I’d rather be talking about these great NBA Playoffs than Donald Sterling’s interview.
“Very Little Blowback From His Own Party”: Trump Has GOP Defenders Despite Racially Charged Rhetoric
In his presidential announcement speech, Donald Trump wasted no time in creating controversy. “When Mexico sends its people, they’re not sending their best,” the Republican candidate said. “They’re sending people that have lots of problems and they’re bringing those problems with us. They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists.”
Offered a variety of opportunities to walk the comments back, Trump has, at least for now, refused. This week, he insisted his remarks were “totally accurate.”
As Rachel noted on the show last night, this has led a variety of businesses, including NBC/Universal, to end their relationships with the controversial candidate. But what remains striking is the degree to which Trump is facing very little blowback from his own party.
Fox’s Sean Hannity has defended Trump, as has Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas). “I like Donald Trump. I think he’s terrific,” the Republican senator said, “I think he’s brash, I think he speaks the truth.”
Last night, Politico published a piece by National Review editor Rich Lowry on the candidate. The headline read, “Sorry, Donald Trump Has A Point.”
As for his instantly notorious Mexico comments, they did more to insult than to illuminate, yet there was a kernel in them that hit on an important truth that typical politicians either don’t know or simply fear to speak. “When Mexico sends its people,” Trump said, “they’re not sending their best.”
This is obviously correct. We aren’t raiding the top 1 percent of Mexicans and importing them to this country. Instead, we are getting representative Mexicans, who – through no fault of their own, of course – come from a poorly educated country at a time when education is essential to success in an advanced economy.
As for Trump’s assumptions about these immigrants being drug-running rapists, Lowry didn’t dwell on these details while praising the candidate’s broader immigration argument.
This is not a wise strategy.
Even if we put aside the fact that Trump’s argument is factually wrong, and he most certainly does not “have a point,” the truth remains that the Republican Party has alienated immigrant communities in recent years, and the latest Trump fiasco offers the GOP an opportunity to distance itself from offensive, racially charged rhetoric.
But for many Republicans, it’s an opportunity better left ignored.
In fairness, Trump has not enjoyed universal praise among conservatives. Sean Spicer, the Republican National Committee’s Chief Strategist & Communications Director, conceded two weeks ago that Trump’s anti-Mexican rhetoric is “probably something that is not helpful to the cause.”
Probably.
Look, I’m not suggesting the onus is on Reince Priebus to pick up one of the Trump pinatas that have become popular in some circles, and destroy it on camera, but I am suggesting leading Republican voices show some courage and denounce offensive rhetoric from one of their own.
Trump, obviously, is pushing Latino voters away. But the more voices on the right defend Trump, and the more Republican voters express their support for his candidacy, the broader the damage will be to the party.
Indeed, as msnbc’s Amanda Sakuma noted yesterday, Trump’s antics raise “uncomfortable but genuine questions over how Republicans expect to make inroads with Latino voters in light of the harsh anti-immigrant rhetoric.”
By: Steve Benen, The Maddow Blog, July 2, 2015
“The Donald Show”: Let The Lunacy Begin; The Loopy Side Of American Politics
Oh, joy! Oh, goody! Oh, happy day! For those of us who love the loopy side of American politics, our dream of some serious loco for 2016 has arrived: Donnie Trump in the race! For president. Of the United States. No, really!
“Wow,” exclaimed a beaming Donald Trump as he stepped onstage, basking in the cheers of a throng that had assembled for his launch into the 2016 presidential race. “That is some group of people,” he gushed. “Thousands.”
He announced his candidacy from — where else? — Trump Tower, the luxury skyscraper on tony Fifth Avenue in Manhattan. The celebrity billionaire, who has splashed the Trump brand on casinos, hotels, resorts, condos, neckties, and even steaks, now wants to put it on the Republican Party. Indeed, The Donald declared that he should be our president because, “We need somebody that can take the brand of the United States and make it great again.” There you go — the U.S. is a brand, like a Big Mac, the Nike swoosh or Vidal Sassoon hair spray.
As for qualifications, Trump brandished his wealth, exclaiming that only someone “really rich” has what it takes to be America’s CEO. This view that one’s net worth is the measure of one’s worthiness squares with an earlier self-assessment by Donnie: “Let me tell you, I’m a really smart guy.”
Of course, smart is as smart does, so what does Mr. Smartypants propose to do as president? He claims he has “a foolproof way of winning the war with ISIS,” the barbaric terrorists marauding through Syria, Iraq and elsewhere. Excellent! What is his plan? It’s a secret, he says, “I don’t want the enemy to know what I’m doing.”
The announcement was a showbiz extravaganza. Literally. The crowd was there to cheer the self-promoting hypester who wants to be president — but not necessarily to support him. That’s because some of these over-the-top enthusiasts were actors! Yes, hired at $50 a pop to do a three-hour performance as Donnie’s “crowd.” An outfit named Extra Mile Casting had been retained to puff up the audience: “We are looking to cast people for the event to wear T-shirts and carry signs and help cheer him,” said Extra Mile in an email to its list of actors who work as extras in films, TV shows, ads, etc. When The Donald Show was done, the actors were seen dumping their signs in the trash and going on to their next showbiz gig.
For his part, Trump gave a rambling, bumbling, almost-incoherent 40-minute rant. Citing his chief qualification for the highest office in the land, he said: “I’m really rich. …And by the way, I’m not even saying that to brag. …That’s the kind of thinking you need for this country.” And his immigration policy is simply, well, simplistic. He “would build a great wall” on the Mexican border to stop all the rapists and other criminals who, he claims, are streaming into the U.S. in droves. “And nobody builds walls better than me, believe me.” Wow, apparently he’s going to build the wall himself! Then he added a jingoistic gringosim to this Good Neighbor policy, declaring, “And I’ll have Mexico pay for that wall.”
And what’s his economic policy, you ask? It’s a whopper: “I will be the greatest jobs president God ever created,” he bellowed.
No, no, Donnie — don’t even try to blame God for creating you or your nuttiness. You truly are a self-made man, spawned from the fumes of your own gaseous ego. Yet you’re a godsend for people seeking comic relief in politics.
Such goofiness explains why Trump is starting his run for the White House with some 70 percent of voters (including more than half of Republicans) viewing him UNfavorably. But, as a brand-name celebrity, The Donald will qualify to be in the GOP’s presidential debates — so let the lunacy begin!
By: Jim Hightower, The National Memo, June 24, 2015
“The Clown Prince Of The 2016 Cycle”: Republican Nightmare; Donald Trump On The Debate Stage
Republicans are worried that Donald Trump will turn their first presidential debate into an embarrassing circus for the party and top candidates.
The celebrity real estate mogul’s Gatsby-esque entrance into the race on Tuesday has unleashed a torrent of anti-Trump tirades from influential Republicans, who are openly fretting that the bombastic, saber-rattling New Yorker with broad name recognition is in position to qualify for one of the 10 coveted debate slots under the rules set by Fox News.
The National Review called Trump a “ridiculous buffoon” and “an ass of exceptionally intense asininity.” Republican strategist Rick Wilson dubbed him “the clown prince of the 2016 cycle.” The conservative group Club For Growth said he “should not be taken seriously” and urged that he be excluded from the debates.
If Fox were making the cut today, Trump appears to be in.
The RealClearPolitics average of five recent national polls puts him in ninth place with 3.6 percent, just ahead of former Texas Governor Rick Perry — and 1.8 points ahead of John Kasich, the governor of Ohio, meaning the chief executive of the state where the debate is being held would not have a place on the stage. Candidates at the bottom of the list have seven weeks to displace Trump, but that’s a tall order, particularly if he gets a boost after announcing his presidential bid Tuesday and hitting the Sunday show circuit with a scheduled appearance on CNN’s State of the Union.
One of the candidates likely to be left out, Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, appeared to be anticipating the Trump phenomenon days before the New Yorker jumped into the race. Talking to reporters Saturday at a Utah gathering of Republican candidates and donors sponsored by Mitt Romney, Graham complained that the rules for determining participants in the first debate “reward people who have run before and celebrity.”
“I think there’s going to be a big pushback against this,” he predicted.
Reality TV show
At least one of Trump’s critics, Wilson, already is resigned to the prospect. “[I]t’s time for Republican candidates for President to face a simple fact; Trump will be on that stage. He’ll make the cut, based on name ID alone,” wrote party strategist Rick Wilson in a post for the conservative website IJReview. Wilson advised other candidates on state to refuse to engage. “Don’t agree with him. Don’t disagree with him. Don’t argue with him.”
The very thought is a nightmare scenario for the Republican establishment, which risks having its presidential field look more like an unwieldy circus of a reality TV show than the self-styled embarrassment of riches.
“This is the greatest gift to the media and the Democrats that could imagine,” Wilson wrote.
The Democratic National Committee was so gleeful about Trump jumping into the race that it issued a statement holding him up a “major candidate” who brings “much-needed seriousness” to the Republican field. The Republican National Committee welcomed him to the race in a tweet.
Trump’s announcement speech did nothing to assuage concerns about what his presence might mean for some of the party’s top contenders, such as former Florida Governor Jeb Bush and Florida Senator Marco Rubio.
“You looked at Bush, it took him five days to answer the question on Iraq. He couldn’t answer the question. He didn’t know. I said, ‘Is he intelligent?’ Then I looked at Rubio. He was unable to answer the question, is Iraq a good thing or bad thing,” Trump said. “How are these people gonna lead us? …They don’t have a clue. They can’t lead us. They can’t. They can’t even answer simple questions. It was terrible.”
But whether Trump manages to get the free media promised by the debate, he’s unlikely to lack for a platform. The self-described billionaire promises to fund his own campaign. “I don’t care,” he boasted. “I’m really rich.”
By: Sahil Kapur; Kendall Breitman contributed reporting; Bloomberg Politics, June 17, 2015
“How Do You Solve A Problem Like The Donald?”: The Republican Party Just Got A Giant Headache, With A Comb-Over On Top
For years now, Donald Trump has threatened to run for president. In the past it has been just a publicity stunt — he says he might run, he gets some attention, eventually he gives it up. And pretty much everyone, myself included, thought that’s what Trump was doing this time around, even as he scheduled an announcement today (the theory that made the most sense to me said that he would announce that he was creating the classiest, most high-end super PAC anywhere). But believe it or not, Donald Trump is actually running for president.
There’s no way to know how far this will go. Philip Bump recently took a look at Trump’s poll numbers, and he ranks somewhere between the U.S. Congress and foot fungus. (My favorite detail: Asked about why 58 percent of Republicans in Iowa said they’d never vote for him, Trump responded, “That’s because they don’t think I’m running. When they think I’m running, they go through the roof.”) But he has enough money to finance a campaign for as long as he likes, which essentially means until he gets bored. That could be quite some time.
Trump’s candidacy presents a problem for the news media. How do you report on someone like him? Is it even worth fact-checking the ridiculous statements he constantly makes, or should we not even bother? Given that he has zero chance of winning his party’s nomination, should reporters be assigned to cover him? Why does he deserve more attention than, say, Ben Carson?
The truth is that he’s going to be covered, and covered amply, because he brings entertainment value to the campaign. He is, without question, a unique American character. Most politicians have a heightened self-regard, but Trump is in a league by himself when it comes to delusional egotism, which is part of what makes him compelling to watch. It was apparent in the bizarre, stream-of-consciousness rant that passed for his announcement speech.
“Our country needs a truly great leader,” he said, speaking of himself. “I will be the greatest jobs president that God ever created, I tell you.”
It’s Trump’s lack of self-awareness that makes him such a wonder to behold. The man who has brought vulgarity to new heights thinks he’s the epitome of class, and even if no sane person would sit through an hour of “the Apprentice,” it’s hard to look away when he starts talking.
But the ones with the real dilemma are the leaders of the Republican Party, which is why the Democratic Party is absolutely licking its chops at his entry. The DNC’s statement today said simply that Trump “adds some much-needed seriousness that has been previously lacking from the GOP field, and we look forward to hearing more about his ideas for the nation.”
Republicans have already been struggling to bring order to a race with as many as fifteen candidates, and while some people (I plead guilty) derisively refer to the primary contest as it existed before as a clown show, it now features one of the country’s foremost clowns. And according to the rules the RNC and the participating TV networks set to limit the upcoming debates to ten participants — a threshold of performance in recent polls — Trump would qualify to participate. And it’s likely to stay that way, since the bottom rungs are occupied by candidates who poll in the low single digits. Trump may not be the nominee, but he’ll probably be able to pull five or ten percent of Republican voters, putting him somewhere in the middle of the pack.
So at the debates, we may end up watching Jeb Bush, Scott Walker, and Marco Rubio try to get a word in while Trump goes on about his solid gold toilets, the models he’s dated, and his brilliant secret plan to defeat ISIS (maybe we’ll finally learn what it is!). That could make the real candidates look like sober leaders who can be trusted to take the country’s reins. Anything’s possible. But it may be more likely that Trump will make the party look more foolish than it already does. He may be a walking caricature, but is what he has to say about issues any less serious than what we’ve heard from the other candidates? Is Trump’s secret ISIS plan likely to be dumber than the idea that we just need to show “strength” and “resolve” and everything in the Middle East will turn out fine? Is what Trump has to say about the economy any less grounded in fact and experience than the other candidates’ belief that if we cut taxes for people like Donald Trump, the economy will get better for everyone?
The Republican Party just got a giant headache, with a comb-over on top.
By: Paul Waldman, Senior Writer, The American Prospect; The Plum Line Blog, The Washington Post, June16, 2015
“Donald Sterling’s Interview Disaster”: Rich Old Racist Self-Destructs To Anderson Cooper
Donald Sterling, in all his reprehensible anti-glory, is officially representative of only one person, Donald Sterling. But it was hard not to think about the insularity and cossetting the super-wealthy enjoy, once they get super-wealthy, watching the maligned Los Angeles Clippers owner self-destruct with Anderson Cooper Monday night.
Sterling is a man who is obviously used to holding forth on his mind-blowingly prejudiced views without challenge. He wants us to think V. Stiviano entrapped him with her magic lady parts — “I don’t know why the girl had me say those things,” he told Cooper — and got him to launch a paranoid racist rant out of lust. But clearly that is not true, unless he’s lusting after Anderson Cooper.
“I’m not a racist,” Sterling told Cooper. “I made a terrible, terrible mistake. And I’m here with you today to apologize and to ask for forgiveness for all the people that I’ve hurt. When I listen to that tape, I don’t even know how I can say words like that…. I mean, that’s not the way I talk.” Actually, it seems to be exactly the way Sterling talks.
It’s hard to know where to start with the NBA franchise owner’s outrageous remarks. He called Stiviano “a street person” and said Magic Johnson “ought to be ashamed of himself.” No, that doesn’t do Sterling justice. This is what he said about Johnson:
Here is a man, he acts so holy. He made love to every girl in America in every city and he had AIDS. When he had those AIDS, I went to my synagogue and I prayed for him.
“Those AIDS”? (For the record, Johnson has HIV, not AIDS). But it got worse:
What has Magic Johnson done? He’s got AIDS. Did he do any business? Did he help anybody in south L.A.? I think he should be ashamed of himself. What does he do for the black people? I’m telling you he does nothing. It’s all talk.
I spent millions on giving away and helping minorities. Does he do that? That’s one problem I have. Jews, when they get successful, they will help their people.
And some of the African-Americans, maybe I’ll get in trouble again. They don’t want to help anybody. What has Magic Johnson really done for Children’s Hospital which kids are lying in the hallways. They are sick. They need a bed. What has he done for any hospital? What has he done for any group?
For the record, Magic Johnson has a foundation that gives away almost $2 million a year and got a four-star rating by Charity Navigator last year. A recent Los Angeles Times investigation found little evidence of the Donald Sterling Foundation’s good work. He does reportedly give a lot of money to women he’s trying to bed.
For his part, Johnson replied an hour after the interview aired: (on Twitter)
Maybe Sterling thought his sit-down with Cooper would help him rehabilitate himself, but at one point he even turned on Cooper. When the CNN anchor suggested that Sterling’s paternalistic comments about his players, that “I support them and give them food, and clothes, and cars, and houses,” had been criticized as reflecting a plantation mentality, Sterling turned on his host: “I think you have more of a plantation mentality than I do. And I think you’re more of a racist than I am. Because I’m not a racist, and I’ve never been a racist.”
“I know you are but what am I” rarely turns out well on national television.
It’s said that Sterling’s sit-down with Cooper was a message to other NBA owners, some of whom he claimed support his crusade to keep his team. (Oh, and he said his players “love” him too.) If Sterling was sending the owners a message in the interview, it had to be: “I want to sell my team right now. Help me.”
NBA commissioner Adam Silver was unimpressed. He apologized to Magic Johnson “that he continues to be dragged into this situation and be degraded by such a malicious and personal attack.” The NBA Board of Governors — Sterling’s fellow owners — “is continuing with its process to remove Mr. Sterling as expeditiously as possible.” It can’t happen soon enough.
By: Joan Walsh, Editor at Large, Salon, May 13, 2014
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