“For His Next Trick, Trump Questions Clinton’s Religious Faith”: The Last Person Who Should Question Others’ Faith
Recently, most of Donald Trump’s offensive rants have focused on race and ethnicity, but not religion. Any chance he can pick up the slack and start making faith-based insults, too?
As it turns out, yes, he can.
Donald Trump questioned Hillary Clinton’s commitment to her Christian faith on Tuesday, saying that little is known about her spiritual life even though she’s been in the public eye for decades.
Speaking to a group of top social conservative evangelical Christian leaders at a gathering in New York City, Trump said, “we don’t know anything about Hillary in terms of religion.”
“Now, she’s been in the public eye for years and years, and yet there’s no – there’s nothing out there,” Trump said. “There’s like nothing out there. It’s going to be an extension of Obama but it’s going to be worse, because with Obama you had your guard up. With Hillary you don’t, and it’s going to be worse.”
As The Hill’s report noted, the behind-closed-doors meeting was not open to the public or to journalists, but one faith leader recorded Trump’s comments and posted them online.
The presumptive Republican presidential nominee added that the religious leaders in attendance should “pray for everyone, but what you really have to do is pray to get everybody out to vote for one specific person.”
Let’s unpack this a bit, because even by Trump standards, this is pretty amazing.
First, to suggest Americans “don’t know anything about” Hillary Clinton “in terms of religion” is absurd. The Democratic candidate has spoken about her Methodist faith many times, including lengthy comments about her views on Christianity and the Bible at an Iowa event earlier this year.
Second, I’d love to hear more about why, exactly, Trump and his like-minded friends had their “guard up” about President Obama’s faith. What is it, specifically, that led Trump and his allies to put their “guard up” about his religion?
Third, when Trump urged faith leaders to “pray to get everybody out to vote for one specific person,” he was approaching a potentially dangerous legal line. Under federal tax law, houses of worship and those responsible for tax-exempt ministries cannot legally intervene in political elections. Taking steps to have parishioners “vote for one specific person” is problematic.
And finally, of any political figure in America, Donald J. Trump is perhaps the last person who should be questioning others’ faith.
The GOP candidate’s clumsiness on matters of faith has been a point of concern for some conservative voters before, and last summer, the New York Republican refused to say which parts of Scripture are important to him, saying it was “private.” (Asked whether he’s drawn more to the New or Old Testaments, Trump said, “Both.”)
And now Mr. Two Corinthians wants to complain that “we don’t know anything about Hillary in terms of religion”? Seriously? I don’t expect much from Trump, but for him, there is no upside to picking this particular fight.
By: Steve Benen, The Maddow Blog, June 21, 2016
“The Carnage Will Continue…For Now”: This Is One Of Those Moments When It Is Tempting To Get Cynical
Sen. Chris Murphy’s filibuster was successful in pressuring Republicans to hold votes last night on whether or not to require background checks on all gun purchases and add terrorist suspects to the list of people who are barred from buying guns. But those measures failed to get the 60 votes in the Senate that are needed to pass.
In order to limit the damage voting against those common sense reforms will do in the upcoming election, Republicans offered their own versions of the bills to muddy the waters. In the end, the Senate voted on 4 amendments.
The Senate voted 47 to 53 to reject a measure from Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) to let the attorney general deny firearms and explosives to any suspected terrorists. Sen. Heidi Heitkamp of North Dakota was the sole Democrat to vote against the measure, while Republican Sens. Kelly Ayotte of New Hampshire and Mark Kirk of Illinois, both of whom face tough re-election contests, voted for it.
The Senate also rejected a Republican alternative from Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas), that would allow authorities to delay a gun sale to a terrorism suspect for three days or longer if a judge ruled during that time that there is probable cause to deny the firearm outright. The vote was 53 to 47, falling short of the 60 votes needed.
Two Democrats, Sens. Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Joe Donnelly of Indiana, backed the measure. But three Republicans – Sens. Jeff Flake of Arizona, Kirk and Susan Collins of Maine voted against Cornyn’s amendment…
The Senate also rejected, on a 44 to 56 vote, a measure from Sens. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.), Cory Booker (D-N.J.) and Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) that would expand background checks for anyone trying to purchase a firearm, including at a gun show or online…
Both Manchin and Toomey refused to back Murphy’s more expansive measure. Democratic Sens. Heitkamp and Jon Tester (D-Mont.) – who is also running the Senate Democrats’ campaign operation this year – also voted against Murphy’s proposal…
Most Republicans backed an alternative from Sen. Charles Grassley (R-Iowa) that would only increase funding for the government to run background checks without expanding them. It failed on a 53 to 47 vote, falling short of the 60 votes needed…
Republican Sens. Kirk and Cory Gardner (R-Colo.) voted against the proposal; Sen. Joe Donnelly (D-Ind.) voted for it.
Republicans offered an unworkable alternative to banning terrorist suspects from buying guns (Cornyn’s bill):
Democrats countered that the time limitations in Cornyn’s alternative would make it functionally impossible to actually prevent suspicious individuals from purchasing firearms.
They also voted for a measure that would increase funding to do background checks, but didn’t close the loophole of being able to purchase them without one at places like gun shows (Grassley’s bill). So even if the Republicans’ alternatives had passed – they would have accomplished nothing.
Meanwhile, they were able to keep the Democrats from passing their bills with assists from a few Democrats, including Senators Heitkamp, Manchin and Tester.
To put this is some perspective, yesterday CNN released a new poll showing that 92% of Americans favor a background check for any gun purchase and 85% support preventing people who are on the U.S. government’s Terrorist Watchlist or no-fly list from owning guns. A majority (54%) also support a ban on semi-automatic assault weapons as well as the sale and possession of equipment known as high-capacity or extended ammunition clips.
To be honest, what the Democrats offered yesterday in the Senate was pretty weak tea when it comes to gun safety measures. But they did so knowing that they had the overwhelming support of the American people. And still…Republicans obstructed.
This is one of those moments when it is tempting to get cynical. I suspect that is precisely what Republicans and the NRA are hoping for. When people give up – they score a permanent win. But this is when I remind myself of the years it took for women to get the right to vote and for the Civil Rights Movement to end Jim Crow. We have two choices at a moment like this: give up and allow the carnage to continue, or remain committed to the struggle and keep fighting.
By: Nancy LeTourneau, Political Animal Blog, The Washington Monthly, June 21, 2016
“At This Point, I Am Out Of States”: Trump’s Path Goes Through Michigan And Pennsylvania
Right up front, I want to provide the caveat that I don’t think presidential polls, even state rather than national ones, amount to a hill of beans this early in the process. Having said that, let’s take a look at what it would mean for the Electoral College if the latest Quinnipiac polls out of Florida, Ohio, and Pennsylvania are correct.
The polls show Clinton with a clear lead in Florida (47%-39%), but locked in ties in Ohio (40%-40%) and Pennsylvania (42%-41%).
So, let’s say that Florida is solidly blue at this point but suddenly Pennsylvania is winnable for Trump. Or, to be more precise, let’s look at what it would mean if Trump lost Florida but won in both Ohio and Pennsylvania.
For starters, Obama won in 2012 with 332 Electoral College votes to Mitt Romney’s 206. If we keep everything the same and award Ohio and Pennsylvania to Trump, the result is 294-244.
So, winning Ohio and Pennsylvania is a good start, but without Florida being a possibility, it’s hard to get from 244 to the 270 votes needed to win.
Let’s give Trump Virginia. That get’s him to a 257-281 deficit. New Hampshire gets him to 261-277.
I don’t feel like I can give Trump Iowa based on his poor performance there in the caucuses, but even if I did, he would still lose 267-271. At this point, I am out of states. I can’t see Trump doing well in Nevada or Colorado. He seems terribly weak in Wisconsin. The only remaining state out there that is theoretically ripe for Trump is Michigan.
So, if Trump can win Ohio and Pennsylvania and Virginia and New Hampshire and Michigan (but not Iowa). That gets him a 277-261 victory. In fact, in this scenario, he doesn’t even need New Hampshire.
This seems like his only path.
And it assumes that he won’t lose Arizona or North Carolina or Indiana or Georgia, or any other states that were carried by Romney. But, of course, John McCain lost North Carolina and Indiana to Obama, and Georgia and Arizona are going to be hotly contested this time around.
If Quinnipiac is correct and Florida isn’t even a swing state this time around, the path to Republican victory is very, very narrow. But it is at least discernible. Trump will need to go after Pennsylvania and Michigan with everything he’s got.
By: Martin Longman, Political Animal Blog, The Washington Monthly, June 21, 2016
“Trumpism Won’t Disappear When He Does”: In The End, Only One Thing Can Kill A Bad Idea
On Saturday, someone tried to kill Donald Trump.
You may not have heard about it. The story didn’t get much play, the attempt wasn’t well planned and the candidate was never in jeopardy.
Still the fact remains that authorities arrested one Michael Steven Sandford, 19, after he allegedly tried to grab a gun from the holster of a Las Vegas police officer with the idea of using it to kill Trump at a campaign rally. Authorities say Sandford, who carried a UK driver’s license but who had been living in New Jersey for about a year and a half, had visited a nearby gun range to learn how to handle a firearm. They say he has wanted to kill Trump for a year.
Let us be thankful he was not successful. The assassination of Donald Trump would have been a new low for a political season that is already the most dispiriting in memory. It would have deprived a family of its father and husband. It would have traumatized a nation where political murder has been a too-frequent tragedy.
And it would have imparted the moral authority of martyrdom to Trump’s ideas. That would be a disaster in its own right.
Like most would-be assassins, what Sandford apparently did not understand is that you cannot kill an idea with a bullet. Even bad ideas are impervious to gunfire.
Trump, of course, has been a veritable Vesuvius of bad ideas in the year since he took that escalator ride into the race for the presidency. From banning Muslim immigrants to building a wall on the southern border to punishing women who have abortions to advocating guns in nightclubs to judging judicial fitness based on heritage, to killing the wives and children of terror suspects, if there has been a hideous, unserious or flat-out stupid thought floated in this political season, odds are, it carried the Trump logo.
It is understandable, then, that even people who wish Trump no bodily harm might feel as Sandford presumably did: that if he were somehow just … gone, the stench of his ideas — of his anger, nativism, coarseness and proud ignorance — might somehow waft away like trash-fire smoke in a breeze.
But it doesn’t work that way. Martin Luther King’s dream of racial equality did not die on the balcony of the Lorraine Motel. Nor did Adolf Hitler’s dream of racial extermination perish with him in that bunker beneath Berlin. Ideas, both transcendent and repugnant, are far hardier than the fragile lives of the men and women who give them voice.
So, any hope that Trump’s disappearance would somehow fix America is naive. America’s problem has nothing to do with him, except to the degree he has made himself a focal point.
No, America’s problem is fear. Fear of economic stagnation, yes, and fear of terrorism. But those are proxies for the bigger and more fundamental fear: fear of demographic diminution, of losing the privileges and prerogatives that have always come with being straight, white, male and/or Christian in America. It was the holy quadfecta of entitlement, but that entitlement is under siege in a nation that grows more sexually, racially and religiously diverse with every sunrise.
Trumpism is only the loudest and most obvious response to that, and it will not disappear when he does. Indeed, there is no instant cure for what has America unsettled. There is only time and the hard work of change.
In a sense, we are bringing forth a new nation, conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men and women really are created equal. If for some of us, that fires the imagination, it is hardly mysterious that for others, it kindles a sense of displacement and loss. The good news is that their Trumpism cannot survive in the new nation.
In the end, you see, only one thing can kill a bad idea.
And that’s a better one.
By: Leonard Pitts, Jr., Columnist for The Miami Herald; The National Memo, June 22, 2016
“Will Trump Last The Election?”: Republicans Are On The Verge Of Nominating A Psychological Cripple
An ordinary sociopath would have known to pretend shock and sorrow after the terrible mass murders in Orlando. Shielded from ordinary human interaction by his arrogance and wealth, however, presumptive GOP nominee Donald Trump had no clue how to act. So he sent out an instinctive, self-serving reaction on Twitter:
“Appreciate the congrats for being right on radical Islamic terrorism, I don’t want congrats, I want toughness & vigilance. We must be smart!”
Meghan McCain, Arizona Sen. John McCain’s daughter, reacted incredulously: You’re congratulating yourself because 50 people are dead this morning in a horrific tragedy?”
Even more pointed was GOP consultant and TV talking-head Ana Navarro: “Translating Trump: ‘20 people [sic] are dead. 42 people are injured. But of course, 1st, it’s all about Me. Me. Me.’ Ugh.”
Both women spoke for millions. Is there no tragedy so grave, no sorrow so profound, that it can penetrate the hardened carapace of Donald Trump’s ego?
Clearly not. Unless polls showing a steep drop in Trump’s chances to win the presidency are all wrong, many Americans are just now awakening to that reality. Unless they find some way to save themselves, Republicans are on the verge of nominating a psychological cripple: an ego-driven, self-obsessed narcissist preoccupied with fantasies of power, and incapable of empathy.
Too harsh? Overnight, Trump doubled-down. In an interview on Fox News, he allowed as how President Obama had not only failed to prevent ISIS-inspired homophobe Omar Mateen from massacring fifty innocent souls in Orlando’s Pulse nightclub, but that he’s probably a traitor.
“Look, we’re led by a man that either is not tough, not smart, or he’s got something else in mind. And the something else in mind — you know, people can’t believe it,” he said. “People cannot, they cannot believe that President Obama is acting the way he acts and can’t even mention the words ‘radical Islamic terrorism.’ There’s something going on. It’s inconceivable. There’s something going on… [Obama] doesn’t get it or he gets it better than anybody understands — it’s one or the other and either one is unacceptable.”
In his withering fashion, the president dismissed Trump’s “yapping” while pronouncing the supposedly forbidden words “radical Islamists.”
“It’s a political talking point,” he said. “It’s not a strategy…”Not once has an adviser of mine said, ‘Man, if we really use that phrase, we’re going to turn this whole thing around.’ Not once.”
Obama’s mockery makes Trump crazy precisely because it diminishes his shaky self-esteem. People who are genuinely self-confident don’t feel the need for constant boasting. The clinical term for what ails the candidate is “Narcissistic Personality Disorder.”
Improperly—shrinks aren’t supposed to diagnose public figures they haven’t met—but no doubt accurately, a growing number of clinicians have used the phrase to explain Trump’s disturbing personality traits.
“He’s so classic that I’m archiving video clips of him to use in workshops because there’s no better example of his characteristics,” psychologist George Simon, who conducts seminars on manipulative behavior, told Vanity Fair.
“He’s like a dream come true.”
And that was back last fall during GOP debates, when Carly Fiorina, Jeb Bush and Megyn Kelly were Trump’s targets of choice. Having bluffed and bulldozed his way into the Republican nomination, the candidate now finds himself in a new world where different rules apply. He appears incapable of adjusting.
“Success emboldens malignant narcissists to become even more grandiose, reckless and aggressive,” writes psychologist John D. Gartner. “Sure enough, after winning the nomination, there has been no ‘pivot’ towards more reasonable behavior and ideas, just the opposite. He has become more shrill, combative and openly racist.”
Trump’s unprovoked attacks on Judge Gonzalo Curiel’s ethnicity appear to have repulsed even voters resentful of liberal cant about racism, but who do think of themselves as fair. In consequence, fully 56 percent in a recent ABC News/Washington Post poll had a “strongly unfavorable” view of Trump—the kind of judgement that may be irreversible.
Josh Marshall sums things up from a political perspective: “Almost every day since he clinched the nomination almost six weeks ago has been a surreal tour through Trump’s damaged psyche – the insecurities, silly feuds, the mix of self-serving lies and attacks on people he’s supposed to be courting…The daily particulars are so mesmerizing that you have to step back to see that Trump isn’t even running a campaign.”
So now we learn that the Trump campaign is flat broke. How can that be? This is a guy claims who he’s worth $10 billion and who was supposed to be self-financing his campaign. Except now he’s not.
Ten billion is 10,000 million. If Trump were anywhere near that rich, the $42 million in Hillary Clinton’s campaign coffers would be chump change.
Can he sustain this act until November? Can Trump’s fragile psyche risk losing to a girl?
I’m starting to have my doubts.
By: Gene Lyons, The National Memo, June 22, 2016
Share This Blog
Unknown Feed- An error has occurred; the feed is probably down. Try again later.
mykeystrokes.com 