
“You wouldn’t expect somebody who’s supposed to be sophisticated, and brags about his business prowess, would run his foundation like this,â€
Yeah right, Have you seen Trump’s attorney? He’s the closest thing I’ve seen to Better call Saul.
Its interesting how, of all the stuff he could be talking about, its the Machado incident that’s pushed him over the edge. Its not about whether he thinks rehashing Machado obsessively will help him with women. He’s so caught up in narcissistic revenge mode, he really doesn’t care.
Trump really has a very sick view of women.
The reason Trump has become so unglued is because when Hillary brought it up it hit a bullseye in identifying a core sickness in Trump’s character. He’s a control freak who gets off on dominating women. That’s why he has such conflict with the ones he can’t beat down. He has to resort to humiliation or denigrating comments to any female who doesn’t bow down before him or knuckle under to his will. He’s a sick man-child.
What I find most disturbing in all of this are the people who support him knowing full well he’s not fit for the office that he seeks. It’s really a shame that our political process has degenerated to the point where a sick and twisted morally bankrupt flim-flam man has managed to take control of the party of Lincoln. What is our country coming to?
Swami: never mind about party of Lincoln, they’re way past that. I’d say that the R’s and the D’s have in effect traded Abraham Lincoln and Andrew Jackson. It took about a century for the parties to change places; perhaps another century to change back.
On the amount of weight gained, Digby had a picture the other day of Machado when she was doing her first workouts, which would be when Trump said she’d gained 60 lbs. if she’d gained 60 lbs in that pic she started out at 80-90 in the pageant, which is obviously not so. She says she gained perhaps as much as 20 lbs from about 118.
Let me make a comparison to show what that means for a woman like that. In the movie “Sirens”, Elle Macpherson spent most of the movie nude. Of course she looked great. And how did she prepare for that movie? She gained 20 lbs. up to about 138-140. Google some pictures from that movie and tell me she doesn’t look incredibly good. As Scarlett Johansson has said about her response to industry bigwigs telling her to lose weight, “I don’t hear the guys complaining”. Obviously she’s not talking about guys like Trump. Come to think of it, this whole situation calls for some of that classic Johansson sideeye, the best in the business.
“He’s a sick man-child.”
I woke up in hippie-dippie dime store psychology/comparative traditions mode, which is usually more fun for me than for those around me. But, it occurred to me that part of the repulsion that some of us feel for Trump is, as Swami, suggested, that he never underwent the process of growing out of the selfish child state. He preserves and represents that bitter, self-centered twit that formed the kernel of our immature psyches, the part that had to be shed and discarded along the road to adulthood so that we could engage the rest of the world. He is a braying clown weighed down by narcissism and hobbled by his id. At times he seems almost like a creature of myth, representing a hideously shallow mentality that was born to power by chance, and who will leave a cautionary tale in his wake.
ERRR, Sorry, I told you I was in hippie-dippie mode.
If there’s such a place as Hell, Rudy Giuliani, Newt Gingrich and Roger Ailes would be the three bachelors on the infernal “Dating Game.” Either Phyllis Schlafly or Peggy Noonan would be the contestant.
If only we could tap the energy from deflating male ego’s, we’d be energy independent for the rest of eternity.
This, is written by a 58 year-old male – me!….
Clearly, Team Clinton’s use of Machado was brilliant, the Donald took the bait and is the gift that keeps giving.
Check out Bill Maher last night, asking Trump toadie Steven Moore, “Have you lost your goddamn mind?”
t-RUMP stepped into a trap!
And the best thing is, he can’t stop opening his trap about it!!!
Thanks, JDM. I suspected that was the case.
It’s funny, and not so funny to look at old photos from back in 70s. A lot of us looked like famine victims. I don’t know how women survived it, because as usual, most of pressure was focused on them.
I remember seeing “Sirens,” and I have to admit, I thought Elle Macpherson was quite attractive, and of course Scarlett Johansson is a very beautiful young woman, if she were my granddaughter, I’d be very proud of her, for more than just her beauty.
” The true meaning of disciple is not punishment, but self control”
That’s an old military maxim. And by that standard Trump fully qualifies as an undisciplined pig!
In looking at Trump’s loss of momentum and loss in the recent polls in SWING states, the old saying comes to mind with great irony – “It ain’t over till the fat lady sings.”
One wonders if in the talent portion of the pageant did Machado sing?
Machado was, AND IS NOW now, a grest-looking woman!
I’d drag my (biÄ£ger than t-RUMP’s) balls for acres over rocks, just to kiss the tires on her car!
TMI?
Yeah!
But, I ain’t “Dumb-‘n–Ol-Chump!”
I may be an asshole
But I’m certainly not a misogynistic one!!!
OT
I remember Joe Campbell talking about a description of the process of love that came from an Indian source.
First, we are attracted by something in the eyes or the way a person walks, some physical attribute. We form a bond based on attraction and the bond grows and deepens, we come to love the things that cannot be apparent from appearance. When the bond has grown to overshadow the physical attraction, we still feel the attraction, maybe more strongly than ever, but, we wonder how why we ever valued it so highly as compared to all of the other attributes.
I think he had a catchier way of relating this phenomenon.
As I grow older, the nature of physical beauty is changing. It has to reflect an inner beauty, and the little ways that it comes out can be subtle and not necessarily physical in themselves. It can be in the way a woman laughs or the way, or importantly, the way she thinks.
OT also..But Rudy needs to be commended for his excellence in the fine art of butt sucking.
It’s not about the weight. It’s about the public humiliation. Gah.
Curious. In the 9/30 post “Donald’s Meltdown” there is a link without comment to Joan Walsh’s Nation piece entitled “Donald Trump Is Being Outplayed by Women—and He’s Losing His Mind Over It” and subtitled “The GOP nominee’s pathological sexism could be what kills his presidential hopes. Good.” Yet in the 9/27 post “Hillary’s Night?” there is a link to Amanda Marcotte’s piece in Salon entitled “Donald Trump is every woman’s workplace nightmare: Debate with Hillary Clinton was a crash course in everyday sexism”. The link to the Marcotte piece is embedded in the sentence “Oh, and Amanda Marcotte is already complaining that everything about the debate was sexist. Give it a bleeping rest, Amanda.”
Nowhere in Marcotte’s piece does she say anything like “everything about the debate was sexist”. It is simply her latest take on Trump’s (and a certain kind of man’s) sexism, very much of a kind with Joan Walsh’s piece.
So what is going on here? Is there a backstory I’ve missed?
“Is there a backstory I’ve missed?”
Yes. Among other things, on several occasions during the primaries, Marcotte accused Bernie Sanders of misogyny, apparently because he exists, and she was certain that all Sanders supporters opposed Clinton only because they were sexist. She wrote one column after another about it. She’s such a fawning sycophant of Clinton’s that the last time I mentioned Marcotte, she was upset with President Obama because his speech at the DNC convention praising Hillary Clinton didn’t praise Clinton enough. And Marcotte was making a different point from Walsh. Walsh gleefully noted that Clinton was tripping up Trump with his own bigotry, whereas Marcotte’s piece was just complaining for the gazillionteenth time about how awful it is that Clinton can’t catch a break from men.
It’s about the public humiliation.
It’s also about the sadistic nature of that humiliation.. Trump was getting off on humiliating her..Watch the video and notice Trump’s facial expressions..He’s a sick individual. And this is the guy that creeps like Pauly Ryan, Mitch McConnell, John McCain, Marco Rubio, and a host of other GOP slobs are willing to stand behind.
It blows my mind..Didn’t any of the people learn about the value of common decency and character?
I remember that column now. I agree completely that her appraisal of Obama’s speech was completely off the mark. I too watched the entire speech and thought it was very good. I could not understand her POV on it. Anyway, I still like a lot of her writing, though I know she raises a lot of lefty hackles (The Daily Howler really doesn’t like her either). And though a small but vocal minority of Bernie bros are misogynists, the vast majority of us are not, and it bothered me that we were all painted with that brush. Anyway, thanks for the response.