Trump Goes Ape Over the Obamas

This is a picture of Barack and Michelle Obama. 

A lot of people have been posting pictures of the Obamas over the weekend.  And I am posting on here on my blog.  We're posting such pictures to get back at Donald Trump for posting an unfunny, inappropriate, just plain sick video meme showing the Obamas as apes in the jungle.  Which he did for . . . no apparent reason.

Well, actually, I think there was a reason.  Trump is tanking in the polls so badly that even his supporters are abandoning him.  The economy is tanking.  American arrogance toward the rest of the planet, long a leitmotif of U.S. foreign policy, has become officially enshrined as doctrine by Trump with the blessing of Marco Rubio's State Department.  ICE is committing crimes against humanity and getting away with it.  MAGA acolytes are still waking free despite their mentions in the Epstein files - and Trump is mentioned in them at least 38,000 times.  All Trump had to do to regain his base, or so he figured, was to remind supporters whom they hate more than anyone else - black people.

What Trump forgot, apparently, was that while all racists are Trump supporters, not all Trump supporters are racist.  And while non-racist Trump supporters may have disliked Trump's bigotry but still voted for him because their dislike for the Democrats was even greater, this stunt was too much for them to bear.

Which is unfortunate, because Trump's previous racist social-media stunts - not to mention his racist  policies, his racist statements, and his racist behavior, as well as his chief of staff Susie Wiles' racist attitude (she said that a mixed-race First Couple, as Kamala Harris and Doug Emhoff would have been had Harris won the 2024 election, was "too much" for some people) - should have soured non-racist Trump supporters on the MAGA movement long ago.  The mainstream media are framing the reaction to the Obamas video meme from Republicans in Congress as a sign that Trump has gone too far this time.  Oh, really - after Trump had gone too far too many times to count, they're suddenly offended now?  Representative Mike Lawler (R-NY) expressed his disgust over the Obamas video meme and added that, since Trump took the meme down (but not before Trump-haters took screenshots of the evidence), we should just move on from it and go forward.  But go forward to what? A video meme from Trump depicting the Obama sisters as a chained pair of orangutangs?  (I know, I shouldn't give Trump ideas - but if I could think of something so offensive, Trump may be able to think of something far more so.)  Senator Tim Scott (R-SC), who is black, said he is appalled by Trump's racism.  Even though Scott once said that America is not a racist country and apparently never noticed Trump's previous racism . . . or never noticed the racism of other Republicans, such as when ancient white woman and U.S. Representative Virginia Foxx (R-NC) once told black ABC-TV reporter Rachel Scott (no relation to Tim) to "shut up" after Rachel Scott asked a question that Foxx didn't like. 

Trump supporters who say they now have seen the light and do not support him anymore in fact have thrice voted for Trump and had simply preferred to overlook his bigotry and his other unsavory qualities.  Vote for him once, in 2016?  Okay, Hillary Clinton was no prize, and no one knew how Trump would fare as Chief Executive.  Vote for him a second time, in 2020?  Okay, Trump made a lot of unforced errors handling COVID, but so did other countries, like Sweden, the failing economy wasn't his fault, and not even President Martin O'Malley - 😉 - could have handled the pandemic without a few stumbles, though he, Hillary Clinton, or Bernie Sanders certainly would have done better.  But vote for Trump again in 2024 - after all of the top-secret files he took back to Florida, after he was convicted for business fraud, after he was indicted for election interference in Georgia, after all of the continuing racism - and after January freakin' Sixth??  Now you're appalled by him?  

Another reason  these Trump supporters are deserting him is because his policies didn't personally affect them in any adverse way.  It's like the independent feminist women who supported President Ronald Reagan's re-election in 1984, which John Belushi's brother Jim parodied with a "Saturday Night Live" white woman's rap he wrote for a skit - "I'm liberated, I joined NOW, I voted for Reagan anyhow, because his tax and budget cuts will hurt other people - but not us!"

I don't doubt the sincerity of those who voted for Trump and say they turned against him because of his racist attitudes.  But another reason they turned against him is because Trump's tax and budget cuts, which had hurt other people, now hurt them.  And Trump supporters who are racist are deserting him for that reason alone.  I wouldn't buy a used car from any of them.  But then they probably would only have a used SUV to sell anyway. 

The Plot Begins To Unravel

Nikki Haley is treating her second-place finish in New Hampshire as a victory of sorts, and she may have a point.  Although she lost New Hampshire by eleven percentage points, exit polls show that a majority of those who voted in the primary would not vote for Donald Trump in a general election matchup with Joe Biden and that Haley would do better against Biden with Republicans and independents than Trump.

Biden may be doing better against Trump and is doing very well among independents,  Recent polls show that, although his approval rating is still nothing to write home about, he actually beats Trump handily in New Hampshire and now has an edge in recent polling in Pennsylvania.

And Trump sees the handwriting on the wall that is closing in on him.  When Haley presented a cool, calm, collected persona in her sort-of-victory speech and declared that the campaign has just begun, Trump responded with the least gracious victory statement ever committed to video, thanking Haley's fellow South Carolinian Tim Scott for his endorsement  by saying that Scott must really hate Haley, who appointed Scott to his seat to complete an an unexpired term.

An embarrassed Scott quickly went up to him and said, "No, I just love you!"

No one's buying it.

Ladies and gentlemen, we have here a bromance made a few feet below heaven.

Trump must be getting desperate because not only is he saying things like "We are an institute in a powerful death penalty" and "And my cream pie kitty ate an Armenian zapato con queso dipped in chocolate syrup" (I made up one of those - can you guess which one Trump actually said?), he's wearing more bronzer in the most pathetic attempt to look youthful and vigorous since Democratic presidential candidate Alan Cranston dyed what was left of his hair in 1984.  

Increasingly, Trump's last hope is that third-party candidates siphon enough votes away from Joe Biden (and I'll get to that later). 

By the way, what's the difference between Gene Simmons and Donald Trump? One is a sexist vulgarian who wears face paint in public and entertains white-trash audiences in big arenas. The other is a heavy-metal bass player.  😛  

And Nikki Haley is right when she says that New Hampshire is not the end of the presidential nomination process.  That would be New Jersey.  😛

The Carroll case?  I'll address that in a separate post.

Taking His Hardball and Going Home

Last week, I wrote on this blog that it was time for MSNBC's Chris Matthews to retire after he compared Bernie Bros to the Wehrmacht.  This past Monday, he did just that.  I'm glad to see that Matthews discovered my blog and took my advice.

Okay, Matthews, whom I've always had a love-hate attitude toward, likely never even saw my blog, unless he Googled himself and went through all 170 million results.  But he did in fact retire, thanks not only to his Sanders gaffe but also for a bunch of comments he made to women.  This past Friday, he had to deal with a magazine GQ column from journalist Laura Bassett, who charged that Matthews complimented her appearance by rhetorically asking, "Why haven’t I fallen in love with you yet?"  At a cocktail party from a single man, that comment might have been appropriate.  But when the supposedly happily married Matthews made that comment to Bassett  just before a televised discussion with her about sexual-assault allegations against Trump . . . uh, yeah, that was more than a little awkward.  In fact, Bassett added for good measure that Matthews "has a pattern of making comments about women's appearances in demeaning ways."

For the record, Bassett is an attractive woman, but that's all I'll say about that.  I may have already said too much.

While all this was going on, Matthews mistook Jaime Harrison, a South Carolina Democrat running for the U.S. Senate there, with Republican U.S. Senator Tim Scott, also of South Carolina. Both men are black.  Both of them are also bald, but any fool can tell them apart.  Black people do not all look alike, of course, and Matthews' mistake would have been understandable if this had been a Julie Wolfe-Esmé Marshall situation (two models who look so much alike that when I met Julie Wolfe, I began to tell her that she looked like Esmé Marshall only to have Ms. Wolfe finish my sentence for me), or even if it were a Dom DeLuise-Chef Paul Prudhomme situation.  It was nothing of the sort.

So, on Monday night, after opening his show "Hardball," Matthews - who does not look like Dom DeLuise or Chef Paul Prudhomme - announced his retirement on the air.  And while he finished his sentences - especially the one about how it was time for a new generation more in step with the times to take over at MSNBC and the one about how he was sorry for his demeaning comments about women (none of which involve Julie Wolfe or Esmé Marshall) - he did not finish the hour of his show.  After "Hardball" returned from its first commercial break, Steve Kornacki was sitting in Matthews' place looking as stunned as everyone watching at home must have been.  And so an era ends.  We'll have to wait for a new era to begin; a rotation of different hosts - including, I suspect, the insufferable Joy Reid - will fill in the 7 PM Eastern hour until a permanent host can be found.

Perhaps we should have seen this coming. Maybe we should have known something was up when Matthews did not take part in MSNBC's coverage of the South Carolina primary this past Saturday, reducing the gaffe-machine squad to just Joe Biden (who urged people to support Jaime Harrison's presidential bid).

Sorry to see you go, Chris.  Well, not really, especially after that remark on Election Night 2012 about how you were glad we had Hurricane Sandy the week before because it brought about opportunities for good politics.

Hopefully, Joy Reid will follow Matthews out the door sooner or later, and maybe also Chuckles the Clown (also known as Chuck Todd).

Carolina In My Mind

History was made in South Carolina yesterday as the Republicans nominated Indian-American state representative Nikki Haley to run for governor and voters in the palmetto State's First Congressional District nominated Tim Scott, who is black, to be the Republican candidate for that seat in the fall. Scott would be the first black Republican congressman from South Carolina since Reconstruction and the first black Republican congressman since 2003. Both are likely to win in November.

As much as I want to praise South Carolina Republicans for looking beyond race, gender, and ethnicity in these primary elections, I choose to damn them instead. Haley and Scott won largely out of right-wing anger with Washington and the Obama administration. Haley, a wealthy businesswoman, and Scott, who had the backing of the anti-tax, Wall Street-friendly Club For Growth, both represent a philosophy that promotes an unfettered market and a limited role for government - the same ideology that got this country in trouble in the first place. To give you an idea of how toxic Haley and Scott could be, both were endorsed by noted book-banning wolf killer Sarah Palin. The end.

The Republican party in South Carolina has been redeemed by the star quality of its nominees, though, after the embarrassing revelations of last year involving Mark Sanford. It's now the state Democratic party - which somehow nominated a loser named Alvin Greene to take on the horrible incumbent Republican senator Jim DeMint and has less than zero chance of unseating him - that's the joke, and the less said about that, the better.

Meanwhile, next door in North Carolina, U.S. Senate hopeful Elaine Marshall, a favorite among progressives, defeated establishment candidate Cal Cunningham for the Democratic U.S. Senate nomination. This should be a big deal. Marshall did what Bill Halter couldn't do in Arkansas - defeat a Senate candidate backed by the White House. She's running in November against Richard Burr, a rather unpopular fellow, though probably not as unlikable as Jim DeMint, and one who holds a Senate seat that is a political graveyard for those who have held it in the past thirty-five years.

No one cares. No liberal commentators at MSNBC are celebrating this victory over establishment Democrats within the party. Even Ed Schultz hasn't mentioned it. As noted, Chuck Todd considers it such a long shot for the Democrats he'd rather not talk about it. But it proves that progressives are getting energized and are ready to put forward more of their own candidates. They've not only nominated Marshall to run for the Senate, in North Carolina, they've nominated Joe Sestak to do so in Pennsylvania. Two out of three ain't bad. And they pulled off their latest coup in a state where voters lean Republican but have shown a willingness to hear out Democrats. Ask Kay Hagan, North Carolina's Democratic senator. If this primary is any indication, the left is not going to let Tea Partiers suck up all the political oxygen.