trump is serious!!!!!

[Scooter]

[Burning Petard]

"Delaware will go to trump" Really wesw? Delaware is the state where the loyal GOP primary voters threw away their GOP representative in Washington because he compromised and nominated a witch instead. And let the Dems take everything.

(((((snailgate)))))

[Lord Jim]

Donald Trump wants Tom Brady to speak at the Republican convention

Presumptive Republican nominee Donald Trump wants Tom Brady and other sports stars to speak at the Republican National Convention, reports The New York Times.

While at a rally in Virginia, Trump mentioned Brady as one of the “champions” who support his candidacy for office. Trump also named UFC president Dana White, Steelers quarterback Ben Roethlisberger and former Indiana coach Bobby Knight as sports legends who are also his supporters. The businessman and reality TV star said he would prefer to have the athletes as opposed to other politicians speak for him at the upcoming Republican National Convention.[Especially since so damn few politicians are willing to do so...]

Trump, who recently described himself as “the least racist person,” has previously been vocal about his friendship with Brady. The Patriots quarterback sported one of the candidate’s trademark “Make America Great Again” hats in his locker last season.

http://www.si.com/extra-mustard/2016/06 ... convention

If Brady's a no-show, a lot of people are going to feel very deflated...

[Lord Jim]

Oh no, Sarah Palin doesn't like me; whatever shall I do?

Sarah Palin unloads on #NeverTrumpers, calling them Republicans Against Trump, or ‘RAT’



DENVER — Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin unloaded Friday on conservatives who refuse to support presumptive GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump, dubbing them “Republicans Against Trump, or RAT for short.”

“They want to take their [Denver] Nuggets ball home and stay home instead of vote, because their guy didn’t win this time around?” asked Mrs. Palin at the Western Conservative Summit in Denver. “You know, I shouldn’t call them thumb-suckers because they’re not all bad. I’m kidding: They are. And Hillary [Clinton] needs them because she cannot win without them.”

Mrs. Clinton, the former secretary of state, is the presumptive Democratic Party presidential nominee.

Mrs. Palin’s rousing kick-off speech at the three-day conservative gathering at the Colorado Convention Center came as an unsubtle swipe at conservatives uneasy about Mr. Trump’s candidacy.

“You know who’s a threat?” Mrs. Palin asked. “Those GOP-ers who insist that they’ll never vote for their party’s choice this time. [You betcha sweetie... ] They call themselves never-hashtag whatever. I just call them Republicans Against Trump, or RAT for short.”

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/201 ... -them-rep/

We should change it to "Republicans Against Drumpf" ...

That way we could be RAD

[Long Run]

If Ike thought Earl Warren was his biggest mistake, I am sure that in a long carer of highs and lows, McCain will rate his selection of Palin as his worst mistake (worse even than associating with Keating). She's the gift that just keeps on giving.

[Scooter]

Lifting her out of obscurity and giving her a national platform, and the consequent energy that provided for the Tea Party and other assorted wingnuts, that will be the legacy that will overshadow anything else McCain achieved in politics.

[BoSoxGal]

Yeah, pretty much. It's time for McCain to retire but apparently he doesn't agree.

[Bicycle Bill]

Oh no, Sarah Palin doesn't like me; whatever shall I do?

Sarah Palin unloads on #NeverTrumpers, calling them Republicans Against Trump, or ‘RAT’



DENVER — Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin unloaded Friday on conservatives who refuse to support presumptive GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump, dubbing them “Republicans Against Trump, or RAT for short.” .... “You know who’s a threat?” Mrs. Palin asked. “Those GOP-ers who insist that they’ll never vote for their party’s choice this time. [You betcha sweetie... ] They call themselves never-hashtag whatever. I just call them Republicans Against Trump, or RAT for short.”

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/201 ... -them-rep/

We should change it to "Republicans Against Drumpf" ...

That way we could be RAD

Just want to point out that I called it here about two weeks ago; I just thought that Trump would be the one doing the snarling instead of his bitchy little lap dog.

-"BB"-

[Jarlaxle]

Yeah, pretty much. It's time for McCain to retire but apparently he doesn't agree.

McCain should have retired 20 years ago. He is a poster child for term limits. I also suspect he is approaching non compos mentis.

[RayThom]

More from Palin:
viewtopic.php?f=3&t=14905&p=207894#p207894

[Lord Jim]

McCain will rate his selection of Palin as his worst mistake

I'm sure that's one decision he'd like to have back...

I feel for John McCain, he's in a very difficult spot...

Technically he has endorsed Trump, though he never has anything good to say about him, on policy he disagrees with him on just about everything, and he publicly criticizes him regularly, (most recently just a couple of days ago over Trump's reaction to the Istanbul Airport attack)...

He's not going to the convention, and if he weren't in a tight re-election race, I don't think there's any way in hell that he would even have made a proforma endorsement.

[Scooter]

[BoSoxGal]

Better hair and his annoying little voice would be a welcome change from the Oompa's bloviating!

[Scooter]

[Lord Jim]

How do you manage to drown out stories about your opponent being interviewed by the FBI about possibly endangering national security?

Easy, just be Donald "Never Apologize Never Admit A Mistake" Trump and turn what could have been quickly dealt with into a multi-day controversy:

How Trump overshadowed Clinton's bad weekend

(CNN)In any normal presidential election, it would be hard to overshadow news that the FBI interviewed one of the candidates for three and a half hours about potential criminal behavior.
But in 2016, Donald Trump seems to be able to seize any news cycle -- intentionally or otherwise.

His Saturday tweet of a graphic that included Hillary Clinton's face, a six-pointed star, a pile of cash and the words "most corrupt candidate ever" drew immediate backlash for evoking anti-Semitic imagery. The image was posted 10 days earlier to an anti-Semitic, white supremacist message board.



Trump on Monday morning initially addressed the controversy -- again on Twitter -- by blaming the "dishonest media" for "trying their absolute best to depict a star in a tweet as the Star of David rather than a Sheriff's Star, or plain star!"[Uh, Donald, they don't use six pointed stars on white supremacist web sites to depict a "sheriff's badge"...]

On Monday afternoon, the Trump campaign finally issued a statement on the matter -- one that amounted more to a response to the Clinton campaign statement than an explanation of his tweet.

Trump rejected the Clinton campaign's accusations that his tweet was anti-Semitic by slamming "false attacks" and insisting the star represented a sheriff's badge.

"These false attacks by Hillary Clinton trying to link the Star of David with a basic star, often used by sheriffs who deal with criminals and criminal behavior, showing an inscription that says 'Crooked Hillary is the most corrupt candidate ever' with anti-Semitism is ridiculous," Trump said in a statement.

Trump's statement did not address the fact that the campaign tweeted an image that had previously been posted on an anti-Semitic, white supremacist message board. His statement also didn't explain where the campaign obtained the image.

On Monday night the Trump campaign's social media director, Daniel Scavino, filled in some details on what he said were the image's origins.

"The social media graphic used this weekend was not created by the campaign nor was it sourced from an anti-Semitic site," Scavino said in a statement separate from Trump's. "It was lifted from an anti-Hillary Twitter user where countless images appear."

"The sheriff's badge -- which is available under Microsoft's 'shapes' -- fit with the theme of corrupt Hillary and that is why I selected it," Scavino added.

Scavino also said that as the campaign's social media director, "I would never offend anyone and therefore chose to remove the image."

Trump's stumbles were suddenly back in the spotlight on a weekend that would have otherwise focused on Clinton's vulnerabilities.

Trump's prolific Twitter habit is once again forcing Republicans to confront questions about the temperament of the man they will soon formally nominate as their presidential candidate and his apparent unwillingness to forcefully reject the support of those with racist or anti-Semitic views. It also comes as Trump tries to manage a more disciplined campaign, underscoring fears among some in the GOP that the businessman is unable to avoid self-inflicted wounds.

Adding to the fire is the Trump campaign's refusal to answer questions about the tweet, its origin or whether anyone would be held accountable. It simply deleted the tweet and replaced the six-pointed star with a circle.

It's not the first time Trump's own controversies have overshadowed Clinton's as a result of the presumptive Republican nominee's unforced errors.

Two days before Trump created a weeks-long news cycle by accusing a judge of being biased because of his Mexican heritage, Clinton faced one of the most damaging news items of her candidacy when the State Department's inspector general released a scathing assessment of Clinton's private email use.

But Trump's tirade on the judge, his doubling down on those race-based accusations and the ensuing rift it provoked between Trump and newly-supportive Republican leaders eclipsed Clinton's email woes.


Trump's tweet Monday addressing the graphic may only serve to further extend the controversy, drawing attention away from both Clinton's email scandal and a news cycle this week that was expected to focus on Trump's imminent decision to pick a running mate before the GOP convention.

Trump's latest trouble is especially loaded because it's not the first instance of him tweeting or retweeting something linked to white supremacists.

Trump has previously retweeted neo-Nazi accounts including one named "@WhiteGenocideTM." In November, he retweeted a graphic of false and racist crime statistics overstating the numbers of blacks killed by other blacks.
And amid a groundswell of support from white supremacists, Trump and his campaign have been slow and even loathe to reject the support of those individuals.

When pressed by CNN's Jake Tapper earlier this year on the support of former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke, who continues to peddle in anti-Semitic conspiracy theories, Trump initially said falsely he did not know of Duke and would not disavow his support. He would later do so and blame a faulty earpiece.

And when he was later confronted by CNN's Wolf Blitzer about anti-Semitic death threats some of his supporters were directing at a Jewish reporter who wrote a profile about Trump's wife, the presumptive Republican nominee refused to condemn those actions.

"I don't have a message to the fans," Trump said when pressed on the anti-Semitic death threats in an interview with Blitzer in May. "A woman wrote an article that's inaccurate."

Now, questions continue to swirl around how his campaign obtained and decided to tweet a graphic that had circulated on a message board filled with anti-Semitic conspiracy theories and neo-Nazi message boards -- and whether he will repudiate the support of individuals who prescribe to that ideology.

http://www.cnn.com/2016/07/04/politics/ ... index.html

Now, I don't think there's much to support the idea that Trump is personally an anti-semite; in fact there's some not inconsiderable evidence to the contrary...(his son-in-law is Jewish, his daughter converted to Judaism, and he's so vocally pro Israel Netanyahu is probably rooting for him...)

But just as he has shown with bigots of other stripes, Trump seems to have no problem pandering to them, and extreme difficulty disavowing their support...

If when this first erupted,Trump (or even a campaign statement) had said:

"It was a very bad mistake to use this image in the tweet. Our intent was to depict a sheriff's star, but obviously given the original source of the image this was not the case, and we have removed it. We deeply apologize for its use.

Mr. Trump fully understands how offense could be taken by this. The use of images that originate from racist sources have no place in this campaign, and we are currently investigating how this happened, in an effort to make certain it never happens again."

Controversy over...

But Donald Trump is congenitally incapable of doing anything like that...

This kind of step on your opponent's troubles and step on your own message in news cycle after news cycle with your own self-inflicted missteps is something he simply can't stop himself from doing. He's too egotistical and insecure to ever admit to error or take responsibility for any mistake, even when the failure to do so does him severe political harm....

GOP convention delegates take note...

If you nominate this guy, this is the sort of thing you can absolutely count on, day-in-and-day-out , from now till election day...

[Joe Guy]

Trump has a familiar way of not admitting to making a mistake. I'm surprised that he doesn't sign his tweets, "yrs, donald"...

[Gob]

[Guinevere]

Saturday on the beach, we were sitting near the high tide line, and it was jammed, so a group of 20-somethings decided to fit their stuff in right in front of us. Three couples and a baby. The male of the third couple started talking about mortgages and interest rates and schemes to get a home for as little as possible. He clearly didn't own a home because most of what he was saying was completely wrong. Then he transitioned into politics, and of course, railed on HRC and women in general. Apparently he is "solid Republican" and a huge Trump fan. Next, he started picking on his girlfriend, telling her she wasn't worth as much as he was because he was a man (you can imagine how I was squirming in my chair at this point, my Swede had to hold me back). His abuse of her continued -- she wanted him to help her move her air conditioner into her window and he refused, telling her if she couldn't do it herself she didn't deserve to have it, and a bunch of other demeaning mean crap (at this point my chivalrous Swede was ready to deck him, too). He transitioned into screaming about Obamacare and health care in general, and after lighting a cigarette and making some racist comments about the President and anyone who gets subsidized health care, including using the N-word, he then proceeded to describe his last doctor's visit. He claims he was having stomach pains, and when asked how much he drinks, he said "3 or 4" . . . an hour. Claimed he drank up to 30 beers a night (and was drinking all day, as far as I could tell). At this point we both agreed to leave before either of us got really angry at this guy -- but I was a both flabbergasted and sad--- how much of a cliché could this guy be -- stupid, sexist, racist, smoking, alcoholic, Trump supporter. I fear for my country.

[Lord Jim]

Trump's Campaign Is Still a Hot Mess
by Ben Geier
July 6, 2016, 11:49 AM EDT

Despite recent efforts to become more disciplined, the Trump campaign is still fumbling.

Plenty of prominent American politicians have labeled themselves “mavericks.” John McCain, Rand Paul, and even Bernie Sanders spring to mind as politicians who prided themselves on not playing by the normal rules of the political game, and used that independent streak to attract voters.

All of those candidates, though, knew the basics of how to run a political campaign. Fundraising. Staffing. Taking advantage of opponents’ mistakes. Donald Trump, who is perhaps the most maverick candidate to rise to prominence in the past several decades, still seems to have no knowledge of those things.

This has become increasingly evident in recent days, as Trump’s campaign continues to falter. If there was some hope among Republicans that the firing of controversial campaign manager Corey Lewandowski would lead to a professionalization of the Trump campaign, that hasn’t come to bear.

Trump’s eschewing of political norms may have helped win votes in the Republican primary, but it could hurt him when going up against a well-funded and well-organized candidate like Hillary Clinton.

First, there was the report on Tuesday night of “red flags” in Trump’s latest campaign finance filings. CNBC notes that six-figure payments were made paid to campaign staff for nontaxable expenses, double reimbursements granted to some staffers, and no disclosure of vendors that some staffers were paying.

Then there were the reports last month that Trump was being badly out-fundraised by Clinton and had a skeletal campaign staff at his disposal.

And then there’s the matter of Trump’s ability on the stump. Tuesday had the potential to be one of the worst days of Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign. Though the FBI chose not to recommend she be indicted for her use of a personal e-mail server while she was Secretary of State, FBI Director James Comey gave a press conference where he raked Clinton over the coals, saying she was “extremely careless” with classified information and could have exposed state secrets to hostile governments.

A more competent candidate would have hammered Comey’s comments home and would have refused to talk about anything else. Instead, in a rally on Tuesday evening, Trump opted to rehash an old argument of his that Saddam Hussein wasn’t so bad because he “killed terrorists.” Comments like these force mainstream Republicans to distance themselves even more from Trump, rather than rally behind him in a coordinated effort to question Hillary Clinton’s judgment.

There is still time for Trump to find his campaign sea legs, but he should do it quickly.

http://fortune.com/2016/07/06/trumps-ca ... -hot-mess/

[BoSoxGal]

Thank goodness he's a pathological narcissist and possible psychopath who can't be bothered to listen to reasonable political advisors.

I'm cautiously optimistic that HRC will save us from this guy, but I am making plans to leave the country just in case.