In the past I would periodically have posts just to highlight really dumb things said by politicians. Once Donald Trump began running, he both overshadowed dumb comments from all other sources, and made so many that I couldn’t attempt to blog on them all. Today I heard a comment from a Republican other than Donald Trump which was so absurd that I couldn’t let it pass without a post. According to Alaska Public Radio, “Alaska Congressman Don Young argued against gun control by suggesting Jews might not have died in the Holocaust if they had been armed.”
This is an argument which conservatives have made in the past. Jonathan Greenblatt, National Director of the Anti-Defamation League, responded to this argument in 2016 after it was made by Ben Carson:
Guns or lack of them did not cause the Holocaust. The Holocaust was the product of anti-Semitism and the moral failure and indifference of humans.
It is mind-bending to suggest that personal firearms in the hands of the small number of Germany’s Jews (about 214,000 remaining in Germany in 1938) could have stopped the totalitarian onslaught of Nazi Germany when the armies of Poland, France, Belgium and numerous other countries were overwhelmed by the Third Reich.
Despite the overwhelming military force of the Nazi regime, there were thousands of brave civilians — Jewish and gentile — who indeed often resisted with every fiber of their being. Unfortunately, arming every European Jew would not have been enough to stop an evil force that was only overcome by the military might of the Allies.
Young also supports allowing teachers to carry firearms–not that many have any desire to do so.
In other political news today, Hope Hicks announced she is resigning the day after she admitted to telling white lies. If Hope Hicks is resigning after telling white lies, shouldn’t Donald Trump resign for telling really big lies?
A Pew Research Center survey shows what was expected after a campaign with the two most unpopular candidates in memory. Donald Trump is the least popular president-elect in modern history. Even George W. Bush, who like Trump failed to win the popular vote, received a 50 percent approval rating in a country which was divided 50:50. Trump is well below this with an approval of only 41 percent.
A majority also disapprove of his cabinet choices and appointments by a 51 percent to 40 percent margin. This is hardly surprising in light of appointments including Steve Bannon, Michael Flynn at NSA, Ben Carson at HUD, and Betsy DeVos at Education. It says something when one of his least objectionable choices is someone known as Mad Dog (James Mattis at Defense).
…many of the same doubts and concerns that voters expressed about Trump’s qualifications and temperament during the campaign are evident as he prepares to take office. Just 37% of the public views Trump as well-qualified; 32% of registered voters described Trump as well-qualified in October. Majorities continue to say Trump is reckless (65%) and has poor judgment (62%), while 68% describe him as “hard to like.”
In addition, more than half of the public (54%) says that Trump has done too little to distance himself from “white nationalist groups” who support him, while 31% say he has done the right amount to distance himself from such groups; 6% say he has done too much in this regard.
And despite all this, the Democrats managed to come up with a candidate who still managed to lose to Trump. There are many reasons why Clinton was such a terrible candidate, all of which were predictable. It also came as little surprise that Clinton ran such an awful campaign, concentrating on personal attacks and avoiding discussion of issues. As people saw Clinton as being as terrible a person as Trump, and were supplied with plenty of confirmation of this with her behavior during the campaign, personal attacks on Trump were not enough to win the election. Perhaps Clinton should have discussed major issues such as Medicare, which the voters had little knowledge of. Pew found:
Overall, only about half of the public (51%) has heard a lot (12%) or a little (39%) about a proposal to change Medicare to a program that would give future participants a credit toward purchasing private health insurance. About as many either have heard nothing (48%) or don’t know (1%).
Instead Clinton gave no reason to vote for her beyond her gender and it being her turn. This left the race as an unpopularity contest among two incredibly unpopular candidates.
One of the many strange aspects of this election has been how Donald Trump has won over the religious vote. While Trump never appeared to have much interest in religion in the past, Hillary Clinton is one of the most religious politicians in public life. She spent her years in the Senate working with The Fellowship, supporting an increased role for religion in public policy. However, while generally conservative on social and cultural issues, she fails the right wing litmus test on reproductive rights. This is clearly a far greater sin to the religious right than Donald Trump’s admitted abuse of women.
As I noted yesterday, the release of the tapes in which Trump discussed his abuse of women led to the condemnation from many Republicans, but at least one representative of the religious right did not alter his support for Trump: “One of Trump’s most prominent social-conservative supporters, Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council, told BuzzFeed’s Rosie Gray: ‘My personal support for Donald Trump has never been based upon shared values.'”
Buzzfeed found another representative of the religious right who continues to back Trump:
“Voters of faith are voting on issues like who will protect unborn life, defend religious freedom, create jobs, and oppose the Iran nuclear deal,” Faith and Freedom Coalition president Ralph Reed said in an email to BuzzFeed News. “Ten-year-old tapes of private conversation with a television talk show host rank very low on their hierarchy of concerns.”
Asked if he had any comment on the tape itself and if he was definitely standing by Trump, Reed said, “I think the statement is self explanatory.”
“Dr. Carson believes that people can change and be better,” Carson aide Armstrong Williams told BuzzFeed News in an interview. “You know, these things happen. I’m sure somebody could find a video of Bill Clinton talking like this — are we gonna say Bill Clinton was the same person as president that he is today? Obviously not.”
Armstrong continued, “People commit adultery. It happens. Ministers. Heads of state. Everyday people. People are human, they do human things. It’s nothing unusual that somebody committed adultery on their spouse. Women do it. Men do it. Should we be shocked by it? No.”
…He concluded the interview by saying, “Hey, the flesh can be weak, my man.”
While it is possible that Bill Clinton has also talked like this, it is worth remembering, as Buzzfeed pointed out, “Republicans frequently argued in the ’90s that Bill Clinton’s affair with Monica Lewinsky was disqualifying in part because presidents should be held to a higher moral standard.”
Several Republicans, including Senator Mike Lee of Utah and Jon Huntsman have called on Trump to drop out of the race. While this is unlikely to happen, I have previously posted some interesting links in this post on the ramifications of a candidate dropping out.
I think that Trump already had little chance of winning the election (unless something major happened which was favorable to him). The tape therefore probably won’t change the presidential election result. However it does put the entire GOP in a bigger hole. Previously it looked like the nomination of Clinton seriously hurt the chances for the Democrats to take control of the Senate. That might now be a possibility again.
The third night of the Republican Convention was supposed to feature vice presidential nominee (and possible future acting president) Mike Pence. Instead Ted Cruz stole the show by refusing to endorse Donald Trump. Cruz advised people to vote their conscience, which had become the the slogan of those at the convention who wanted to open up the nomination to vote for others. He was booed last night, but if Trump loses badly, he might also be in a position to look like the smart one in the party by November, in contrast to those who backed Trump.
Allowing Cruz to do this prior to Pence’s acceptance speech looks like another act of poor convention planning on Trump’s part–although he did turn the situation to his advantage in the convention hall by entering before Cruz finished speaking. If he was going to have Cruz speak, it might have made more sense to do it the first night (when Clinton is allowing Sanders to speak), or perhaps the second night when all sorts of wacko speeches were already being given.
Cruz also spoke a lot about freedom. Unfortunately he primarily supports the right of conservative Christians to impose their religious views on others.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q4umqsx7aUY
All the noise following Cruz’s speech distracted from Mike Pence’s speech (fact checking here) and as a result, even after last night not very many people know who Mike Pence is. Seth Meyers took a closer look at Pence in the video above.
It’s been a great week for gay escorts in Cleveland.
Male prostitutes contacted by The Post said business is booming and Republican National Convention attendees — most of them married — are clamoring for their services…
The clientele has included mostly married white men between the ages of 40 and 50, said another escort who’s seen eight johns so far…
“The Republicans have a lot of delegates in the closet, let’s put it that way.”
But ladies of the night weren’t reaping the same benefits.
When contacted by The Post, females for hire said they’re making much less money than normal.
Mark Cuban was initially pro-Trump, but has changes is mind. He joined Stephen Colbert in taking the gloves off to bash Donald Trump last night.
A new study to be published in a special 2016 election issue of PS: Political Science and Politics finds that reading Harry Potter books leads Americans to take a lower opinion of Donald Trump. In fact, the more books the participants read, the greater the effect…
“Because Trump’s political views are widely viewed as opposed to the values espoused in the Harry Potter series,” Mutz writes in the study, “exposure to the Potter series may play an influential role in influencing how Americans respond to Donald Trump.”
To test that explanation for the Harry Potter effect, Mutz focused on three core themes from Harry Potter: The value of tolerance and respect for difference; opposition to violence and punitiveness; and opposition to authoritarianism.
In each case, Mutz points out, Donald Trump’s messages are opposed to the lessons conveyed in Harry Potter and closer to that of his enemy, Lord Voldemort. Examples abound throughout the series:
Harry and his friends advocate for oppressed house-elves and oppose Lord Voldemort’s quest for blood purity among wizards. Harry himself is of mixed wizard/muggle (non-wizard) ancestry. Trump, by contrast, has called for a temporary moratorium on Muslim immigration and made offensive comments about outgroups of all kinds, including women, Mexicans, Asians, and those with disabilities.
The Harry Potter series promotes non-violent means of conflict resolution; while Voldemort is willing to kill many times, the books’ protagonists consistently avoid unnecessary curses for killing, torture, or controlling others. Harry even saves the life of his Voldemort-aligned nemesis, Draco Malfoy. Trump, by contrast, has spoken widely about his fondness for waterboarding, and advocates the killing of terrorists’ families as a means of deterrence. He has praised his followers’ acts of violence against protesters at his rallies.
The Harry Potter protagonists work against authoritarian characters in the books. “As does Voldemort,” Mutz writes, “Trump portrays himself as a strongman who can bend others to his will, be they the Chinese government or terrorists.”
…Mutz’s data also shows that each Harry Potter book read also raised a person’s evaluations of Muslims and homosexuals, two groups chosen to gauge the respondent’s tolerance and respect for difference. Harry Potter also appeared to encourage opposition to punitive policies — gauged by responses to questions about the use of torture, killing terrorists, and support for the death penalty — though the effect size was small.
But reading Harry Potter also engendered opposition to Trump in ways that surpassed the effect of these two themes.
“It may simply be too difficult for Harry Potter readers to ignore the similarities between Trump and the power-hungry Voldemort,” she writes.
Going into the final night of the convention, Donald Trump has also received a lot of criticism for his comments on foreign policy in an interview with The New York Times in which, once again, he shows how little interest he has in facts or details.
I other news, Michelle Obama played Carpool Karaoke with James Corden and, in followup of yesterday’s post, Roger Ailes has left Fox following the charges of sexual harassment. Apparently at News Corp you can get away with trying to screw American democracy, but not Megyn Kelley.
…according to the Kasich adviser (who spoke only under the condition that he not be named), Donald Jr. wanted to make him an offer nonetheless: Did he have any interest in being the most powerful vice president in history?
When Kasich’s adviser asked how this would be the case, Donald Jr. explained that his father’s vice president would be in charge of domestic and foreign policy.
Then what, the adviser asked, would Trump be in charge of?
“Making America great again” was the casual reply.
We don’t know how accurate this is or if the Trump camp made the same offer to Mike Pence, but it is consistent with how I think of Trump. I am not at all surprised that Trump would want to act out the role of President on television, and perhaps have the final say on some matters, but is not interested in the day to day hard work of the job. I’m not sure if this is good or bad. Presumably Pence would know better than to proceed with some of Trump’s strangest, and most unconstitutional, ideas. On the other hand, Pence is far more conservative in some areas where many question how conservative Trump really is, including social issues and foreign policy. It would be a good thing if Trump keeps Pence from meddling in matters such as abortion and gay rights, but there is no way to predict what will happen.
Trump’s convention entrance on Monday provided good material for the late night comics. Stephen Colbert used it inspire his entrance on the show last night.
Jimmy Fallon mocked the entrance, and then went on to give his version of Trump’s speech.
Stephen Colbert also had Melania Trump on to explain the plagiarism charges.
As the Republican Party dies on national television, the head of the voice of the GOP, Roger Ailes, is also in serious trouble. Megyn Kelley has joined other women at Fox in accusing Ailes of sexual harassment, and the Murdoch family clearly appears to be siding with Kelley and the others making the accusations. I have long considered Ailes to be far more responsible than Rupert Murdoch for the extreme partisanship of Fox, and as Murdoch’s children are taking an increasingly more significant role in News Corp, we might be seeing the end of Fox as we know it. There is also speculation that some of Fox’s biggest names (i.e. idiots) might leave if Ailes leaves.
Republicans are blaming President Obama for creating Donald Trump. While others say he was created in a lab when a young real estate developer was bitten by a radioactive douchebag. –Conan O’Brien
Bonus Quotes:
It was reported yesterday that an op-ed written by Donald Trump seems to have been blatantly plagiarized from an article written by Dr. Ben Carson days before. People first became suspicious when Trump’s op-ed began, “As a black doctor…” –Seth Meyers
The hacking group “Anonymous” has apparently declared war against Donald Trump. Of course, hacking him shouldn’t be hard, because if there’s anyone who just uses their name as their password, it’s Donald Trump. –Jimmy Fallon
At a rally over the weekend, Donald Trump was surrounded by Secret Service agents after a man tried to rush the stage. The Secret Service said the man was dangerous and disturbed, but they had to protect him anyway. –Jimmy Fallon
A new poll found that the majority of millennials would vote for Hillary Clinton over Donald Trump. Then millennials found out you can’t vote by texting and said, “Never mind!” –Jimmy Fallon
Clinton’s revisionist assertion — made at Nancy Reagan’s funeral last week — that the Reagans started a national dialogue about AIDS earned her zero points. Instead, Noah said, “The correct answer was any other combination of words.”
“There are so many nice things she could have said about Nancy Reagan, but for some reason she brought up the worst thing,” he continued. “Hillary, you need the LGBT community. They’re the people who started the discussion on AIDS. And because they’re active Democratic voters, they should be your natural ally.”
He also mocked Clinton for denying Bernie Sanders’ role in supporting health care reform in the 1990’s with a picture of Sanders literally standing right behind her, and for telling coal miners she would be putting them out of work, as opposed to saying they would be getting better jobs in renewable energy.
Saturday Night Live showed how Clinton panders to voters by pretending to be a progressive, often copying ideas from Bernie Sanders. She transformed into Sanders during the course of the mock commercial. It ends with, “I’m whoever you want me to be, and I approve this message.”
The cold open on Saturday Night Live began with a mock news report on Ben Carson’s endorsement of Donald Trump, but also included reaction from Larry David as Bernie Sanders. The skit mocked both Sanders and his supporters:
“I want to thank everyone who voted for me, and apologize to everyone else for making your Facebook feed so, so annoying,” Sanders says after CNN’s Jake Tapper (played by Beck Bennett) congratulates him.
“I mean, I love my supporters, but they’re too much, right?” he continues. “I’m great, but I’m not ‘five posts a day’ great. With all due respect to my supporters: Get a life.”
Tapper points out that, Facebook enthusiasm aside, Sanders is still trailing his rival Hillary Clinton, who’s got the advantage in both delegates and “mediocre” superdelegates.
“I have the voters,” Sanders assures Tapper in the clip. “My message is resonating with a very diverse group of white people. And I’ve got supporters of all ages — 18-year-olds, 19-year-olds… eh, that’s it.”
Previous visits by Larry David impersonating Bernie Sanders can be seen here, here and here.
An expanded version has been cross-posted at The Moderate Voice which includes several jokes from late night comics on the candidates, which have also been previously posted here.
The top moments of the last Republican debate were Ben Carson’s entrance and Marco Rubio’s robotic repetition of a single line, even after Chris Christie had already started mocking him for this. Stephen Colbert mocked all three Republicans in the video above.
It remains to be seen whether this will hurt Rubio in today’s New Hampshire primary but with the results in as I am posting this it looks like he will do at best third, and possibly worse. However, at the moment, he is leading Christie.
“Sarah Palin accused Ted Cruz of lying about Ben Carson and stealing the Iowa caucus. This is my favorite thing in politics, when people lie and cheat to get the evangelical Christian vote.” –Conan O’Brien
The number of presidential candidates should drop quickly now that voting has begun. It is not surprising that many of the candidates are waiting to see if they do better than the polls have predicted, which is reasonable considering how poorly polls often are at predicting primary results. Some of the more mainstream candidates are putting their hopes on New Hampshire. For other candidates, a loss in Iowa was enough to tell them that they had no chance.
On the Democratic side, Martin O’Malley announced that he is suspending his campaign while the Iowa caucus was in progress. It has been clear for months that O’Malley had no real chance with the conservative/establishment voters going for Clinton and the liberal/pro-insurgent voters going for Sanders. There was no middle lane for O’Malley, who certainly would be a far better choice than Clinton. He campaigned hard in Iowa, and there was no point in continuing once this failed to result in support at the caucuses. This leaves Bernie Sanders as the only liberal or progressive left in the race from either party.
For the Republicans, the Iowa caucus is the best shot for a candidate from the religious right to win, as Mike Huckabee and Rick Santorum have done in the past. Republicans this year are bucking their usual trend of backing the next in line, with Ted Cruz winning this year. Huckabee at least deserves credit for realizing there is no hope and not dragging it on any longer. I wonder how much longer Rick Santorum and Ben Carson will stay in the race.
Rand Paul dropped out today, realizing it made more sense to work at holding on to his Senate seat, especially when he is increasingly being excluded from the Republican debates. While I disagree with Paul on many things, I did like having Paul criticizing the other candidates for their conservative positions on military interventionism, civil liberties, and the drug war. For that matter, while he has done so at times, I also wish Bernie Sanders would do the same regarding Clinton’s views.
With Paul out, this leaves Sanders as the only candidate opposing unnecessary foreign intervention, the only candidate opposing the surveillance state and other restrictions on civil liberties, and the only candidate who opposes the drug war. By concentrating on economic issues, where he also differs substantially from all the remaining candidates, other issues are receiving too little attention this year.
Stephen Colbert did not do his usual segment on Hungry For Power Games last night, concentrating on the caucus instead. Now he has three candidates to mock tonight.
