There were a number of news outlets that disagreed with that decision, and in fact some of you expressed similar opinions here in the IM comment section as well.
Now as it turns out David Corn of Mother Jones, who by the way one would expect to be among the first to mock Trump's candidacy, is agreeing with those dissenters:
Trump has indeed turned an important event—a major political party selecting its presidential nominee—into a stretch Hummer-sized clown car. A Trump-dominated GOP contest does have the feel of a super-charged reality show, with political consumers (that is, the audience) on the edge of their seats, eagerly awaiting the next Trump tweet—Trweet™—blasting another foe or critic. ("Hey Pope Francis, you suck!") Trump is campaigning as a bombastic buffoon, playing to the crowd and inspiring love-hate viewing. Yet, I believe my dear comrades at HuffPo (and I hope they will link to this article) are wrong.
It's not that Trump is truly a statesman who ought to be regarded as such. But he is a political phenomenon that tell us much about a significant slice of the American public: Republican voters. It is indeed a drop-dead serious matter that a large bloc of GOPers—perhaps a plurality, depending on which poll you prefer—would entrust this nation to Trump. And the fact that Trump's demagoguery is prevailing at this early stage of the Republican presidential race is a measure of how far the tea party shift in the party has gone—and how this ideological extremism has developed deep roots within the GOP.
Okay well that is a valid point.
However personally I will NEVER be able to treat a Trump candidacy as anything other than a joke.
Of course at this point that is pretty much how I treat the entire Republican party.
If Trump wins in Iowa, NH, South Carolina, then I might start to feel sick to my stomach that he is a real contender.
ReplyDeleteMeanwhile, on the Dem side of things:
Wrap Up: Who Stood Out, Who Missed Out
http://iowastartingline.com/2015/07/19/hall-of-fame-wrap-up-who-stood-out-who-missed-out-2/
If Trump wins the GOP nomination, no matter who is on the Democratic ticket, there will be a Democrat in the Oval Office for the next four years.
DeleteWhat Donald Trump was up to while John McCain was a prisoner of war
ReplyDeleteIt was the spring of 1968, and Donald Trump had it good.
He was 21 years old and handsome with a full head of hair. He avoided the Vietnam War draft on his way to earning an Ivy League degree. He was fond of fancy dinners, beautiful women and outrageous clubs. Most important, he had a job in his father’s real estate company and a brain bursting with money-making ideas that would make him a billionaire.
...More than 8,000 miles away, John McCain sat in a tiny, squalid North Vietnamese prison cell. The Navy pilot’s body was broken from a plane crash, starvation, botched operations and months of torture.
As Trump was preparing to take Manhattan, McCain was trying to relearn how to walk.
The stark contrast in their fortunes was thrown into sharp relief Saturday when Trump belittled McCain during a campaign speech in Iowa.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2015/07/20/what-donald-trump-was-up-to-while-john-mccain-was-suffering-as-a-prisoner-of-war/
So what if Trump sat it out while McCain enlisted? He along with thousands of others used influence, money, or whatever to get out of going to Vietnam. I don't fault anyone who tried to avoid that clusterfuck, nor do I belittle anyone who served.
DeleteIn this, Trump should have kept his mouth shut. The larger sin was getting involved in that no win war in the first place.
We dishonor our service men and women when we send them to war for dubious reasons and under circumstances whereby their sacrifices count for nothing.
Over the weekend, Scott Walker told a group in Iowa that he would not rule out bombing Iran on his first day in office.
ReplyDeleteTrump is not looking like the worst candidate......
Scott Walker won't go anywhere! War monger and an idiot!
DeleteI certainly hope that Scott Walker does not go anywhere because he is a dangerous one.
DeleteHe is being tutored to bone up on foreign policy. And I have a problem with that. If you have to be tutored on foreign policy, you are not ready nor do you deserve to be the President.
The good news is that he is being painted as the Sarah Palin of the bunch. The link below is just the latest story of Walker being compared to Palin. And let's hope that is all it takes to send Walker packing. They might vote for him in Wisconsin, but I will register as an R to vote against him in the primary if need be.
http://newsbusters.org/blogs/nb/jeffrey-meyer/2015/07/19/mark-shields-scott-walker-has-lingering-resemblance-sarah-palin
he got elected governor and destroyed the unions. how did that happen? luck? bad luck?
Deletei don't abide by the notion that "it'll never happen" - bad people get elected ALL THE TIME. and re-elected.
the only reason we have obama is that he had an amazing ground game, 5000 attorneys watching the voting booths, and an enormous campaign to get out the vote.
how did wisconsin-walker get elected? florida-bush? indiana-pence? new jersey-christie? fallin-oklahoma, martinez-new mexico?
do we blame poor democratic candidates in the general? or poor voting performance by democratic voters?
2:03: how about gerrymandering of the GOP on state levels, and voter suppression and corrupt voting machine manufacturers (remember, Diebold CEO promised gwb the election, and there STILL are TONS of irregularities going on with the voting machines - especially also in Wisconsin!)
DeleteHe had the Koch brothers in his corner.
DeleteI have believed for a while that some of the 2014 Governor elections were rigged by Karl Rove. The elections where the Koch candidate won were very suspicious because the Governors who won were all behind in the polls.
DeleteIt’s becoming more and more clear that Jeb Bush, much like his brother, will say and do absolutely anything to get elected. His defense of John McCain wasn’t about love or even respect for the former POW and war hero, it was a desire to get the front-runner, Donald Trump, out of the race.
ReplyDeleteJeb Bush’s Hypocrisy Revealed: He Sent A Letter Thanking The Swiftboaters (IMAGE/VIDEO)
http://www.addictinginfo.org/2015/07/20/jeb-bushs-hypocrisy-revealed-he-sent-a-letter-thanking-the-swiftboaters-imagevideo/
Trump's comments on John McCain are spot on. No one else had the gonads to speak the truth. That alone gives Trump credibility.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.veteranstoday.com/2015/07/20/trump-opens-mccains-treasonous-can-of-worms/
Deletehttp://www.veteranstoday.com/2015/07/18/trump-right-about-hanoi-john-mccain/
DeleteMean spirited McCain is known for throwing temper tantrums, flying off the handle, blowing his top,seething with anger, accusing others of lying, and of mistreating POW/MIA family members.
Deletehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-CazKanlYDg
McCain's Treason Exposed
DeleteMcCain is exposed as a fraud and war hero pretender.
Read more at http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=cda_1204289488#0mc0Lw1mR8SuggT9.99
Here's a link to an interesting story about John McCain. Yes, he was a POW but there is so much more to tell.
Deletehttp://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/make-believe-maverick-20081016
Donald Trump was not speaking only about John McCain. That's the problem. He said that he cannot admire anyone who gets captured. Think about it. Think about all of the circumstances in which a soldier, sailor, airmen or marine has been captured in the past in any war. Donald Trump sees the entire notion of "capture" as failure; the man does not have a shred of empathy in his body. What a shallow, hypocritical excuse for a human being.
DeleteBeaglemom
Colonel Ted Guy was preparing criminal charges against John McCain when Nixon took Admiral McCain’s little boy under his wing. Where are McCain’s 32 propaganda tapes that were made during Vietnam and broadcast over the radio to US troops? (Colonel Ted Guy)
DeleteWhy did McCain accuse American soldiers of war crimes during Vietnam? What did he get in return?
http://www.veteranstoday.com/2015/07/18/trump-right-about-hanoi-john-mccain/
That is so true. To be "captured" one must have put themselves in jeopardy. It is not failure but courage to have been there.
Deletelisten - there is nothing to admire about trump.
DeleteTrump essentially said being captured is not a heroic act. How can one disagree with that statement.
DeleteSaving someone's life could be heroic. Singing like a canary or screaming at a POW family member in the halls of Congress is not heroic.
On the market street In Aix-en-Provence, France, there is a plaque on a shop that states that fifteen or so French resistance fighters were captured there on such-and-such a date, taken to be tortured and later killed. The day we saw the sign on the building we were setting off on a famous walk out of the city along a country lane that was favored by Impressionist painters in the nineteenth century on their way to a still-existing cafe and restaurant in the midst of glorious countryside. We waited for our bus across the street from the restaurant at the gates of an old chateau. On the wall there was another plaque indicating that this was where the resistance fighters were murdered on the day that they were captured. Bullet holes still riddle the wall. To this day, I feel shivers when I think of that. Donald Trump never clarified what he meant by "captured" so I guess he would have considered those brave French people to have been "losers" because they were either betrayed or simply ran out of luck and gave their lives for their country. Donald Trump does not have the sense that God gave a molecule.
DeleteBeaglemom
Trump will ultimately be God's gift to Hillary in 2016
ReplyDeleteSo will Walker.
DeleteBoth would hand the Oval Office to whoever is on the Democratic ticket.
Donald Trump’s More Popular In Iowa After He Attacked John McCain
ReplyDeleteThe Republican Party’s attempts to stop Donald Trump are doing nothing in Iowa as the bigoted billionaire has seen his approval rating increase after his attack on John McCain.
According to a new Monmouth University poll of Iowa:
Trump’s statement about John McCain’s status as a war hero, made Saturday morning at the Family Leadership Summit in Ames, IA, generated almost universal backlash from his rivals but does not seem to have had an immediate impact on his support among Hawkeye State Republicans. In interviews conducted Thursday and Friday, Trump garnered 13% of the vote to 19% for Walker. This is only slightly different than results from the Saturday and Sunday interviews, which put Trump at 13% to 25%
for Walker.
….
Donald Trump holds a positive 47% favorable to 35% unfavorable rating, which is better than the 40% favorable to 41% unfavorable rating he received from national Republicans last week. He has higher favorable ratings among very conservative caucusgoers (55%) than he does among somewhat conservative (41%) and moderate to liberal (37%) Iowa Republicans. He also has higher favorability ratings among Tea Party supporters (56%) compared to non-supporters (39%) and among men (51%) compared to women (41%).
In other words, the people who support Trump don’t like McCain and they are probably going to continue supporting the reality television personality no matter what the media and the Republican Party say.
http://www.politicususa.com/2015/07/20/bad-news-republicans-donald-trumps-popular-iowa-attacked-john-mccain.html
A Monmouth Poll released on Monday July 20, 2015, finds former Florida Governor Jeb Bush is polling just 7 percent with likely Iowa Republican caucus voters. At 7 percent support, Bush is in a distant fourth place, tied with Texas Senator Ted Cruz. Bush trails Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker (22 percent), wealthy businessman Donald Trump (13 percent) and retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson (8 percent).
While Bush’s fourth place standing should be concerning enough for his campaign, it may understate how much trouble the former Florida Governor faces ahead in Iowa. Of the 17 Republican candidates polled, Bush is one of only 5 who are viewed unfavorably by Iowa Republicans.
The other GOP candidates who Iowa Republicans dislike are former New York Governor George Pataki, former Virginia Governor Jim Gilmore, South Carolina Governor Lindsey Graham, and New Jersey Governor Chris Christie. With the possible exception of Chris Christie, none of those individuals are viewed by the media as having any chance whatsoever of winning the Republican nomination, much less a general election.
http://www.politicususa.com/2015/07/20/time-stop-treating-jeb-bush-candidate-dips-7-percent-iowa-poll.html
Trump just came out on top in the Iowa polls! I think he is being truthful w/regard to John McCain and Mr. McCain has a LOT of folks out there that despise him!
ReplyDeleteMcCain's P.O.W. Release
Deletehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6YwnTnmbOMQ
The Breathtaking Hypocrisy Of The Republican Freak Out About John McCain, In One Letter
ReplyDeletehttp://thinkprogress.org/politics/2015/07/20/3682278/breathtaking-hypocrisy-republican-freak-john-mccain/
Why These Three Voters Are Supporting Trump
http://thinkprogress.org/election/2015/07/20/3682386/trump-supporters-iowa/
Trump's Gaffes Haven't Ruined His Campaign, They've Powered It
ReplyDeleteWhether or not Trump’s campaign is a serious political endeavor or an outlandish attempt at “entertainment” (as the Huffington Post has categorized it), the truth is that it’s successful. Trump has captivated the attention of a nation, and at least for now he’s secured the vote of a significant amount of Republicans. Although many campaigns have been de-railed by a single gaffe. Trump’s campaign has been powered almost entirely by gaffes.
https://www.opposingviews.com/i/politics/trumps-gaffes-havent-ruined-his-campaign-theyve-powered-it
...because he is saying on a national stage what a significant, alas, number of Americans are saying. He is another Sarah who empowers the involved, ill-educated, racist, etc, etc. people in America. Sarah started it, he is finishing it but hopefully not in the final outcome... He is an obvious blowhard, while she was (WAS) pretty and sexy -- both will lose in the end.
DeleteLet him rant -- His red meat remarks spotlight the base nature of the Rethugs and he will divide the party and -- Independents will think twice about voting for them.
And with Scott Walker saying he'll bomb Iran on his first day in office, T-Rump will have to top that: it's in his narcissistic nature to win these blustering, saber rattling promises.
Do you guys think Hairdo Don has ever eaten a meal that didn't have spit, a well placed booger, a couple drops of pee, or other hidden tidbits in it?
ReplyDeleteWouldn't you just love to hear from some of the hundreds of thousands of people he's used and abused over the years? Because, you know, he is soooo superior to.....well, everybody. Is this the god guy we keep hearing about?
Hadn't thought of that, but you are spot on 12:45pm ;-)
DeletePeople will follow..................
ReplyDeletehttp://www.cbsnews.com/news/4-reasons-people-will-follow-you/
"So how do you get people to follow you with their hearts and minds? A recent newsletter from Harvard Business Review listed these four qualities as essential. The tips come from HBR's 10 Must Reads on Leadership:
1. Humanness. Nobody wants to work with a perfect leader. Build collaboration and solidarity by revealing your weaknesses.
2. Intuition. To be most effective, you need to know what's going on without others spelling it out for you. Collect unspoken data from body language and looks given across rooms to help you intuit the underlying messages.
3. Tough empathy. Care deeply about your employees, but accept nothing less than their very best.
4. Uniqueness. Demonstrate that you are a singular leader by showing your unique qualities to those around you."
Hello Donald!
I'm sure he feels he perfectly exemplifies all four of those traits.
DeleteMost narcissists would.
If you had not taken Palin seriously we would be in a heap of trouble now.
ReplyDeleteHuff Post is only treating Trump and his campaign shenanigans as entertainment. They're reporting about his fans...err, supporters...as political news.
ReplyDeleteJay Rosen, NYU journalism professor, explains why he thinks HuffPost is right.
http://pressthink.org/2015/07/huffington-post-says-it-will-frame-trumps-campaign-as-entertainment-why-i-support-that/
I think that this is all being orchestrated so that Jeb Bush can emerge from the Klown Kar as the sanest of the loonies and be crowned with the GOP nomination.
ReplyDeleteBeaglemom
no doubt. i am sure christie would like a little of that love too.
DeleteThis is priceless. Nate Silver took a look at the metrics of Trump's media coverage. He has pegged Trump as a troll and compares him to You Know Who. He also makes the point that Trump's strategy is only working because there are so many in the GOP field.
ReplyDelete"In 2008, Sarah Palin, though beloved by Republicans, was brilliant at trolling Democrats and the media. She was extremely popular at first, although her popularity was ultimately short-lived.
"Trump has taken trolling to the next level by being willing to offend members of his own party. Ordinarily, this would be a counterproductive strategy. In a 16-candidate field, however, you can be in first place with 15 or 20 percent of the vote — even if the other 80 or 85 percent of voters hate your guts."
http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/donald-trump-is-the-worlds-greatest-troll/
LOL, I was reading another article on 538.com and someone commented that Palin is basically a human Confederate flag
DeleteThe Phoniness of Donald Trump
ReplyDeleteIn the past, he has advocated government health care, an assault weapons ban, and 14.25 percent flat tax on all wealthy Americans. Now he opposes all three. Does he stand for anything, other than promoting Donald Trump?
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/bill-george/the-phoniness-of-donald-t_b_7831662.html
Did I just hear Wolf Blitzer say Sarah Palin chimed in about Donald Trump? I just caught the tail end of it, so not sure.
ReplyDeleteAnyway, David Corn is probably suggesting that the buffoon could very well be lifted onto the crowd's shoulders and elected, just because there are that many naive voters.
Donald Trump is turning the U.S. elections into a reality TV show like "The Bachelorette"; maybe call it the "Billionaire President" with millions tuning in every week to see how further Donald Trump can be in top polls and make the most outlandish speeches, insulting every living soul in America.
That would probably go well with his base.
People tuned in to watch SP make a fool of herself, too.
DeleteShe has bombed and so will Trumpeter Trump.
Can't post link but Palin defended both McCain & Trump to CNN.
ReplyDeleteShe referred to herself as a "non-politician". I wonder what the c of pee & her followers think. And the "non-politician" Palin has a PAC. Guess they are giving their money to Sarah "Joe the Plumber, Tito the Builder" Palin ---non politician.
Well, it is news and scary as hell that people would actually vote for that buffoon! What does it say about republicans today??
ReplyDeleteIt says everything you need to know.
DeleteJust check out his Twitter feed. The wingnuts love The Donald.
DeleteI'm FAR more concerned about the crooked conservative Koch sucking puppet from Wisconsin - Scott Walker.
ReplyDeleteThe Donald? Great entertainment. The teabaggers LOVE him and now they are all piling on McCain despising him. The GOP is running scared him as he is showing their true face and has stolen their base. haha
He will never be president but I sure hope he gets nominated and runs!
Go, Donald! The gift that keeps on giving....... more voters to the Democrats. I originally thought he'd flame out and fade to nothing, instead, the other candidates on the Republican side can't seem to gain any traction. Forget McCain, his remarks about mexicans and the slow response from the others showed Donald's got them by the short and curlies. Bernie and Hillary must think he's the best thing that could happen. He's a loose cannon and nothing can stop him from stirring the pot.
ReplyDeleteImagine him winning and having to debate issues with either Hillary or Bernie.Trump has the gravitas of Sarah Palin.
I absolutely understand trump is a freak show. But don't people have better things to do than sit around and write garbage at a blog? Does no one have jobs? Or is this how people waste their retirements?
ReplyDelete