Plan B Forum

Trump once again doubles down on appalling:

In Post-Debate Interview, Trump Again Criticizes Pageant-Winner's Weight

At the end of Monday night's presidential debate, Hillary Clinton accused Donald Trump of taunting one of his former Miss Universe contestants about her weight.

Clinton said the Republican nominee's criticisms of Alicia Machado, a Venezuelan who won the Miss Universe contest in 1996, was "one of the worst things he said" about women. "He called this woman Miss Piggy. Then he called her Miss Housekeeping because she was Latina."

While Trump appeared to dispute Clinton's accusation on the debate stage, he called into Fox and Friends Tuesday morning and once again called Machado fat.

"I know that person. That person was a Miss Universe person," Trump told the Fox News morning show. "And she was the worst we ever had, the worst, the absolute worst, she was impossible," he said. "She gained a massive amount of weight, and it was a real problem. We had a real problem. Not only that, her attitude."

Trump has long struggled to appeal to women — polls show Clinton regularly outperforming Trump by double digits with female voters. And Trump has also alienated Latino voters throughout the campaign, with his harsh rhetoric about immigrants living in the country illegally.

With his past statements about Machado playing into critiques Clinton wanted to make at Monday night's high-profile debate, the Clinton campaign was quick to pounce. An hour after the debate ended, her campaign tweeted a two-minute video about Machado's experience with Trump.

"He was very overwhelming. I was very scared of him," she says in Spanish. "He'd yell at me all the time. He'd tell me 'you look ugly' or 'you look fat.' Sometimes he'd 'play' with me and say 'Hello Miss Piggy, hello Miss Housekeeping.' "

The Clinton campaign's video also includes archived footage of Trump telling reporters "she weighed 118 pounds, or 117 pounds, and she went up to 160 or 170. So this is somebody who likes to eat."

Machado told the campaign that the experience led to long-term eating disorders. "I wouldn't eat, and I would still see myself as fat, because a powerful man had said so."

"He always treated me like a little thing. He always treated me like trash," Machado said Tuesday in a conference call organized by the Clinton campaign.

She said she was caught off-guard when Clinton talked about her Monday night. "I started to cry because I never imagined that someone so important would care about my story," she said, speaking in Spanish.

"I'm very sorry that I might be an uncomfortable person for Mr. Trump," Machado said, "but that's how things happen, that's how things go."

http://www.npr.org/2016/09/27/495611105 ... ers-weight

This is a pattern I have observed a number of times with Trump...

When he finds himself mired with a negative narrative in the news,(in this case, his overall poor performance in the debate) he will frequently say or do something to try to change the narrative to some other negative focus about himself, which he has calculated will be less damaging...

Many times he has called the right shot, but In this case I believe he has badly miscalculated...

I don't think changing the negative narrative focus in the news about him from his overall bad debate performance to his cruel and oafish misogyny is real smart move...

In choosing to highlight this, he is directly undermining his effort to appeal to white women, (particularly college educated white women) a demographic group where polls show him badly trailing Mitt Romney's performance, and a group critical to any chance he has of winning...

One of the things Trump has complained about is that his misogynist comments used in commercials are old, or taken out of context, or just about Rosie O'Donnell and the feud he had with her, blah blah blah...

Well now he has obligingly created a whole set of new, in context, not about Rosie O'Donnell, misogynist comments for his opponent to exploit....I'll be very surprised if Team Clinton doesn't have commercial out featuring clips from what he has said about this lady by tomorrow at the latest...

And he's made it a twofer, because once again, he's offending Latinos as well...

Additionally, he has once again (as he did with Mrs. Khan and the disabled reporter to name but two) chosen a sympathetic and compelling figure to make the object of his bullying wrath...

Which completely undermines his efforts to improve his standing on having the temperament and judgement to serve as President...

Which really makes this boneheaded play a threefer...

Of all the bait Hillary skillfully tossed in the debate, this has clearly landed the biggest fish...

Trump has his brain-dead supporters and he was right about them when he said "I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody and I wouldn't lose voters"; I offer our own wesw as 'Exhibit A'.  However, with the undecided swing voters it's an entirely different story.  Here, Trump continues to show himself to be one of the least-qualified people to run for the presidency in my memory.  Considering that I can remember candidates like Lyndon LaRouche, David Dukes, George Wallace, Pat Paulsen, H. Ross Perot, and even "Pigasus", the 145-pound domestic pig that was nominated by the Youth International Party ("Yippies") in advance of the 1968 Democratic Convention, that's saying something!

The way this election is playing out is a clear example of giving someone enough rope and he will hang himself.  Hillary should just stand to one side and let Trump get on with tying his own noose.

-"BB"-

We can only hope.

ROUND TWO: New Debate Strategy for Donald Trump: Practice, Practice, Practice
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/29/us/po ... ebate.html
Good luck to that. If Drumpf has to fill his head with enough facts to counter Hillary's strategy his head is going to explode.

Speaking of pigs . . . new story in Newsweek linking Trump to violating the Cuban trade embargo . . . will be interesting to see him spin this one for his followers . . .

This one goes out to the Donald, who clearly has no clue what makes the rockin' world go round...

Tripling down:

Trump: I don't know Miss Universe Alicia Machado, but 'I saved her job'

Republican nominee Donald Trump doesn't think he is being treated fairly by the former Miss Universe whom he is accused of calling "Miss Piggy."

Alicia Machado, who was crowned Miss Universe in 1996, says Trump called her "Miss Piggy" and "Miss Housekeeping," and that his insults resulted in her developiong an eating disorder. Trump's Democratic opponent, Hillary Clinton, repeated the accusation during the presidential debate on Monday.

Trump responded to the allegations during an interview on Fox News' The O'Reilly Factor Wednesday night, saying both that he hardly knew Machado and that he saved her from being fired because of her weight.

"She had a lot of difficulties and, you know, they wanted to fire her," Trump said. "The company itself wanted to fire her. I saved her job. I'll bet you, if you put up and added up all the time I spoke to her it was probably less than 5 minutes. I had nothing to do with this person.[except of course for bringing in reporters for that humiliating video of her working out] But they wanted to fire her. I saved her job because I said, 'that's going to be ruinous' [in other words, he was thinking about the negative PR for his business, not her] and I've done that with a number of the young ladies, where I saved their job. And you know what happened? Look what I get out of it. I get nothing,"

Trump repeated that "it's somebody I don't know" while adding, "I saved her job because they wanted to fire her for putting on so much weight."

Trump implied the contestants should understand that their weight could be an issue. "Say what you want Bill, I mean they know what they're getting into. It's a beauty contest," he said.

Yet, Trump wanted to give Machado another chance and convinced the pagaent to "let her try and lose the weight," rather than fire her.

For Trump, the episode serves as an example of how no good deed goes unpunished. "Can you imagine I end up in a position like this?" he asked. "This is what you get for helping somebody."

"But I just don't know her," he added.

http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/poli ... /91250868/

Poor Donald. Compassionate humanitarian that he is, he bent over backwards to try to help this ungrateful lard ass, and this is the thanks he gets...

It just ain't fair...

ps — he apparently has small feet to go with the small hands

-"BB"-

Omfg that's a brilliant cover illustration!

With an early morning Twitter rampage, Tubby Don (I've heard many people are starting to call him that; not me of course, but many people are) quadruples down:

Donald J. Trump ‏@realDonaldTrump 49m49 minutes ago

Did Crooked Hillary help disgusting (check out sex tape and past) Alicia M become a U.S. citizen so she could use her in the debate?
1,203 retweets 2,440 likes

Donald J. Trump ‏@realDonaldTrump 1h1 hour ago

Using Alicia M in the debate as a paragon of virtue just shows that Crooked Hillary suffers from BAD JUDGEMENT! Hillary was set up by a con.
1,250 retweets 2,684 likes

Donald J. Trump ‏@realDonaldTrump 1h1 hour ago

Wow, Crooked Hillary was duped and used by my worst Miss U. Hillary floated her as an "angel" without checking her past, which is terrible!
1,436 retweets 3,174 likes

https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump

Congratulations Tubby Don...

You've managed to turn what you could have snuffed out fairly easily with a half-way decent response into a week long media-dominating narrative focused on your misogyny, anti-Latino prejudice and obsessive bullying pettiness...

ewww

...she went ass to mouth.

Nobody cares.
The only people making this a big thing is the media and the other campaign. Trump camp don't care. Independents don't care. Hillary camp is trying to make it matter as she is "the champion of women" except of course if you dallied with her Bill"

I disagree oldr...

I think this is going to have some impact with undecided white women voters that Trump desperately needs.

I think it's also going to have some impact with those undecided voters who have been willing to continue to give Trump a chance to show that he has the temperament to be President.

Post debate polls (both national and in critical states) are already showing a pick up of a few points for Clinton, and I suspect that polls coming out in the next few days will show a further shift of an additional couple of points as a result of his post-debate antics this week.

It's mattered in NH. HRC +7 in their first poll conducted this week, after the debate.

Does it matter to you older? Or do you not give a damn how the President treats women and girls.

I agree with Jim, oldr--he took something that probably could have been easily dismissed or ignored and kept it in the spotlight, revealing more and more what an ass he is and why he should not be president. And I think it will make a difference among undecided, as the polls are beginning to show. And Hillary and her "camp" appear to be approaching this the right way--give Trump the rope to hang himself, and then just tempt him to do so.

Do his antics not make one iota of difference to you? Do you really want an ass who can't control himself and keeps digging himself into deeper and deeper holes to be president?

In fairness, I don't believe that oldr has ever suggested that he supports Trump or would want to see him as president, even before this latest series of bozo eruptions.

I agree Scooter, I think oldr is more or less neutral here. I guess I should have said "would you" rather than "do you". Sorry oldr.

I believe oldr has all ready indicated that he is not voting for Trump...

As I recall ( and I may be mistaken, but as everyone knows I rarely am ) he said he was going to vote for Gary "What's Aleppo?" Johnson, because Trump has no chance of carrying NY, and therefore he didn't feel the need to have to vote for Hillary.

(Man, The Libertarian ticket would be a lot more appealing to me if it was "Weld-Johnson" rather than "Johnson-Weld")

Man, The Libertarian ticket would be a lot more appealing to me if it was "Weld-Johnson" rather than "Johnson-Weld

And the Green Party would be a lot more appealing to me in Trump wasn't running.

Lord Jim wrote:(Man, The Libertarian ticket would be a lot more appealing to me if it was "Weld-Johnson"

I can hear a Johnny Carson monologue joke in there, crying to be let loose.