Trumped 202

[Doc Holliday]

Voting for Trump through gritted teeth

Even red-state Republicans in the Electoral College are uncomfortable with the man they’ll have to support.

By Kyle Cheney, Politico

Peter Greathouse, a Republican from Utah, says he’s not “comfortable” with Donald Trump as his party’s nominee. Jane Lynch, a GOP veteran from Arizona, says she’ll likely cast her personal vote for libertarian Gary Johnson or a write-in candidate. Loren Byers, a Texas Republican, calls Trump “a loose cannon.”

Their critiques rank as mild in this polarized election year – until you consider who they are. All three are members of the Electoral College, and if Trump wins their states in November, they’ll be asked to cast the formal ballots that could make him president.

Interviews with Republican members of the Electoral College – all from the red states Trump has his best chance of winning – reveal that the divisions that have wracked the GOP for months have also reached this oft-overlooked body with the ultimate authority to decide the election.

All of the members contacted by POLITICO – including Greathouse, Lynch and Byers – insisted they would cast their electoral vote for Trump if he prevailed in their state. (They’d disenfranchise millions of voters and risk a Constitutional crisis if they didn’t.) But most indicated they would do so through gritted teeth – if only to reject Hillary Clinton or to uphold oaths they took to their party.

“You hold your nose and do some things,” said Jim Skaggs, a Kentucky GOP elector, who said he would cast his electoral vote for Trump but may stay home on Election Day. “Neither one of them give a damn about the voters of Kentucky. They’re here to get elected.”

Several GOP electors refused to say who they’d cast their personal ballot for on Election Day. Others committed to voting for a third party or write-in candidate – if they vote at all – even though they committed to support Trump with their electoral votes.

“I don’t like the fact that I’m going to do this,” said Lynch, the Arizona elector, of committing her electoral vote to Trump. Lynch, who has attended eight national Republican conventions and supported Ronald Reagan over Gerald Ford in 1976, noted that there’s an increasing likelihood that Trump will lose her state to Hillary Clinton, which means a separate set of Democratic electors would be tapped instead.


Voting for Trump through gritted teeth

Doc Holliday says: "The Trump candidacy is sinking & sinking fast! Only the Titanic sank quicker!"

 

[Doc Holliday]

I need to get something off my chest.....

Sean Hannity. What a fucking dick.

There! I feel much better now!

 

[cloudsurf]

Why do country stars overwhelming support Trump?
Is there something in the air besides cow manure and chicken shit.

 

[westwoody]

What is Trump's rationale for refusing to release his tax returns?

He must realise it is hurting him, right or wrong. Even if he did release them now his refusal will continue to be an issue.

 

[Doc Holliday]

Why do country stars overwhelming support Trump?
Is there something in the air besides cow manure and chicken shit.

It's not complicated. They're white & from the deep south. Just like NASCAR drivers.

 

[Doc Holliday]

What is Trump's rationale for refusing to release his tax returns?

His rationale is that he's got a lot of skeletons in the closet which he doesn't want people to find out. He's likely not worth as much as he claims. That's almost a fact. He likely doesn't give as much to charity as he boasts. He likely has dealings with questionable governments/rogue countries. He also may not have paid much taxes. Or all of the above.

Donald Trump will never release his taxes, although he once promised to (when he didn't believe he'd ever win the GOP nomination). He doesn't want people to realize how much of a scumbag he is if they ever wind up seeing his income tax statements. He's deeply hurting the Republican party and it's likely already too late for the GOP to ever unite. Once Trump loses, his followers will leave the party and follow him as a non-existent third party. The Trump Party. And when you think about it, the Trump Party was already in motion at the recent GOP convention. The only Republican speaker at the party was Ted Cruz, and we know how it turned out. The rest were Trump cronies and Trump kids.

 

[Passionné]

They're white & from the deep south.

Because they're white Southerners?????????????????????????????????????????? C'mon. Then how is Trump in trouble in Florida, North Carolina, and Virginia and probably with less than the usual Red State support elsewhere. They're often very Conservative, Evangelicals, anti-government, anti-taxes, and a lot of other things that put them against Clinton. I'm sure they feel as STUCK with Trump that many others feel.

What is Trump's rationale for refusing to release his tax returns?

As I posted before, strong indications show Trump may have not paid taxes at all for many years out of the last 30. The last 5 years for certain, and 2 or 3 more years that can be proven. It's simply a bigger embarrassment not to have paid than to fail to report. As we know Trump it my only be he doesn't have a rationale and simply refuses to.

Voting for Trump through gritted teeth

Even red-state Republicans in the Electoral College are uncomfortable with the man they’ll have to support.

Interviews with Republican members of the Electoral College – all from the red states Trump has his best chance of winning – reveal that the divisions that have wracked the GOP for months have also reached this oft-overlooked body with the ultimate authority to decide the election.

Many people don't understand it's not "We The People" who have the final vote, it's the electors apportioned to the number of people in each state. It's very rare when an elector goes against the state voters choice but it happens. I've heard as many as 2 electors nationally have not gone as their state voted in one election but no election this century has been that close. But it is interesting and illuminating how the Republican electors have such doubts about Trump.

As for Clinton's lead in New York, the state along with California, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Maryland, Oregon, and Washington are among the most BLUE of all states. So it's not very telling when Clinton has a wide lead in New York, except that Trump's support is even worse than it was for Romney and McCain.

Poll: Clinton Maintains Big Lead as Voters Doubt Trump's Temperament

http://www.nbcnews.com/politics/fir...n-has-owned-airwaves-general-election-n631706

The gist of this is voter believe Trump is slightly more honest, but far more unstable. A kook is more honest about what they think but still a kook in the first place.

 

[PopeDover]

It's not complicated. They're white & from the deep south. Just like NASCAR drivers.

Bigotry simplifies everything

 

[Doc Holliday]

Trump shakes up campaign team

Trump critics scoff at campaign shuffle

Republicans and Democrats alike dismiss the idea that Trump will change — 'Trump is Trump.'

By Nick Gass, Politico

Donald Trump’s critics on both sides of the aisle scoffed at the shakeup of his top aides, arguing the Manhattan businessman needs to take a long, hard look in the mirror to figure out the root cause of his woes.

For weeks, Trump has been hit with tanking poll numbers, distracted by political opponents not named Hillary Clinton and staring down the distinct possibility that his last 14 months could all have been for naught. With Stephen Bannon, the brash and bare-knuckled executive of Breitbart News, coming on as Trump's campaign CEO and chief pollster Kellyanne Conway boosted to the role of campaign manager, the Manhattan businessman vowed to "do whatever it takes to win this election."

The announcement came hours after a well-received policy speech in Wisconsin in which he trained his "law and order" message onto the ongoing unrest in the Milwaukee area following another police-involved shooting, while accusing Clinton and the Democratic Party of "bigotry" toward African-Americans. And, as the Trump campaign blasted out in an early-morning announcement email, the move comes as he rolls out his first general election TV ads later this week, promising "additional top-flight operatives joining the movement on a near-daily basis."

Noted Never Trump critic Bill Kristol mocked the notion that Trump's gambit would pay off in the long run.

"I don’t think it matters because the problem is Donald Trump," the Weekly Standard editor told MSNBC's "Morning Joe." "You know, his unfavorable rating has been consistently too high to win a presidential election. Hillary Clinton’s, you would normally say is too high, but it’s about 10 points lower than Trump’s."

In an ordinary election where a candidate from the party of the incumbent president is treading water in terms of public approval, Republicans would generally be ahead at this point, Kristol said, while acknowledging that he could still see Trump ultimately prevailing.

Mike Murphy, the former head of Jeb Bush’s super PAC, said he was “dubious” the shakeup means Trump’s serious about changing his ways.

“You know, we've been through a couple of these. And we've got plenty of time left,” Murphy said on MSNBC. “Could Trump change? Maybe. But he's Trump. It's unlikely. Like, my Labrador could walk up to the piano and start playing. Not going to bet on it. Trump is Trump."

Paul Begala, the senior adviser to the pro-Clinton super PAC Priorities USA, also said the campaign can shuffle around advisers all it wants — it won’t make such of a difference.

"It's the candidate, stupid," Begala remarked, borrowing a phrase from Bill Clinton's 1992 campaign, on which he served as chief strategist.

Begala also compared Trump's moves to rearranging the deck chairs on the fated Titanic.

And given the Breitbart's reputation for viciously attacking the Republican establishment, there are concerns on Capitol Hill and beyond that Trump’s decision to hire Bannon may turn off some GOP allies once and for all. The grief was already starting to emerge on Wednesday, with one senior Republican aide told POLITICO, “If the underlying thinking with the move is to better enable Donald being Donald, he is toast."

House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.), who has drawn no shortage of negative coverage from Breitbart, has remained silent so far. But Ryan spokesman Brendan Buck suggested Wednesday that he, if not his boss, were barely holding their tongues.

“I have shelved so many hot takes this morning I can’t even tell you,” Buck tweeted.


Trump campaign team shuffle

Doc Holliday says: "I agree with most of the critics that the shake-up won't help the candidate much. Trump is the problem, and Trump is and will always be Trump. His unlikeability numbers are so high that he doesn't stand a chance of getting elected. None of the blacks will vote for him, the large majority of women won't vote for him, the majority of hispanics won't vote for him, and only 20% of white voters under the age of 35 will vote for him. All he has left are white middle-class men over the age of 35, the bigots and the racists from the deep south. It's not a winning formula.

It also wouldn't surprise me to learn that Paul Manafort was the one who asked to leave the campaign and not the other way around. Trump's insistence on hiring the serial sexual predator and former Fox News chief Roger Ailes might have been the last straw. There had been rumblings for the past couple of weeks that Trump campaign officials had grown exasperated with Trump and were getting tired of working for a failing campaign that was looking more and more like it had no chance to win. In other words, Trump was out of control and why should they bother to stay on if they could no longer control him and his sinking ship?"

 

[Doc Holliday]

Oh please!!!!!

There's a statue of a nude Donald Trump that showed up in Union Square today......not very flattering, i may say:

Nude statue of Donald Trump

 

[cloudsurf]

Pretty large for a clit....must be on steroids.

 

[Doc Holliday]

Pretty large for a clit....must be on steroids.

Well, you know what they say about men with small hands....

 

[Passionné]

I hear Stephen Bannon has been a big conspiracy theories promoter. Just what T'Dump needs, someone feeding him conspiracy scenarios to encourage him to go off even more on utterly crazy comments.

The naked statue of Trump is priceless. If you look carefully it seems he pissed down his own left leg. Fits how he's pissed all over himself in this campaign.

New polls currently show Clinton already has enough electors to win the election, and that's not counting the swing states.

Right now polls show Donald Trump losing every single swing state

http://www.vox.com/2016/8/15/12455240/donald-trump-polls-today

Donald Trump’s post-convention collapse has hurt him in the polls across the country. But it’s really hurt his numbers in some crucial swing states in particular — states that would be enough to give Hillary Clinton an Electoral College majority.


Now Trump is trailing in an average of post-convention poll results for every swing state from the past two cycles. That includes, of course, the traditional powerhouses of Florida and Ohio, where Clinton has taken single-digit leads.


But there are six states that have moved especiallydramatically in Clinton’s direction.


Four of these — Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and New Hampshire — have pretty consistently supported Democratic presidential candidates for decades, and are returning to old form despite speculation that Trump could put them in play this year.


There are another two — Virginia and Colorado — that appear to have transformed. They were solid Republican states in presidential years as recently as 2004. But Barack Obama won them twice, and Clinton is now leading in both by very comfortable double-digit margins.


If those six swing state leads hold up, they’ll be enough to give Clinton the presidency even if the national race tightens enough to let Trump win the old standbys of Ohio and Florida.

Clinton currently has very large leads in enough states to give her the presidency

Clinton starts off with a bloc of 201 votes or so that have always seemed to solidly be in her column (give or take one electoral vote from Maine’s second congressional district).


But then there’s a set of six more states where, since the convention, she’s consistently run up really big polling leads — 9 points or above, on average. So if she adds just those six states to her bloc and nothing else, she’ll win 273 electoral votes and therefore the presidency.

 

[Doc Holliday]

Paul Manafort resigns as Trump campaign chairman

I knew the claim he was staying on was just a sham. There's no way he would have stayed on knowing fully well he was being pushed away to make way for the likes of Steve Bannon, who heads one of the most radical right wing websites out there. Bannon has attacked the GOP as much as he's attacked Democrats. He has constantly attacked speaker Paul Ryan and went out of his way to attempt to make him lose his recent re-election in Wisconsin by backing a rival candidate. The GOP are not very happy at his hiring and neither are they happy with the recent hiring of serial sex predator and fallen Fox News creator Roger Ailes as an advisor. The optics are not very good considering Bannon is even more of a mysogyst than Trump ever will be, and Ailes' long history of sexually harassing women.

Expect the personal attacks against the Clinton family to increase and don't be surprised if the bigotry and racism increases. This is mind-boggling considering Trump needs to lure various demographic groups into his camps such as women, blacks, hispanics and others. Right now, only 20% of college/university-educated voters under the age of 35 are supporting him. The blacks are under 1%, something never seen in US politics. Only a small minority of women will vote for The Donald and the majority of hispanics will vote for anyone but Trump. Hiring the likes of Steve Bannon and Roger Ailes doesn't cut it. Neither will it impress women, blacks and hispanics.

Only the HMS Titanic sank quicker than The Donald's campaign. But what can i say? Trump didn't like the way he was told to behave and wanted someone more like him: racist, bigoted and mysogynist. Steve Bannon fits the bill perfection and will continue to expand the Trump message: more lies, more vitriol, more racist and bigoted statements....and more attacks towards women. Sad.

 

[Sol Tee Nutz]

I realize that there are many bad things to say about either of these two politicians but is there anything good to say about either of them. Even a short list if that is possible.

 

[cloudsurf]

Question is did Manafort resign because he is unhappy with the new team and direction of campaign .... or was he forced out because more embarrassing details of his Russian connection will be coming out soon.

 

[Passionné]

is there anything good to say about either of them. Even a short list if that is possible.

The following is true if you leave out your strong disagreement with or hate of her.

Clinton is stable and very rational.

She knows how to recognize good advice, listen, and learn from it.

She's got to be very skilled at handling herself in the face of endless serious attacks on her.

She's highly intelligent for the same reasons.

*** In one poll I saw people had a lot of negative things to say about Clinton as they did Trump. But the major difference was they all said he's very temperamental, scary, and DANGEROUS.

Personally, I buy she made big mistakes. Otherwise, those mistakes have been greatly exaggerated solely for political purposes. The email server stuff for instance, she has been excoriated for having a private server, neither G.W Bush or Jeb Bush have gotten a wiff of crap over theirs.

There's a lot anyone can say justifiably about Clinton's faults. However, there's a lot of people who obviously buy everything hook, line, and sinker the Republican smear machine puts out like drooling dogs, largely for hate's sake alone. On Benghazi especially. Presidents, cabinet members, and legislators make policy. How the situation actually gets carried out is not under their tactical control in the field at all. For example the Killing of Bin Laden. Obama said GO! After that everything is up to soldiers and commanders in the field doing the work. Failure or success is up to them. If every act was run by the President then FDR would be the greatest military commander ever. In case you missed it, he wasn't.

Cheers,

 

[Doc Holliday]

Question is did Manafort resign because he is unhappy with the new team and direction of campaign .... or was he forced out because more embarrassing details of his Russian connection will be coming out soon.

I doubt it could get any worse than the public finding out the pro-Putin former PM of Ukraine had been paying him millions of $$ as an 'advisor' to his government.

My guess is that there was no longer any room for him on the Trump rollercoaster once radical right winger Steve Bannon was hired to head the campaign. There were also grumblings today coming from the
Trump camp that he was actually forced out because Trump didn't like the fact Manafort spent weekends at his home on Martha's Vineyard.

There's no doubt the Trump side would prefer denying Manafort ditched them and would rather imply they forced him out. Expect more attacks from the Trump camp towards Manafort.

With Steve Bannon now running the clown show, it would't surprise me to see former KKK grand wizzard David Duke join the campaign.

p.s. What's with Trump recently addressing african americans at his rallies with nearly zero blacks in attendance?

 

[Doc Holliday]

GOP insiders: Trump's overhaul won't succeed

Roughly a third of Republican respondents say the addition of Bannon and promotion of Conway will make things worse.

By Steven Shepard, Politico

Donald Trump says this week’s dramatic campaign overhaul will put his presidential bid on the right path, but GOP leaders in key battleground states aren’t buying it.

Fewer than a third of Republican members of The POLITICO Caucus — a panel of activists, strategists and operatives in 11 key battleground states — believe Trump’s reshuffling will move the campaign in the right direction. Just as many, 31 percent, say the installation of Breitbart News executive Stephen Bannon as campaign CEO and pollster Kellyanne Conway as campaign manager, represent a turn for the worse.

“There is no way to right this ship,” said one New Hampshire Republican — who, like all respondents, completed the survey anonymously. “Changes in top staff this late in the game are always a sign that the campaign and candidate recognize that they are lost. In this case, they have gone from bad to worse. Campaigns do not need ‘CEOs,’ and pollsters are not qualified to manage presidential efforts. He is in a constant cycle of moving from one set of ‘yes men’ to another.”

Nearly a half-dozen GOP insiders compared the changes to “rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic” — a reference to Trump’s significant deficit in the polls.

A Virginia Republican made a similar analogy: “You can keep moving people in and out of the car, but so long as the drunk guy is driving it while blindfolded, the ride probably isn't going to get any smoother.”

In fact, a slight plurality of Republicans, 37 percent, said they weren’t sure whether the changes would move the campaign in the right or wrong directions. For most of those insiders, Trump’s difficulties begin and end at the top.

“The problem was never the organization, or obvious lack thereof. The problem has always been Donald,” said an Iowa Republican. “He lost the election the day he descended down the escalator. There is no pivot, no second act, and no path to the presidency that runs down the road of racism and incendiary intolerance. He chose that road when he chose birtherism, and it's a one-way route to ruin. How fitting that that final word associated with Trump, after all, will be ‘loser.’ ”

“No matter who he hires,” a Florida Republican added, “his Inner Voice runs the show.”

But some Republican insiders praised the moves. A North Carolina Republican called Bannon “a bomb-thrower” but with “good aim.”

“Installing a guy at the top whose motto is ‘Honey Badger don't give a f---’ won’t do much to reassure donors and establishment Republicans,” the Republican said. “But we’re way past that now. [Bannon] is an unconventional pick — but for this most unconventional of candidates, it makes sense.”

GOP insiders don't believe anything will change with Trump

Doc Holliday says: "I believe things will only get worse considering who's now leading the campaign. Paul Manafort wasn't perfect and had his faults, but at least he had a lot of experience running political campaigns. And things won't change because Trump is Trump, will always be Trump, and he's largely been the big problem with the entire campaign. The ship is sinking and sinking faster.

 

[Passionné]

TRUMP'S INTEREST IN THE PRESIDENCY REVEALED?

Complex heavy debts of at least $2.65 billion could be resolved by Presidential appointments.

Trump’s Empire: A Maze of Debts and Opaque Ties

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/21/us/politics/donald-trump-debt.html

On the campaign trail, Donald J. Trump, the Republican presidential nominee, has sold himself as a businessman who has made billions of dollars and is beholden to no one.

But an investigation by The New York Times into the financial maze of Mr. Trump’s real estate holdings in the United States reveals that companies he owns have at least $650 million in debt — twice the amount that can be gleaned from public filings he has made as part of his bid for the White House. The Times’s inquiry also found that Mr. Trump’s fortunes depend deeply on a wide array of financial backers, including one he has cited in attacks during his campaign.

continued...

As president, Mr. Trump would have substantial sway over monetary and tax policy, as well as the power to make appointments that would directly affect his own financial empire. He would also wield influence over legislative issues that could have a significant impact on his net worth, and would have official dealings with countries in which he has business interests.

continued...

Beyond finding that companies owned by Mr. Trump had debts of at least $650 million, The Times discovered that a substantial portion of his wealth is tied up in three passive partnerships that owe an additional $2 billion to a string of lenders, including those that hold the loan on the Avenue of the Americas building. If those loans were to go into default, Mr. Trump might not be held personally liable, but the value of his investments would sink.

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