American Politics

[MarquisdeSade1]

The Deification of Donald Trump Poses Some Interesting Questions.

Jan. 17,2024.

A woman raises a large crucifix while a man with a "Make America Great Again" hat holds up a Trump 2020 flag as a crowd prays.

Credit. David Goldman / Associated Press.

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Thomas be. Edsall.

By Thomas be. Edsall.

Mr. Edsall contributes a weekly column from Washington, the. See. , on politics, demographics and inequality.

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On Oct. 15,2020, in a rare display of humility, Donald Trump told a campaign rally in Greenville, and. See. , that he was not as famous as Jesus Christ.

"Somebody said to me the other day, 'You're the most famous person in the world, by far. ' I said, 'No, I'm not. ' They said, 'Yes, you are. I said no. ' They said, 'Who's more famous?' I said, 'Jesus Christ. '.

This exhibition of modesty was out of character.

Trump, his family and his supporters have been more than willing to claim that Trump is ordained by God for a special mission, to restore America as a Christian nation.

In recent weeks, for example, the former president posted a video called "God Made Trump" on Truth Social that was produced by a conservative media group technically independent of the Trump campaign. He has also screened it at campaign rallies.

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The video begins as a narrator with a voice reminiscent of Paul Harvey's declares: "On June 14,1946, God looked down on his planned paradise and said: 'I need a caretaker. ' So God gave us Trump. ".

Why was Trump chosen? The video continues:

God had to have someone willing to go into the den of vipers. Call out the fake news for their tongues as sharp as a serpent's. The poison of vipers is on their lips. So God made Trump.

The video claims to quote God directly:

God said, "I will need someone who will be strong and courageous. Who will not be afraid or terrified of wolves when they attack. A man who cares for the flock. A shepherd to mankind who won't ever leave or forsake them. I need the most diligent worker to follow the path and remain strong in faith. And know the belief in God and country. ".

The "God Made Trump" video was created by the Dilley Meme Team, described by Ken Bensinger of The Times as.

An organized collective of video producers who call themselves "Trump's Online War Machine. " The group's leader, Brenden Dilley, characterizes himself as Christian and a man of faith but says he has never read the Bible and does not attend church. He says that Mr. Trump has "God-tier genetics" and, in response to the outcry over the "God Made Trump" video, Dilley posted a meme depicting Mr. Trump as Moses parting the Red Sea.

The video, along with Eric Trump's claim that his father "literally saved Christianity" and the image Donald Trump reposted on Truth Social of Jesus sitting next to him in court, raises a question: Does Trump believe that he is God's messenger, or are his direct and indirect claims to have a special relationship with God a cynical ploy to win evangelical votes?

I posed this and other questions to Barry Hankins, a professor of history at Baylor and the editor of The Journal of Church and State. Hankins replied by email: "Over the years since, there has been a growing chorus of voices saying Trump is the defender of Christians and Christianity. Trump says this himself all the time, 'When they come after me, they're really coming after you. '.

There are photos, Hankins continued, "of evangelicals laying hands on him in the Oval Office, which is something that Christians do when they ordain pastors or commission missionaries, or Jan. 6 insurrectionists carrying large crosses and praying as they attack the Capitol. People at his rallies carrying signs that say, 'Thank you, Lord Jesus, for President Trump. ' And on and on. ".

I asked Hankins whether Trump's evangelical supporters "see him as a Jesus-like figure. ".

Hankins replied, "I think 'Jesus-like' is well put. When the indictments came down during Lent last spring, there were references to the powers of government going after Trump like the Roman Empire went after Jesus. ".

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Trump's evolution into a Jesus-like figure for some but not all white evangelicals began soon after he began his first presidential campaign. As David P. Gushee, a professor of Christian ethics at Mercer University, explained by email:

Some of Trump's Christian followers do appear to have grown to see him as a kind of religious figure. He is a savior. I think it began with the sense that he was uniquely committed to saving them from their foes (liberals, Democrats, elites, seculars, illegal immigrants, etc.) and saving America from all that threatens it.

In this sense, Gushee continued, "a savior does not have to be a good person but just needs to fulfill his divinely appointed role. Trump is seen by many as actually having done so while president. ".

This view of Trump is especially strong "in the Pentecostal wing of the conservative Christian world," Gushee wrote, where.

He is sometimes also viewed as an anointed leader sent by God. "Anointed" here means set apart and especially equipped by God for a holy task. Sometimes the most unlikely people got anointed by God in the Bible. So Trump's unlikeliness for this role is actually evidence in favor.

The multiple criminal charges against Trump serve to strengthen the belief of many evangelicals about his ties to God, according to Gushee:

The prosecutions underway against Trump have been easily interpretable as signs of persecution, which can then connect to the suffering Jesus theme in Christianity. Trump has been able to leverage that with lines like, "They're not persecuting me. They're persecuting you. " The idea that he is unjustly suffering and, in so doing, vicariously absorbing the suffering that his followers would be enduring is a powerful way for Trump to be identified with Jesus.

Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, Republican of Georgia, gave voice to this phenomenon when she protested the filing of criminal charges against Trump. On her way to a pro-Trump rally in Manhattan on April 3, 2023, she told Brian Glenn of the Right Side Broadcasting Network:

Jesus was arrested and murdered by the Roman government. There have been many people throughout history that have been arrested and persecuted by radical, corrupt governments, and it's beginning today in New York City, and I just can't believe it's happening, but I'll always support him. He's done nothing wrong.

The more interesting case, Gushee wrote.

Is Trump himself. I accept as given that he entered politics as the amoral, worldly, narcissistic New York businessman that he appeared to be. Like all G. O. P. Politicians, he knew he would have to win over the conservative Christian voting bloc so central to the party.

If people wanted to make him out to be savior, anointed one and agent of God, he would not object. It enhanced their attention and loyalty and his power over and in this group. Lacking any inner spiritual or moral compass that would seek to deflect overinflated or even idolatrous claims about himself, he instead reposted their artwork and videos and so on. Anyone truly serious about the Christian faith would deflect claims to being a savior or anointed one, but he did not have such brakes operating. I do not suppose that he actually believed himself to be any of these things, but others did, and it helped him, and it fed his ego, so why stand in the way?

Certain denominations among evangelicals are more willing to believe Trump is God's messenger than others. John Fea, a professor at Messiah University in Pennsylvania, wrote by email that.

There are evangelicals of the charismatic and Pentecostal variety — the so-called New Apostolic Reformation or Independent Network Charismatics — who believe that Donald Trump is an agent of God to rescue the United States from the atheistic, even demonic, secularists and progressives who want to destroy the country by advancing abortion, gay marriage, wokeness, transgenderism, etc.

"This whole movement," Fea wrote.

Is rooted in prophecy. The prophets speak directly to God and receive direct messages from him about politics. They think that politics is a form of spiritual warfare and believe that God is using Donald Trump to help wage this war. (God can even use sinners to accomplish his will — there are a lot of biblical examples of this, they say.).

But even this group of Christians does not see Trump as the messiah, Fea wrote: "They will be quick to tell you that only Jesus is the Messiah. They do not believe Trump has special powers, but he is certainly an agent or vessel for God to work through to make America Christian again. ".

As far as Trump goes, Fea continued, "he probably thinks these charismatics and Pentecostals are crazy. But if they are going to tell him he is God's anointed one, he will gladly accept the title and use it if it wins him votes. He will happily accept their prayers because it is politically expedient. ".

Robert P. Jones, the founder and chief executive of P. Are. Are. I. (formerly the Public Religion Research Institute), contends that Trump's religious claims are an outright fraud:

Trump has given us adequate evidence that he has little religious sensibility or theological acuity. He has scant knowledge of the Bible, he has said that he has never sought forgiveness for his sins, and he has no substantive connection to a church or denomination. He's not only one of the least religious but also likely one of the most theologically ignorant presidents the country has ever had.

Trump, Jones added in an email, "almost certainly lacks the kind of religious sensibility or theological framework necessary to personally grasp what it would even mean to be a Jesus-like, messianic figure. ".

Despite that, Jones wrote, "many of his most loyal Christian followers, white evangelical Protestants, have indeed come to see him as a kind of metaphorical savior figure. ".

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According to Jones, in order to rationalize this quasi-deification of Trump — despite "his crassness and vulgarity, divorces, mocking of disabled people, his overt racism and a determination by a court that he sexually abused advice columnist E. Jean Carroll" — white evangelicals refer not to Jesus but the Persian King Cyrus from the book of Isaiah in the Hebrew Bible. ".

In that story, Jones recounted in his email.

Cyrus is the model of an ungodly king who nonetheless frees a group of Jews who are held captive in Babylon. It took white evangelicals themselves a while to settle on an explanation for their support, but this characterization of Trump was solidified in a 2018 film that came out just before the 2018 midterms entitled "The Trump Prophecy," which portrayed Trump as the only leader who could save America from certain cultural collapse.

According to Jones, "White evangelicals' stalwart, enduring support for Trump tells us much more about who they see themselves to be than who they think Trump is. As I argued in my most recent book, 'The Hidden Roots of White Supremacy, Jones continued in his email, "the primary force animating white evangelical Protestant politics — one that has been with us since before the founding of the Republic — is the vision of America as a nation primarily of, by and for white Christians. ".

Jones cited a 2023 P. Are. Are. I. Survey that showed "a majority (56 percent) of white evangelical Protestants, compared to only one-third of all Americans, believed that 'God intended America to be a new promised land where European Christians could create a society that could be an example to the rest of the world. '.

Jones argued that Trump's declaration on the Ellipse on Jan. 6, 2021 — "We fight like hell. And if you don't fight like hell, you're not going to have a country anymore" — was a direct appeal "to this sense of divine entitlement of those who believed this mythology strongly enough to engage in a violent insurrection. ".

While Trump has overwhelming backing from white evangelical Christians, many of whom invest him with exceptional ties to God, there are also strong secular factors underpinning this support from evangelicals.

Jim Guth, a political scientist at Furman University and an expert on the role of religion in politics, published an article in 2019, "Are White Evangelicals Populists? The View From the 2016 American National Election Study. " The essay describes the basis for the strong affinity of white evangelicals for Trump's conservative populism.

"White evangelicals," Guth found, "are invariably the most populist: more likely to favor strong leadership (even when that means breaking the rules), to distrust government, to see the country on the wrong track and to think that the majority should always rule (and minorities adapt). ".

Guth also found that.

Another salient trait of populist politics is the willingness to ignore democratic civility. We constructed a "rough politics" score from three A. And. E. S. Items: whether protesters deserve what they get if they are hurt in demonstrating, whether the country would be better off if it got rid of rotten apples and whether people are "too sensitive" about political discourse. Here the usual pattern recurs: Evangelical affiliation, evangelical identity and biblical literalism predicts agreement with those assertions, while religious minorities, secular folks and progressives tend to demur.

Guth ranked religious groups on their level of support for conservative populism and found that.

Evangelicals end up far above any other religious group, with about two-thirds falling into the populist category. White Catholics, mainline Protestants and Latter-day Saints have significant numbers in that group but far fewer than evangelicals and nowhere near a majority. The religiously unaffiliated and minority ethnoreligious groups have few populists — often very few — with Jews, agnostics / atheists, Black Protestants and members of world religions the most antipopulist.

Guth wrote that his "findings help us understand what many have struggled to comprehend: How can white evangelical Protestants continue to provide strong support for President Donald Trump, whose personal values and behavior trample on the biblical and ethical standards professed by that community?

The most common explanation, according to Guth.

Is that white evangelicals have a transactional relationship with the president: As long as he nominates conservative jurists and makes appropriate gestures on abortion and sexual politics, they will support him.

"The evidence here," he wrote, "suggests a more problematic answer":

White evangelicals share with Trump a multitude of attitudes, including his hostility toward immigrants, his Islamophobia, his racism and nativism, as well as his political style, with its nasty politics and assertion of strong, solitary leadership. Indeed, Trump's candidacy may have "authorized" for the first time the widespread expression of such attitudes.

Guth took his analysis a step farther, suggesting that pro-Trump, conservative populism has become entrenched in the white evangelical community:

The pervasive populism of white evangelical laity not only helps explain their support for President Trump but suggests powerful barriers to influence by cosmopolitan internationalist evangelical elites, who want to turn the community in a different direction. As hostile responses to efforts of antipopulist evangelicals like Michael Gerson, Russell Moore, David Platt and many others indicate, there is currently a very limited market for such alternative perspectives among the rank and file. Indeed, the vocal populism of many of the conservative evangelicals filling President Trump's religious advisory council is probably more representative of the community as a whole.

Guth went on:

Nor does cosmopolitan or cooperative internationalism find much purchase among local evangelical clergy. Analysis of the 2017 Cooperative Clergy Survey shows that ministers from several evangelical denominations, especially the large Southern Baptist Convention and Assemblies of God, exhibit exactly the same populist traits seen here in white evangelical laity, but in more pronounced form: strong Islamophobia, Christian nationalism, extreme moral traditionalism, opposition to trade pacts, militaristic attitudes, resistance to political compromise and climate change denial, among others.

In other words, conservative populism, with all its antidemocratic implications, has taken root in America. What we don't know is for how long — or how much damage it will do.

[Elvis 2008]

MSNBC's stated policy is not to knowingly air blatant lies for obvious license, credibility, civil / legal liability and, well, patriotic reasons. In the case of a Trump speech, that means clearing it and fact-checking it before they air so much as a single sentence of it. Unlike Fux News, MSNBC would rather not pay $787 Million in a hot minute settlement in exchange for helping Trump win an election so he can produce more "A Once in 100 Years DISASTER Has STRUCK"! Headlines and topics for them to improve their ratings by covering it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PnMs9358nVU

Go to the 3:23 mark.

Matt Taibbi: But hey, before we move on, should we address this thing that happened with Abby Phillip and Vivek Ramaswamy? I know Jimmy Dore already did a bit on it, but this is one of the weirdest things that I've seen on TV. I was just wondered if you agreed or not.

Walter Kirn: Abby Phillip being the CNN moderator at a Ramaswamy town hall, it happened in December, and the setup here is that yeah, I do think it's worth addressing because it was one of the most overt interventions by a state media representative in American television that I've ever seen. State media representative-.

Matt Taibbi: I've never seen anything like it.

Walter Kirn: . She set Ramaswamy up with a question about January 6th, and comments he made about it having been to some extent, quote, an inside job or having involved undercover agitators or something from-.

Matt Taibbi: About which I take no position. I'm assuming you don't either, but.

Walter Kirn: Right. You mean on the truth of that?

Matt Taibbi: Yeah.

Walter Kirn: Well, I don't take any position on it. I will say that as a news watcher, a reporter, and a friend of other reporters, I know there were various agents-.

Matt Taibbi: Oh, well, we know that. Mm-hmm.

Walter Kirn: But in any case, Ramaswamy, in other words, wasn't talking about pure fantasy: he was emphasizing something and interpreting something in a strong way. But she came in like she was, I don't know, his minder or a disciplinarian sent from headquarters and wouldn't let him speak, started interrupting him, kept saying, "I have to interrupt you. I don't want to have to interrupt you again," talking over him, not letting him answer her own question, her own prejudicial setup.

Matt Taibbi: Can we just play a few minutes of this? I'm sorry. It's just so amazing.

Walter Kirn: Yeah, it's mesmerizing.

Matt Taibbi: I think we can probably stop here, right? It just keeps going on and on like that, but I can't remember an interview like that. Can you? Jimmy Dore's bit was hilarious. It was like somebody was yelling in her earphone, "Don't let him say that. " It did feel like that.

Walter Kirn: That's how it works: of course somebody was yelling in her ear. And they're just stepping forth now and making themselves principles in the play. No longer are they trying to elicit statements from the main actors: they are the actors. And she's very sorry, but she, "Has to interrupt," she kept saying. It was almost as if she'the had a stun gun, she would've administered shocks and said, "Mr. Ramaswamy, I'm afraid I'm going to have to turn up the voltage now. I'm going to have to shock you again. You just made another statement: that gets you another shock," and the audience applauding against her, she's got something going in her ear, Ramaswamy is attempting to speak and it's all a subject that she broached. In other words, "I'the like you to defend yourself. Now, once you've started defending yourself, I'm going to have to interrupt and stop you from doing that."

Matt Taibbi: I feel bad for her because it was pretty clear that she didn't know a thing about the subject. I guess it's her job to know that.

Walter Kirn: Man, is that because of your Roman Catholic upbringing?

Matt Taibbi: Maybe it is, yeah.

Walter Kirn: I don't feel bad for anyone on TV. Anybody who's making those TV bucks and getting that good health insurance and wearing those red dresses, and getting out there with the heaters of the world.

Matt Taibbi: Having lunch at Whole Foods in the basement.

Walter Kirn:

Exactly, getting high-fived at Erewhon in LA. What we're going to see more and more is this discourse policing as an overt act by journalists. They want to control the thermostat, okay? They see themselves as guardians of the information thermostat, and if anybody tries to adjust it without permission, they grab it again and say hands off that thermostat.

Walter Kirn: That was weird too. It is her job to always make the favorable interpretation for the federal government?

Matt Taibbi: Yeah. Why should she care?

Walter Kirn: he had a point.

Matt Taibbi: I don't care.

Walter Kirn:

Yeah, that's the thing: why do they care so badly? And that's a mystery to me still, Matt. Is their monopoly on airport broadcasting that valuable? I think it's probably something like that. Dude, we've got Don Lemon now peeling off for X from CNN, and his whole schtick is that he's now going to speak the truth. The manacles are off: it's Don Lemon unchained.

Matt Taibbi: Wow. What's that going to be like?

Walter Kirn: We have no idea because any CNN host is so oppressed by the fact they're on CNN, you know? I've got to say, Chris Cuomo unchained is a lot more interesting than the CNN Chris Cuomo.

Matt Taibbi: It's true. Yep. Mm-hmm.

Walter Kirn: They're leaving the brainwashing program one by one. We're going to have Abby Phillip the way she really is someday.

Matt Taibbi: Right, and that's going to be awesome. I can't wait.

Walter Kirn: I can't wait.

Matt Taibbi: Yeah. But this policing mid-question is a new thing. I haven't seen that before. But we've been talking all year about this anti-disinformation stuff, and going in afterwards, and surgically removing something somebody said, or deamplifying it or whatever. But at the point of a live interview, intervening to make sure that somebody doesn't squeeze something out that might be heard by.

Walter Kirn: Dude, it was a town hall. It was an event to which people had come to hear Vivek Ramaswamy's views. That's why they were there. That's why it was on TV. And she's like, "I'm going to have to put my hand over your mouth. " Even if he was saying manifestly crazy things, the point was to let him speak.

Matt Taibbi: This kind of thing makes people want to hang journalists from yardarms. I'm sorry, it's the truth: I saw this developing during the 2015,2016 campaign, we got ritualistically Jared at the beginning, but then as things got more heated and the stories about Trump got more pointed, it got a little scary there for a little bit. People started to really despise the people in the press section, and you could feel it was mutual. There's no question about that. To this day, when you go out and try to interview people in the lines of Trump events, they are very hands-off. Unless they know who you are, they're not going to talk. And that is a new phenomenon. That was not like that even 8 years ago, or 10 or 12 years ago.

Walter Kirn: Matt, I just came up with a new debate format: you'll have Donald Trump at one lectern, and then the other lectern will be Abby Phillip, and Joe Biden will moderate.

Matt Taibbi: That's right.

Walter Kirn: Exactly: why not just have the candidates debate someone in the press, while the other candidate feeds leading questions? Because-.

Matt Taibbi: You could just interchange them because they're all the same anyway. It could be Jen Psaki for one question, and then, I don't know, I won't put Chris Hayes into this, but you know who I'm talking about. There's this endlessly. Chuck Todd, Karine Jean-Pierre.

Walter Kirn: Right, okay, so-.

Matt Taibbi: You can just cycle them endlessly.

Walter Kirn: Trump should debate Rachel Maddow with Kamala Harris asking the questions. That would probably be more revealing.

Matt Taibbi: It would be way more interesting.

Walter Kirn: Right, exactly. But that's what was happening here: we were seeing Abby Phillip acting as a surrogate for some kind of hive-mind at CNN that was debating Vivek Ramaswamy at what was supposedly a solo town hall at which she was just supposed to ask questions. But journalists now answer the questions too. So in other words, the whole thing has come full-circle. Is it not the natural evolution of narcissistic journalism that, "I not only write the story, I am the story. I not only ask the questions, I answer them. "?

End of link.

Yeah, Trump debating Rachel Mad Cow with Kamala asking the questions would be the Democratic douche version of fairness.

[EihTooms]

Maybe Elvis just dreamed up that part.

Taibbi: I saw this early in the cycle two elections ago. Trump basically looked at the presidential election campaign, which I'the suffered through covering five times beforehand and said, "Wow, this is a really shitty reality show. What would happen if we had a good reality show with a character like me who isn't completely full of shit every time he opens his mouth?"
.....
MSNBC did not show Trump's victory speech and said his winning Iowa was a victory for white supremacy. Yeesh. ".

3 cheers for WHITE SUPREMACY ROTFLMMFAO.

https://youtube.com/shorts/4H8I6-5gj...UxXjyXDhT8c4xJ

At this point, it is obvious to me that the networks like MSNBC and CNN are being propped up by the CIA and FBI..

Here's the problem: Trump IS completely full of shit every time he opens his mouth. Officially, verifiably, provably, personally, legally and fully substantiated by the facts and the record.

Which I assume would come as a shock to ignorant numbskulls like Matt Taibbi. And that is hilarious! I mean, isn't he supposed to be a journalist or something? LOL.

Whatever.

I suppose we'll have to file the very special response a Real News outlet gives to a Donald J. Trump speech that cannot be factchecked on the fly under a "Mrs. Gump, your boy is (pause) different" category.

Personal and business legal affairs of Donald Trump:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pers...f_Donald_Trump#text=Investors%20 are%20 suing%20 Donald%20 Trump, scheduled%20 for%20 January%2029%2 see%202024.

From the 1970s until he was elected president in 2016, Donald Trump and his businesses were involved in over 4,000 legal cases in U.S. federal and state courts, including battles with casino patrons, million-dollar real estate lawsuits, personal defamation lawsuits, and over 100 business tax disputes. He has also been accused of sexual harassment and sexual assault, with one accusation resulting in Trump being held civilly liable.

In 2015, his lawyer Alan Garten called this "a natural part of doing business" in the United States. While litigation is indeed common in the real estate industry, Trump has been involved in more legal cases than his fellow magnates Edward J. DeBartolo Jr., Donald Bren, Stephen M. Ross, Sam Zell, and Larry Silverstein combined.

Numerous legal affairs persisted during Trump's presidency. Since he left office, multiple investigations focus on him:

My God. Somebody tell that poor Matt Taibbi dude to do a little research before he opens his pie hole. Educate himself! His beloved hack Comedian In Chief has had to pay Tens of Millions of dollars for perpetrating innumerable con jobs and frauds.

[MarquisdeSade1]

"Sigh. At least the NYT was not totally negative.

I read another take. Matt Taibbi was talking to another long time journalist Walter Klein about Trump and here is what was said:

Matt Taibbi: I've probably covered 30 Trump speeches over the years at differing times and Sioux Center, Iowa over the weekend to catch Trump. His address there, the runtime on that address was an hour and 48 minutes, which if you've covered campaigns, that's an eternity for a stump speech.

That's long even if you figure in all the people who introduce all the people who introduce the people who introduce the candidate, you almost never get over an hour, even if you include all those people.

Trump's own speech was an hour 48, and what's significant about that, and this is something that I caught from the first time I saw him in the 2015/2016 cycle, is that he gives off this vibe. He loves this shit. He loves being out there. He really enjoys playing to the crowd. He likes interacting with them. People yell things at him, he engages.

Sometimes people yell hostile things at him, he knows when to ignore those folks. He's like a good comedian. Good comedians know how to go in and feel out the crowd. But he loves doing it, and he has a million stories that he likes to share, and some of them are, they're just hilarious, there's no way around it. They're completely original, they're bizarre. They're often insulting.

I called it triumph the comic insult president mode. He was definitely there last weekend. He really doesn't like Ron DeSantis, even though DeSantis is kind of a non-factor for him polling-wise, I think Trump is going to enjoy going back in time and stepping on his corpse, even if he's out of the race still. Nikki Haley, he went after her half a dozen times, called her a bird brain, saying she was in the pockets of the open borders people, and-.

Walter Kirn: She's a globalist, "She likes the globe. ".

Matt Taibbi: "She likes the globe. " It was totally Jeff Spicoli, you know that scene where he goes in and Mr. Hand doesn't want to let him in class and Sean Penn is like, "This is US history, I knew it, I saw the globe. ".

Matt Taibbi: this whole shtick that he does with does Biden not being able to find the exit, it's like the funniest thing. There's no comedian in America who's doing something as funny as this.

Walter Kirn: Shecky Greene just died, Rickles is not with us. Yeah, you see, the other thing about Trump, and I'm just going to go for it because whenever I show affection for his skills as an insult comic or a performer, I'm accused of being a Putinite, and now I just love that, so I'm going to do a little of it.

He admits to less than noble emotions and motives, which the others will not. He says, "Yeah, I can't wait to grind them to dust or take revenge," or, "They betrayed me and I'm going to get them back. ".

Matt Taibbi: We saw this in, again, we saw this in the 2015/2016 cycle. The various politicians, who on that gigantic slate of candidates in that ridiculous race, they picked two strategies for dealing with Trump.

One was the high road, and those who picked the high road fared really badly if you remember Jeb Bush, his campaign basically imploded when he tried to ignore the Donald Trump's insults about his mother by saying, "My mother's the strongest woman I've ever known. ".

Trump interrupts and says, "Why isn't she running?" And that was it. Jeb was done in that moment. There was no longer any campaign.

This was interesting to me as well. Trump is ratings gold.

Taibbi: I saw this early in the cycle two elections ago. Trump basically looked at the presidential election campaign, which I'the suffered through covering five times beforehand and said, "Wow, this is a really shitty reality show. What would happen if we had a good reality show with a character like me who isn't completely full of shit every time he opens his mouth?" And that's what he did. He just got up there and said whatever he felt like, and it was gripping magnetic television, and the big difference financially for the networks was that they didn't have to stump for paid ads from the campaigns anymore. They could sell real ads to real advertisers for these events.

For the second Republican debate in 2015, CNN's ad rates were 40 times higher than normal. They were charging real advertisers enormous money just for the spectacle of Donald Trump.

So they didn't have to do this whole thing where, "We're going to put on this big show, so that the campaigns pay for it, essentially, with paid ads. We can put on an actually kick-ass reality show with this amazing character and get Procter & Gamble and other companies to pay us real money to do it, and that's why-.

Walter Kirn: So Trump is deliberately and effectively hurting their bottom line by not debating.

Matt Taibbi: Oh, absolutely. Yeah. CNN, I think in that one campaign cycle, they made a hundred million dollars more than they would have otherwise, they made a billion dollars in profit. MSNBC made something like 257 million in profit, it was between two and 300 million, and Fox was above, it was in the $1. 4 billion range for profit overall. Everybody made a ton of money in that Trump year, and it was all because Trump is good at this stuff. He realized that people, when they go to these campaign events, they expect to be given canned, lifeless speeches about things with no connection to their real lives. They've given up hope that any of these policies are actually going to end up impacting them.

As for why Trump is likely to win, Taibbi found this from a common man:

I remember talking to a Bernie voter in Winterset, Iowa who worked in a Walmart who was saying, "Here's why Trump is doing well, we've been here in Iowa forever, we see the candidates come in, they promise us stuff that never happens. Most of us work in companies. When the boss says something is going to happen, it happens the next day. " Trump has the authority that politicians don't have anymore because they haven't followed through.

End of link.

I had heard Trump rallies were the stuff of legend with people saying it was the most fun they have had in their life. And when I heard of this Biden routine, I had to check out a clip and found one here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W4cR9zzOtR0.

Can anyone imagine Biden competing against that?

At this point, it is obvious to me that the networks like MSNBC and CNN are being propped up by the CIA and FBI. If Trump is ratings gold, what other reason is there to piss him off so much?

MSNBC did not show Trump's victory speech and said his winning Iowa was a victory for white supremacy. Yeesh. ".

3 cheers for WHITE SUPREMACY ROTFLMMFAO.

https://youtube.com/shorts/4H8I6-5gj...UxXjyXDhT8c4xJ

At this point, it is obvious to me that the networks like MSNBC and CNN are being propped up by the CIA and FBI.

Yes Sir they are much worse than Pravda and Xinhua!!

And NYT are a bunch of whoors for the CCP.

[EihTooms]

Sigh. At least the NYT was not totally negative.

I read another take. Matt Taibbi was talking to another long time journalist Walter Klein about Trump and here is what was said:

Matt Taibbi: I've probably covered 30 Trump speeches over the years at differing times and Sioux Center, Iowa over the weekend to catch Trump. His address there, the runtime on that address was an hour and 48 minutes, which if you've covered campaigns, that's an eternity for a stump speech.

That's long even if you figure in all the people who introduce all the people who introduce the people who introduce the candidate, you almost never get over an hour, even if you include all those people.

Trump's own speech was an hour 48, and what's significant about that, and this is something that I caught from the first time I saw him in the 2015/2016 cycle, is that he gives off this vibe. He loves this shit. He loves being out there. He really enjoys playing to the crowd. He likes interacting with them. People yell things at him, he engages.

Sometimes people yell hostile things at him, he knows when to ignore those folks. He's like a good comedian. Good comedians know how to go in and feel out the crowd. But he loves doing it, and he has a million stories that he likes to share, and some of them are, they're just hilarious, there's no way around it. They're completely original, they're bizarre. They're often insulting.

I called it triumph the comic insult president mode. He was definitely there last weekend. He really doesn't like Ron DeSantis, even though DeSantis is kind of a non-factor for him polling-wise, I think Trump is going to enjoy going back in time and stepping on his corpse, even if he's out of the race still. Nikki Haley, he went after her half a dozen times, called her a bird brain, saying she was in the pockets of the open borders people, and-.

Walter Kirn: She's a globalist, "She likes the globe. ".

Matt Taibbi: "She likes the globe. " It was totally Jeff Spicoli, you know that scene where he goes in and Mr. Hand doesn't want to let him in class and Sean Penn is like, "This is US history, I knew it, I saw the globe. ".

Matt Taibbi: this whole shtick that he does with does Biden not being able to find the exit, it's like the funniest thing. There's no comedian in America who's doing something as funny as this.

Walter Kirn: Shecky Greene just died, Rickles is not with us. Yeah, you see, the other thing about Trump, and I'm just going to go for it because whenever I show affection for his skills as an insult comic or a performer, I'm accused of being a Putinite, and now I just love that, so I'm going to do a little of it.

He admits to less than noble emotions and motives, which the others will not. He says, "Yeah, I can't wait to grind them to dust or take revenge," or, "They betrayed me and I'm going to get them back. ".

Matt Taibbi: We saw this in, again, we saw this in the 2015/2016 cycle. The various politicians, who on that gigantic slate of candidates in that ridiculous race, they picked two strategies for dealing with Trump.

One was the high road, and those who picked the high road fared really badly if you remember Jeb Bush, his campaign basically imploded when he tried to ignore the Donald Trump's insults about his mother by saying, "My mother's the strongest woman I've ever known. ".

Trump interrupts and says, "Why isn't she running?" And that was it. Jeb was done in that moment. There was no longer any campaign.

This was interesting to me as well. Trump is ratings gold.

Taibbi: I saw this early in the cycle two elections ago. Trump basically looked at the presidential election campaign, which I'the suffered through covering five times beforehand and said, "Wow, this is a really shitty reality show. What would happen if we had a good reality show with a character like me who isn't completely full of shit every time he opens his mouth?" And that's what he did. He just got up there and said whatever he felt like, and it was gripping magnetic television, and the big difference financially for the networks was that they didn't have to stump for paid ads from the campaigns anymore. They could sell real ads to real advertisers for these events.

For the second Republican debate in 2015, CNN's ad rates were 40 times higher than normal. They were charging real advertisers enormous money just for the spectacle of Donald Trump.

So they didn't have to do this whole thing where, "We're going to put on this big show, so that the campaigns pay for it, essentially, with paid ads. We can put on an actually kick-ass reality show with this amazing character and get Procter & Gamble and other companies to pay us real money to do it, and that's why-.

Walter Kirn: So Trump is deliberately and effectively hurting their bottom line by not debating.

Matt Taibbi: Oh, absolutely. Yeah. CNN, I think in that one campaign cycle, they made a hundred million dollars more than they would have otherwise, they made a billion dollars in profit. MSNBC made something like 257 million in profit, it was between two and 300 million, and Fox was above, it was in the $1. 4 billion range for profit overall. Everybody made a ton of money in that Trump year, and it was all because Trump is good at this stuff. He realized that people, when they go to these campaign events, they expect to be given canned, lifeless speeches about things with no connection to their real lives. They've given up hope that any of these policies are actually going to end up impacting them.

As for why Trump is likely to win, Taibbi found this from a common man:

I remember talking to a Bernie voter in Winterset, Iowa who worked in a Walmart who was saying, "Here's why Trump is doing well, we've been here in Iowa forever, we see the candidates come in, they promise us stuff that never happens. Most of us work in companies. When the boss says something is going to happen, it happens the next day. " Trump has the authority that politicians don't have anymore because they haven't followed through.

End of link.

I had heard Trump rallies were the stuff of legend with people saying it was the most fun they have had in their life. And when I heard of this Biden routine, I had to check out a clip and found one here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W4cR9zzOtR0.

Can anyone imagine Biden competing against that?

At this point, it is obvious to me that the networks like MSNBC and CNN are being propped up by the CIA and FBI. If Trump is ratings gold, what other reason is there to piss him off so much?

MSNBC did not show Trump's victory speech and said his winning Iowa was a victory for white supremacy. Yeesh.

MSNBC's stated policy is not to knowingly air blatant lies for obvious license, credibility, civil / legal liability and, well, patriotic reasons. In the case of a Trump speech, that means clearing it and fact-checking it before they air so much as a single sentence of it. Unlike Fux News, MSNBC would rather not pay $787 Million in a hot minute settlement in exchange for helping Trump win an election so he can produce more "A Once in 100 Years DISASTER Has STRUCK"! Headlines and topics for them to improve their ratings by covering it.

I for one appreciate that in a news organization.

Why doesn't the Repub Base just write in a dead Don Rickles or a dead Shecky Greene if they like that style of presidential policy and stewardship? It shouldn't take much to convince them that there are Rickles and Greene sightings all the time so they must still be alive.

[EihTooms]

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/01/16/u...in-voters.html

The Most Durable Force in American Politics: Trump's Ties to His Voters.

If Donald Trump's rivals want to stop his rise, they'll need to break his bond with his supporters. They didn't come close in Iowa.

Donald Trump wears a white hat and pumps his fist onstage. The hat says "Trump Caucus Captain. " Visible but out of focus in the foreground is a person making a heart shape with their hands.

Former President Donald Trump at a rally in Indianola, Iowa, the day before the state caucuses. Credit. Haiyun Jiang for The New York Times.

Michael see. BenderKatie Glueck.

By Michael see. Bender and Katie Glueck.

Jan. 16,2024.

Updated 1:54 am ET.

Sign up for Your Places: Extreme Weather. Get notified about extreme weather before it happens with custom alerts for places in the USA You choose. Get it sent to your inbox.

Bill Clinton once explained the nation's two political parties by saying that Democrats want to fall in love while Republicans want to fall in line.

That adage has not withstood the Trump era. Today, it is Republicans who are besotted.

Donald J. Trump's decisive victory in Iowa revealed a new depth to the reservoir of devotion inside his party. For eight years, he has nurtured a relationship with his supporters with little precedent in politics. He validates them, he entertains them, he speaks for them and he uses them for his political and legal advantage.

This connection a hard-earned bond for some, a cult of personality to others has unleashed one the most durable forces in American politics.

Iowa Republicans, following the lead of party officials across the country, rallied behind the former president despite a list of reasons to reject him. Republicans lost control of the presidency, the Senate and the House during his four years in office. He failed to deliver the red wave of victories he promised in the 2022 midterms. He has been charged with 91 felonies in four criminal cases this past year.

And they stayed with him even as they were offered viable alternatives: Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, a popular, young governor who embraced Mr. Trump's policies, and Nikki Haley, one of the Deep South's first female governors, who credibly promised she could win back voters Mr. Trump drove away.

Yet in the first chance Americans had to cast judgment on Mr. Trump since he tried to overthrow an election, many Iowa Republicans made clear they don't judge him. They adore him.

"Trump is not a candidate, he's the leader of a national movement," said Newt Gingrich, a former House speaker who has advised Mr. Trump. "No one has come to grips with what's it like to take on the champion of a movement. That's why even as all these legal issues pile up, it just infuriates his movement and increases their anger unbelievably. ".

The risks associated with the kind of unusually strong hold Mr. Trump maintains on the party have already emerged.

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Image.

A woman wearing a red sweater stands behind a red, white and blue barrier. She holds Trump a campaign sign.

Supporters cheering for Mr. Trump at a rally in Indianola, Iowa. Credit. Haiyun Jiang for The New York Times.

He has encouraged supporters to view him as above fault or defeat, a mindset that can lead to the kind of political violence that shocked the nation during the Capitol riot on Jan. 6, 2021. Elevating charisma over character can open the door to the kind of authoritarianism that Mr. Trump has promised on the campaign trail this past year.

"A lot of the people that support Donald Trump really are fed up with democracy, representative democracy, they think that an authoritarian-style government would probably be preferable at this point, in order to save the nation or whatever," said former Representative Charles Bass, a New Hampshire Republican who previously voted for Mr. Trump, but said he would not do so again. "I don't think they feel threatened by having somebody who at least has the trappings of being more authoritarian than past presidents. ".

Although Mr. Trump's win was resounding, the Iowa results suggest the party remains deeply divided over his return to power. Roughly half of Iowa Republicans voted for one of Mr. Trump's rivals, including about 20 percent who backed Mr. DeSantis, who finished in second, with Ms. Haley close behind.

Republicans who resisted Mr. Trump in Iowa included the party's youngest voters and anti-abortion-rights conservatives who backed Mr. DeSantis, according to entrance polls.

Iowa Caucuses: Live Updates.

Updated.

Jan. 16,2024, 12:50 am ET2 hours ago.

2 hours ago.

5 takeaways from Trump's runaway victory in the Iowa caucuses.

The mood at the DeSantis watch party was anger and disbelief over how fast the call was made.

Trump invested in a muscular turnout operation, and it paid off.

Similarly, Ms. Haley won moderate voters, Republicans who believed Mr. Trump lost the 2020 election, those who support a muscular foreign policy and the segment of the party that prioritized temperament in their choice for a presidential nominee.

Party strategists and officials in other states caution against drawing sweeping conclusions from the votes of a narrow slice of Republicans in a small state. As the Republican nominating contest moves to New Hampshire next week, one poll this month showed Ms. Haley within striking distance of Mr. Trump. The state's voters tend to be more moderate and less religious, suggesting an opening for her.

Mr. DeSantis's ability to threaten Mr. Trump is less clear. He marketed himself to voters as a Trumpian wunderkind, able to deliver America First policies without the drama and chaos that often trail the former president.

But MAGA Nation rivals the Queen's Guard when it comes to standing at the ready to defend their sovereign, and Mr. DeSantis was turned back as Republicans showed they are less interested in policies than they are the man.

"I know that he is picked by God for this hour," said Patricia Lage, an Iowa caucusgoer who spoke in support of Mr. Trump on Monday night in Carlisle, outside Des Moines. "There are things that he has done in the past, but we all have pasts. ".

Image.

Ron DeSantis approaches a stage. A "DeSantis for President 2024" sign is on his left.

Mr. DeSantis taking the stage at a campaign stop at Jethro's BBQ in Ames, Iowa. Credit. Jordan Gale for The New York Times.

Mr. Trump has spent years tending to his voters taking aim at their shared enemies and anticipating their grievances. He has compulsively tried to ensure that he was never out of step.

That preoccupation repeatedly drove his decisions in the White House, from refusing to wear a mask during the initial outbreak of Covid-19 in 2020 to his opposition to striking the names of Confederate generals from USA Military bases.

More recently, Mr. Trump has attacked Mr. DeSantis for signing a six-week abortion ban and avoided committing to a federal ban on the procedure, betting that his voters will either agree or forgive him for deviating from a core conservative priority.

Perhaps most significantly, he has rallied their support amid unprecedented legal troubles in part by describing the prosecution of him as an attempt to silence them.

"You and I have been in this battle side-by-side, together and we have been taking on the entire corrupt system in Washington like no one has ever done before," Mr. Trump told Iowa supporters at a rally on Sunday, adding that the political establishment and global elites "are at war with us we have to fight. ".

Voter anger at political institutions remains sky-high a dynamic that explains what appears, at first glance, to be nothing short of a political magic act: The billionaire son of a multimillionaire has become the voice for working-class Americans.

"His gift is that the average voter in Iowa, New Hampshire and state after state feels like he connects with them," said David Bossie, Mr. Trump's deputy campaign manager in 2016. "he's a blue-collar billionaire. ".

Both Mr. DeSantis and Ms. Haley have tried to weaken Mr. Trump's ties to his supporters without issuing many direct attacks on Mr. Trump. But the race to emerge as the Trump alternative is becoming increasingly urgent, with limited time for the candidates to cement that standing.

Image.

Nikki Haley, wearing a bright pink blazer, talks to a man holding a child in a rainbow color coat.

Ms. Haley talking with supporters at a Caucus Day stop at PB'S Pub in Newton, Iowa. Credit. Ruth Fremson / The New York Times.

Former Senator Judd Gregg of New Hampshire, a Haley supporter, lamented that much of his party had become "sort of a cult" around Mr. Trump. He still considers himself a Republican, though, and views Mr. Trump as the interloper.

"I don't think Trump's a Republican," Mr. Gregg said. "he's a demagogue. ".

David Kochel, a longtime Iowa Republican operative opposed to Mr. Trump, said the former president's bond with his voters was unlikely to be replicated by other candidates. The party has become more populist and anti-establishment, but Mr. Trump's ability to capitalize on his celebrity status while harnessing the swirling mix of anger at elites, racial grievances and mounting distrust of political, judicial and international institutions was, for now, unique.

"he's a unicorn in our party," Mr. Kochel said. "Republicans have become more populist and anti-establishment, but that doesn't mean the party will nominate Majorie Taylor Greene or Jim Jordan next. There's no going back to the old party. ".

This Year's Iowa Caucus Is On Track For Lowest Turnout Since 2000 https://www.nytimes.com/2024/01/15/u...nout-cold.html.

Lower than the last time there was a Repub Caucus in Iowa in 2016.

His percentage in the Caucus was the lowest of any candidate who had already been president. A large percentage of Repub numbskulls in attendance actually consider him to be the CURRENT incumbent. LOL.

Trump's gift appears to be engendering more and more love from the dramatically shrinking smaller and smaller number of suckers he can continue to con the more everyone gets to know him better.

I really do wonder how much longer pollsters need to work and how many more contacts they need to make in order to finally sample roughly as many self-described Repubs and Repubs pretending to be "Independents" as proudly self-described Dems before they can post those poll results that even on the demonstrably Winger-leaning RealClearPolitics site consensus only squeezes out less than half of a normal +/- Margin of Error statistical tie with Biden after Trump has been campaigning since January 2021 and Biden has been busy producing a historic jobs creation, economic and national security recovery since then and only given a couple of campaign speeches over the past 2 weeks or so.

[Elvis 2008]

"I don't think Trump's a Republican," Mr. Gregg said. "he's a demagogue. ".

David Kochel, a longtime Iowa Republican operative opposed to Mr. Trump, said the former president's bond with his voters was unlikely to be replicated by other candidates. The party has become more populist and anti-establishment, but Mr. Trump's ability to capitalize on his celebrity status while harnessing the swirling mix of anger at elites, racial grievances and mounting distrust of political, judicial and international institutions was, for now, unique.

"he's a unicorn in our party," Mr. Kochel said. "Republicans have become more populist and anti-establishment, but that doesn't mean the party will nominate Majorie Taylor Greene or Jim Jordan next. There's no going back to the old party. ".

Sigh. At least the NYT was not totally negative.

I read another take. Matt Taibbi was talking to another long time journalist Walter Klein about Trump and here is what was said:

Matt Taibbi: I've probably covered 30 Trump speeches over the years at differing times and Sioux Center, Iowa over the weekend to catch Trump. His address there, the runtime on that address was an hour and 48 minutes, which if you've covered campaigns, that's an eternity for a stump speech.

That's long even if you figure in all the people who introduce all the people who introduce the people who introduce the candidate, you almost never get over an hour, even if you include all those people.

Trump's own speech was an hour 48, and what's significant about that, and this is something that I caught from the first time I saw him in the 2015/2016 cycle, is that he gives off this vibe. He loves this shit. He loves being out there. He really enjoys playing to the crowd. He likes interacting with them. People yell things at him, he engages.

Sometimes people yell hostile things at him, he knows when to ignore those folks. He's like a good comedian. Good comedians know how to go in and feel out the crowd. But he loves doing it, and he has a million stories that he likes to share, and some of them are, they're just hilarious, there's no way around it. They're completely original, they're bizarre. They're often insulting.

I called it triumph the comic insult president mode. He was definitely there last weekend. He really doesn't like Ron DeSantis, even though DeSantis is kind of a non-factor for him polling-wise, I think Trump is going to enjoy going back in time and stepping on his corpse, even if he's out of the race still. Nikki Haley, he went after her half a dozen times, called her a bird brain, saying she was in the pockets of the open borders people, and-.

Walter Kirn: She's a globalist, "She likes the globe. ".

Matt Taibbi: "She likes the globe. " It was totally Jeff Spicoli, you know that scene where he goes in and Mr. Hand doesn't want to let him in class and Sean Penn is like, "This is US history, I knew it, I saw the globe. ".

Matt Taibbi: this whole shtick that he does with does Biden not being able to find the exit, it's like the funniest thing. There's no comedian in America who's doing something as funny as this.

Walter Kirn: Shecky Greene just died, Rickles is not with us. Yeah, you see, the other thing about Trump, and I'm just going to go for it because whenever I show affection for his skills as an insult comic or a performer, I'm accused of being a Putinite, and now I just love that, so I'm going to do a little of it.

He admits to less than noble emotions and motives, which the others will not. He says, "Yeah, I can't wait to grind them to dust or take revenge," or, "They betrayed me and I'm going to get them back. ".

Matt Taibbi: We saw this in, again, we saw this in the 2015/2016 cycle. The various politicians, who on that gigantic slate of candidates in that ridiculous race, they picked two strategies for dealing with Trump.

One was the high road, and those who picked the high road fared really badly if you remember Jeb Bush, his campaign basically imploded when he tried to ignore the Donald Trump's insults about his mother by saying, "My mother's the strongest woman I've ever known. ".

Trump interrupts and says, "Why isn't she running?" And that was it. Jeb was done in that moment. There was no longer any campaign.

This was interesting to me as well. Trump is ratings gold.

Taibbi: I saw this early in the cycle two elections ago. Trump basically looked at the presidential election campaign, which I'the suffered through covering five times beforehand and said, "Wow, this is a really shitty reality show. What would happen if we had a good reality show with a character like me who isn't completely full of shit every time he opens his mouth?" And that's what he did. He just got up there and said whatever he felt like, and it was gripping magnetic television, and the big difference financially for the networks was that they didn't have to stump for paid ads from the campaigns anymore. They could sell real ads to real advertisers for these events.

For the second Republican debate in 2015, CNN's ad rates were 40 times higher than normal. They were charging real advertisers enormous money just for the spectacle of Donald Trump.

So they didn't have to do this whole thing where, "We're going to put on this big show, so that the campaigns pay for it, essentially, with paid ads. We can put on an actually kick-ass reality show with this amazing character and get Procter & Gamble and other companies to pay us real money to do it, and that's why-.

Walter Kirn: So Trump is deliberately and effectively hurting their bottom line by not debating.

Matt Taibbi: Oh, absolutely. Yeah. CNN, I think in that one campaign cycle, they made a hundred million dollars more than they would have otherwise, they made a billion dollars in profit. MSNBC made something like 257 million in profit, it was between two and 300 million, and Fox was above, it was in the $1. 4 billion range for profit overall. Everybody made a ton of money in that Trump year, and it was all because Trump is good at this stuff. He realized that people, when they go to these campaign events, they expect to be given canned, lifeless speeches about things with no connection to their real lives. They've given up hope that any of these policies are actually going to end up impacting them.

As for why Trump is likely to win, Taibbi found this from a common man:

I remember talking to a Bernie voter in Winterset, Iowa who worked in a Walmart who was saying, "Here's why Trump is doing well, we've been here in Iowa forever, we see the candidates come in, they promise us stuff that never happens. Most of us work in companies. When the boss says something is going to happen, it happens the next day. " Trump has the authority that politicians don't have anymore because they haven't followed through.

End of link.

I had heard Trump rallies were the stuff of legend with people saying it was the most fun they have had in their life. And when I heard of this Biden routine, I had to check out a clip and found one here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W4cR9zzOtR0.

Can anyone imagine Biden competing against that?

At this point, it is obvious to me that the networks like MSNBC and CNN are being propped up by the CIA and FBI. If Trump is ratings gold, what other reason is there to piss him off so much?

MSNBC did not show Trump's victory speech and said his winning Iowa was a victory for white supremacy. Yeesh.

[MarquisdeSade1]

"Even without properly crediting Trump for spending 2018,2019 and all of 2020 laying the foundation for Trump's Pandemic and only crediting him with lying about it and handling it all wrong in critical year 2020, the studies show Trump is responsible for at least 40% of the American deaths from his Pandemic:

US could have averted 40% of Covid deaths, says panel examining Trump's policies.

The country began the pandemic with a degraded public health infrastructure, leading to more deaths than other high-income countries.

Feb. 11,2021.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/...-health-policy

And I hear some of those 400,000 (at a MINIMUM) Americans that Trump has Mass Murdered so far lived in Chicago and sometimes rode trains. ".

https://www.aol.com/police-search-su...125907280.html

[EihTooms]

"Are most Americans stupid about the economy?

Your link and all available evidence strongly suggests the answer is Yes.

"Mr. Biden inherited a tough hand: an economy upset by Covid and supply chain disruptions. ".

Hey, no kidding.

Trump's claim that Biden's remarkable Recovery is the result of "running on the fumes" of what he did is, of course, a preposterous lie. Trump's first couple of years was coasting on the fumes of what Obama-Biden handed him. He didn't even pass his one ineffectual economic legislation until the last working day of 2017. A year later that godawful legislation was presiding over fewer jobs with it than without it, skyrocketing increases in the deficit and a 20%+ Bear Market decline in the broad stock market.

By stark contrast, Biden and his Dems proposed and passed several pieces of historic and positive economic legislation beginning early in his first year and those were in the system and on the table throughout the Great Dem Recovery and Historic Jobs Creation.

Also, the same typically pro Repub Mainstream Media that allowed Larry Summers and others to muse blithely and idiotically about Biden and the Dems not nailing the precise amount of stimulus to the dime necessary to recover the world from Trump's Pandemic with zero assurance that the historic, unprecedented health and economic set backs from it were truly over and while all previous electoral midterm patterns strongly suggesting there would be one and only one year to get it done also allowed Trump to lie for every year since that his Pandemic was simply something that "happened out of the blue" to the poor feller when the verifiable facts show his Classic Disastrous Repub economic and national security policies and stewardship over three years contributed more to producing Trump's Pandemic than any other human being on the planet.

ROTFLMMFAO, yes everyone is so stoopid except some old pervert writing on ISG in BKK

No. The other people who are not that stoopid are the 80+ Million who voted for Biden, the majority of voters who voted for the Dem in 1992,1996, 2000,2008, 2012, 2016, 2020, the ones who made history voting more Senate seats for the Dems and kept the Repub House Majority to a Getting Smaller and Smaller All The Time Pink Tinkle in 2022 and voted higher than usual numbers for Dem election victories in virtually every special election of the past 3+ years.

Sorry, I know being made aware of actual data, results and statistics causes Wingers' socks to roll up and down your legs and steam to shoot out of your ears.

[MarquisdeSade1]

"Are most Americans stupid about the economy?

Your link and all available evidence strongly suggests the answer is Yes.

"Mr. Biden inherited a tough hand: an economy upset by Covid and supply chain disruptions. ".

Hey, no kidding.

Trump's claim that Biden's remarkable Recovery is the result of "running on the fumes" of what he did is, of course, a preposterous lie. Trump's first couple of years was coasting on the fumes of what Obama-Biden handed him. He didn't even pass his one ineffectual economic legislation until the last working day of 2017. A year later that godawful legislation was presiding over fewer jobs with it than without it, skyrocketing increases in the deficit and a 20%+ Bear Market decline in the broad stock market.

By stark contrast, Biden and his Dems proposed and passed several pieces of historic and positive economic legislation beginning early in his first year and those were in the system and on the table throughout the Great Dem Recovery and Historic Jobs Creation.

Also, the same typically pro Repub Mainstream Media that allowed Larry Summers and others to muse blithely and idiotically about Biden and the Dems not nailing the precise amount of stimulus to the dime necessary to recover the world from Trump's Pandemic with zero assurance that the historic, unprecedented health and economic set backs from it were truly over and while all previous electoral midterm patterns strongly suggesting there would be one and only one year to get it done also allowed Trump to lie for every year since that his Pandemic was simply something that "happened out of the blue" to the poor feller when the verifiable facts show his Classic Disastrous Repub economic and national security policies and stewardship over three years contributed more to producing Trump's Pandemic than any other human being on the planet.

And, as a Classic Repub, Trump would lay the groundwork for and blunder us into the next Great, Unprecedented, "Once in 100 Years" Repub Economic Disaster again ASAP, early and often.

That said, bear in mind polls can only telling us what poll respondents "say" to pollsters about how they feel. They can not tell us how they really feel. Voting results tell us how they really feel. And on that count, since 2020 voters have been telling us they definitely trust and believe Biden and the Dems "handle the economy better" than Repubs.

If anything, the greatest political risk for Biden and the Dems in 2024 is that their economic recovery and jobs creation results were so good for so many Americans that they are now free to fall for the usual sucker social issues and empty, jingoistic clap trap that Repub con men have had to run on instead of their disastrous economic and national security results since at least Nixon."

https://twitter.com/HawleyMO/status/...D&refsrc=email

[MarquisdeSade1]

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/01/16/u...in-voters.html

The Most Durable Force in American Politics: Trump's Ties to His Voters.

If Donald Trump's rivals want to stop his rise, they'll need to break his bond with his supporters. They didn't come close in Iowa.

Donald Trump wears a white hat and pumps his fist onstage. The hat says "Trump Caucus Captain. " Visible but out of focus in the foreground is a person making a heart shape with their hands.

Former President Donald Trump at a rally in Indianola, Iowa, the day before the state caucuses. Credit. Haiyun Jiang for The New York Times.

Michael see. BenderKatie Glueck.

By Michael see. Bender and Katie Glueck.

Jan. 16,2024.

Updated 1:54 am ET.

Sign up for Your Places: Extreme Weather. Get notified about extreme weather before it happens with custom alerts for places in the USA You choose. Get it sent to your inbox.

Bill Clinton once explained the nation's two political parties by saying that Democrats want to fall in love while Republicans want to fall in line.

That adage has not withstood the Trump era. Today, it is Republicans who are besotted.

Donald J. Trump's decisive victory in Iowa revealed a new depth to the reservoir of devotion inside his party. For eight years, he has nurtured a relationship with his supporters with little precedent in politics. He validates them, he entertains them, he speaks for them and he uses them for his political and legal advantage.

This connection — a hard-earned bond for some, a cult of personality to others — has unleashed one the most durable forces in American politics.

Iowa Republicans, following the lead of party officials across the country, rallied behind the former president despite a list of reasons to reject him. Republicans lost control of the presidency, the Senate and the House during his four years in office. He failed to deliver the red wave of victories he promised in the 2022 midterms. He has been charged with 91 felonies in four criminal cases this past year.

And they stayed with him even as they were offered viable alternatives: Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, a popular, young governor who embraced Mr. Trump's policies, and Nikki Haley, one of the Deep South's first female governors, who credibly promised she could win back voters Mr. Trump drove away.

Yet in the first chance Americans had to cast judgment on Mr. Trump since he tried to overthrow an election, many Iowa Republicans made clear they don't judge him. They adore him.

"Trump is not a candidate, he's the leader of a national movement," said Newt Gingrich, a former House speaker who has advised Mr. Trump. "No one has come to grips with what's it like to take on the champion of a movement. That's why even as all these legal issues pile up, it just infuriates his movement and increases their anger unbelievably. ".

The risks associated with the kind of unusually strong hold Mr. Trump maintains on the party have already emerged.

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Image.

A woman wearing a red sweater stands behind a red, white and blue barrier. She holds Trump a campaign sign.

Supporters cheering for Mr. Trump at a rally in Indianola, Iowa. Credit. Haiyun Jiang for The New York Times.

He has encouraged supporters to view him as above fault or defeat, a mindset that can lead to the kind of political violence that shocked the nation during the Capitol riot on Jan. 6, 2021. Elevating charisma over character can open the door to the kind of authoritarianism that Mr. Trump has promised on the campaign trail this past year.

"A lot of the people that support Donald Trump really are fed up with democracy, representative democracy, they think that an authoritarian-style government would probably be preferable at this point, in order to save the nation or whatever," said former Representative Charles Bass, a New Hampshire Republican who previously voted for Mr. Trump, but said he would not do so again. "I don't think they feel threatened by having somebody who at least has the trappings of being more authoritarian than past presidents. ".

Although Mr. Trump's win was resounding, the Iowa results suggest the party remains deeply divided over his return to power. Roughly half of Iowa Republicans voted for one of Mr. Trump's rivals, including about 20 percent who backed Mr. DeSantis, who finished in second, with Ms. Haley close behind.

Republicans who resisted Mr. Trump in Iowa included the party's youngest voters and anti-abortion-rights conservatives who backed Mr. DeSantis, according to entrance polls.

Iowa Caucuses: Live Updates.

Updated.

Jan. 16,2024, 12:50 am ET2 hours ago.

2 hours ago.

5 takeaways from Trump's runaway victory in the Iowa caucuses.

The mood at the DeSantis watch party was anger and disbelief — over how fast the call was made.

Trump invested in a muscular turnout operation, and it paid off.

Similarly, Ms. Haley won moderate voters, Republicans who believed Mr. Trump lost the 2020 election, those who support a muscular foreign policy and the segment of the party that prioritized temperament in their choice for a presidential nominee.

Party strategists and officials in other states caution against drawing sweeping conclusions from the votes of a narrow slice of Republicans in a small state. As the Republican nominating contest moves to New Hampshire next week, one poll this month showed Ms. Haley within striking distance of Mr. Trump. The state's voters tend to be more moderate and less religious, suggesting an opening for her.

Mr. DeSantis's ability to threaten Mr. Trump is less clear. He marketed himself to voters as a Trumpian wunderkind, able to deliver America First policies without the drama and chaos that often trail the former president.

But MAGA Nation rivals the Queen's Guard when it comes to standing at the ready to defend their sovereign, and Mr. DeSantis was turned back as Republicans showed they are less interested in policies than they are the man.

"I know that he is picked by God for this hour," said Patricia Lage, an Iowa caucusgoer who spoke in support of Mr. Trump on Monday night in Carlisle, outside Des Moines. "There are things that he has done in the past, but we all have pasts. ".

Image.

Ron DeSantis approaches a stage. A "DeSantis for President 2024" sign is on his left.

Mr. DeSantis taking the stage at a campaign stop at Jethro's BBQ in Ames, Iowa. Credit. Jordan Gale for The New York Times.

Mr. Trump has spent years tending to his voters — taking aim at their shared enemies and anticipating their grievances. He has compulsively tried to ensure that he was never out of step.

That preoccupation repeatedly drove his decisions in the White House, from refusing to wear a mask during the initial outbreak of Covid-19 in 2020 to his opposition to striking the names of Confederate generals from USA Military bases.

More recently, Mr. Trump has attacked Mr. DeSantis for signing a six-week abortion ban and avoided committing to a federal ban on the procedure, betting that his voters will either agree or forgive him for deviating from a core conservative priority.

Perhaps most significantly, he has rallied their support amid unprecedented legal troubles in part by describing the prosecution of him as an attempt to silence them.

"You and I have been in this battle side-by-side, together — and we have been taking on the entire corrupt system in Washington like no one has ever done before," Mr. Trump told Iowa supporters at a rally on Sunday, adding that the political establishment and global elites "are at war with us — we have to fight. ".

Voter anger at political institutions remains sky-high — a dynamic that explains what appears, at first glance, to be nothing short of a political magic act: The billionaire son of a multimillionaire has become the voice for working-class Americans.

"His gift is that the average voter in Iowa, New Hampshire and state after state feels like he connects with them," said David Bossie, Mr. Trump's deputy campaign manager in 2016. "he's a blue-collar billionaire. ".

Both Mr. DeSantis and Ms. Haley have tried to weaken Mr. Trump's ties to his supporters without issuing many direct attacks on Mr. Trump. But the race to emerge as the Trump alternative is becoming increasingly urgent, with limited time for the candidates to cement that standing.

Image.

Nikki Haley, wearing a bright pink blazer, talks to a man holding a child in a rainbow color coat.

Ms. Haley talking with supporters at a Caucus Day stop at PB'S Pub in Newton, Iowa. Credit. Ruth Fremson / The New York Times.

Former Senator Judd Gregg of New Hampshire, a Haley supporter, lamented that much of his party had become "sort of a cult" around Mr. Trump. He still considers himself a Republican, though, and views Mr. Trump as the interloper.

"I don't think Trump's a Republican," Mr. Gregg said. "he's a demagogue. ".

David Kochel, a longtime Iowa Republican operative opposed to Mr. Trump, said the former president's bond with his voters was unlikely to be replicated by other candidates. The party has become more populist and anti-establishment, but Mr. Trump's ability to capitalize on his celebrity status while harnessing the swirling mix of anger at elites, racial grievances and mounting distrust of political, judicial and international institutions was, for now, unique.

"he's a unicorn in our party," Mr. Kochel said. "Republicans have become more populist and anti-establishment, but that doesn't mean the party will nominate Majorie Taylor Greene or Jim Jordan next. There's no going back to the old party. ".

[EihTooms]

https://www.breitbart.com/crime/2024...-her-on-train/

Even without properly crediting Trump for spending 2018,2019 and all of 2020 laying the foundation for Trump's Pandemic and only crediting him with lying about it and handling it all wrong in critical year 2020, the studies show Trump is responsible for at least 40% of the American deaths from his Pandemic:

US could have averted 40% of Covid deaths, says panel examining Trump's policies.
The country began the pandemic with a degraded public health infrastructure, leading to more deaths than other high-income countries.
Feb. 11, 2021

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/...-health-policy

And I hear some of those 400,000 (at a MINIMUM) Americans that Trump has Mass Murdered so far lived in Chicago and sometimes rode trains.

[MarquisdeSade1]

"Are most Americans stupid about the economy?

Your link and all available evidence strongly suggests the answer is Yes.

"Mr. Biden inherited a tough hand: an economy upset by Covid and supply chain disruptions. ".

Hey, no kidding.

Trump's claim that Biden's remarkable Recovery is the result of "running on the fumes" of what he did is, of course, a preposterous lie. Trump's first couple of years was coasting on the fumes of what Obama-Biden handed him. He didn't even pass his one ineffectual economic legislation until the last working day of 2017. A year later that godawful legislation was presiding over fewer jobs with it than without it, skyrocketing increases in the deficit and a 20%+ Bear Market decline in the broad stock market.

By stark contrast, Biden and his Dems proposed and passed several pieces of historic and positive economic legislation beginning early in his first year and those were in the system and on the table throughout the Great Dem Recovery and Historic Jobs Creation.

Also, the same typically pro Repub Mainstream Media that allowed Larry Summers and others to muse blithely and idiotically about Biden and the Dems not nailing the precise amount of stimulus to the dime necessary to recover the world from Trump's Pandemic with zero assurance that the historic, unprecedented health and economic set backs from it were truly over and while all previous electoral midterm patterns strongly suggesting there would be one and only one year to get it done also allowed Trump to lie for every year since that his Pandemic was simply something that "happened out of the blue" to the poor feller when the verifiable facts show his Classic Disastrous Repub economic and national security policies and stewardship over three years contributed more to producing Trump's Pandemic than any other human being on the planet.

And, as a Classic Repub, Trump would lay the groundwork for and blunder us into the next Great, Unprecedented, "Once in 100 Years" Repub Economic Disaster again ASAP, early and often.

That said, bear in mind polls can only telling us what poll respondents "say" to pollsters about how they feel. They can not tell us how they really feel. Voting results tell us how they really feel. And on that count, since 2020 voters have been telling us they definitely trust and believe Biden and the Dems "handle the economy better" than Repubs.

If anything, the greatest political risk for Biden and the Dems in 2024 is that their economic recovery and jobs creation results were so good for so many Americans that they are now free to fall for the usual sucker social issues and empty, jingoistic clap trap that Repub con men have had to run on instead of their disastrous economic and national security results since at least Nixon. ".

[EihTooms]

Are most Americans stupid about the economy?

Your link and all available evidence strongly suggests the answer is Yes.

"Yes, what happened to "I alone can fix it"?

Trump Dreams of Economic Disaster.

Jan. 11,2024.

https://dnyuz.com/2024/01/11/trump-d...omic-disaster/".

Here's something to choke on beeches.

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/01/15/o...s-economy.html

OPINION.

GUEST ESSAY.

What Trump Voters Understand About the Economy.

Jan. 15,2024, 5:01 am ET.

A wooden Trump sign made less legible by being weather-beaten.

Credit. Grant Hindsley for The New York Times.

Share full article.

By Roger Lowenstein.

Mr. Lowenstein is a journalist and the author of "Ways and Means: Lincoln and His Cabinet and the Financing of the Civil War. ".

Sign up for the Opinion Today newsletter Get expert analysis of the news and a guide to the big ideas shaping the world every weekday morning. Get it sent to your inbox.

Why is Donald Trump continuing to poll so strongly with voters?

As unpalatable as a second Trump term would be, many pundits who tackle this question have ignored a striking fact: The typical household's living standard improved during the three Trump years before the pandemic. Under President Biden, Americans have (at best) struggled to keep even with inflation.

Mr. Trump's huge personal negatives his meanspirited personality, his toadying to dictators and shunning of American allies, and his unpardonable effort to steal an election should more than offset his economic record. The old saw that Mussolini got the trains to run on time should not be understood as an endorsement.

But it is one thing to loathe Mr. Trump and hope for his defeat. It is another to wish away his successes or, as has become common, to ascribe his popularity to voter prejudices or weaknesses of character. The leitmotif in such arguments is that blue voters are rational political actors voting on merit while Trump is appealing primarily, if not exclusively, to irrational semi-citizens devoid of even self-interested calculation.

That might be. But it can't be ignored that they might also have experienced the pointed rise, after adjusting for inflation, in median household incomes how the typical family lives during the Trump years prior to the pandemic: 10.5 percent from 2016 to 2019. And inequality contracted noticeably. Thus, the 2020 Federal Reserve Survey of Consumer Finances on (roughly) the Trump era: "In grouping families by wealth, families at the top of the distribution experienced a sharp decline in average income (following particularly outsized gains over the 2010-16 period), whereas families in the lower and middle portions of the wealth distribution all saw modest gains. ".

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This is not to say that Mr. Trump's policies caused inequality to fall (a complicated question) or were responsible for most of the economy's improvement. While his tax cuts were a stimulant, his tariffs on imported steel, a signature policy, probably cost the country more jobs in manufacturing than it gained in steel, and at great expense to American consumers.

And modern economies are not puppets dancing to a president's string; they are susceptible to many influences beyond the control of one official, even those of an Oval Office bully. Moreover, Mr. Trump inherited a strong tailwind; real median household income rose by almost 12 percent during the second term of his predecessor, Barack Obama. Mr. Trump was fortunate.

But voters aren't economists. They often judge presidents on the basis of coincident economic performance. Jimmy Carter had to deal with serious inflation and George H. W. Bush endured a recession; each was voted out. Mr. Bush's successor, Bill Clinton, reaped the recovery; he got four more years.

Mr. Biden inherited a tough hand: an economy upset by Covid and supply chain disruptions. Yet he presided over a return to growth and dodged a much-predicted recession (touch wood). Jobs came roaring back. Early last year, unemployment dipped below the prepandemic low of 3. 5 percent under Mr. Trump, and it remains a still-impressive 3. 7 percent.

Wage inequality is also contracting under Mr. Biden. I would argue that voters care less about inequality than pundits do. What they care most about is whether they are doing better.

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And this is where Mr. Biden has fallen short. Inflation has snatched away the gains from even a very strong labor market. Over Mr. Biden's first two years, as price hikes outran wages, real median household income fell 2. 7 percent. The census has yet to report median income for 2023, but given that real wages were up about 1 percent through November, the cumulative change in household median income, adjusted for inflation, over Mr. Biden's first three years is likely to be in the range of mildly negative to very mildly positive. In other words, in the all-important category of improving living standards, the country did not make progress.

This shows that jobs and output, while very important, are not the only economic indicators that matter. Inflation matters, too because high inflation taxes away prosperity. This is one area in which I think the president along with the Federal Reserve does bear some responsibility. He was warned by voices within his own party notably, Larry Summers that his first budget package, enacted nearly a year after the Covid recession had ended, was too big relative to the need. He went ahead and inflation in 2022 soared to 8 percent, a 40-year high.

While Mr. Biden is still a big deficit spender, the Fed has brought inflation down by more than half. Economic growth in the remainder of Mr. Biden's term may well contribute to rising living standards. I hope voters judge him on this improving picture. And I hope they take noneconomic factors into account, including Mr. Trump's continued refusal to acknowledge his defeat in 2020, which has poisoned the public square and eroded the civic fabric supporting the country's democracy. In a phrase, Mr. Trump is unfit for office.

That does not mean we should shrink from honestly assessing performance, including economic performance, under Mr. Trump as well as under Mr. Biden. Mr. Trump is so off-putting, many find it hard to evaluate him rationally, as we would anyone else. But it is right to do so, and we learn from having our eyes wide, not shut. And something Democrats should have learned by now condescending to Trump voters will not win many of them over.

"Mr. Biden inherited a tough hand: an economy upset by Covid and supply chain disruptions. ".

Hey, no kidding.

Trump's claim that Biden's remarkable Recovery is the result of "running on the fumes" of what he did is, of course, a preposterous lie. Trump's first couple of years was coasting on the fumes of what Obama-Biden handed him. He didn't even pass his one ineffectual economic legislation until the last working day of 2017. A year later that godawful legislation was presiding over fewer jobs with it than without it, skyrocketing increases in the deficit and a 20%+ Bear Market decline in the broad stock market.

By stark contrast, Biden and his Dems proposed and passed several pieces of historic and positive economic legislation beginning early in his first year and those were in the system and on the table throughout the Great Dem Recovery and Historic Jobs Creation.

Also, the same typically pro Repub Mainstream Media that allowed Larry Summers and others to muse blithely and idiotically about Biden and the Dems not nailing the precise amount of stimulus to the dime necessary to recover the world from Trump's Pandemic with zero assurance that the historic, unprecedented health and economic set backs from it were truly over and while all previous electoral midterm patterns strongly suggesting there would be one and only one year to get it done also allowed Trump to lie for every year since that his Pandemic was simply something that "happened out of the blue" to the poor feller when the verifiable facts show his Classic Disastrous Repub economic and national security policies and stewardship over three years contributed more to producing Trump's Pandemic than any other human being on the planet.

And, as a Classic Repub, Trump would lay the groundwork for and blunder us into the next Great, Unprecedented, "Once in 100 Years" Repub Economic Disaster again ASAP, early and often.

That said, bear in mind polls can only telling us what poll respondents "say" to pollsters about how they feel. They can not tell us how they really feel. Voting results tell us how they really feel. And on that count, since 2020 voters have been telling us they definitely trust and believe Biden and the Dems "handle the economy better" than Repubs.

If anything, the greatest political risk for Biden and the Dems in 2024 is that their economic recovery and jobs creation results were so good for so many Americans that they are now free to fall for the usual sucker social issues and empty, jingoistic clap trap that Repub con men have had to run on instead of their disastrous economic and national security results since at least Nixon.

[MarquisdeSade1]

They cheated in 2020 now they figure they can't cover the differential this time.

So Scumbag Joe is planning to stay even after losing a 2nd time even if he has to use the Pentagon to protect him.

https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2...-if-reelected/

Who is a threat to democracy?

No surprise Zuckerturd built that bunker.

https://www.breitbart.com/tech/2023/...ground-bunker/