Saturday Open Thread [6.4.16]

This week has been pivotal. First, the revelations of the Trump University Scam and Trump’s defrauding of the veterans broke. Then Trump goes nuts on the press for revealing the truth in a preview of what press conferences under a fascist dictator will look like. Then Hillary’s amazing speech on Thursday. Then Trump’s insane racist attacks on the Judge in the Trump University case, which he has escalated throughout the week. And then last night he sees a single African American in a crowd at his rally, and in the middle of discussing black protestors who are thugs, says “Look at my African American over there. Look at him. Aren’t you the greatest?”

Everywhere I go, I see people on Facebook, Twitter, in real life, on cable TV, trying to find words or reasons for all this behavior, in particular the attacks on the Judge and the comments on “my African American.” Look, it is all pretty simple, and people just need to accept it rather than rationalize their way out of saying what is really going on here. And that is this: Donald Trump is a narcissistic sociopath. He is a racist. He desires to be a fascist dictator that jails his opponents and cleanses the country of the minorities he hates. Seriously. It’s not hyperbole this time. The Republicans have literally nominated the heir of Adolf Hitler.

The sooner you all accept it, the better off you will all be, because everything will make sense.

Josh Marshall:

The entirety of Trump’s campaign has been driven by building white backlash resentment against non-whites – mainly Hispanics and principally Mexican immigrants or their descendants. It’s an escalating narrative: they’re not us, they’re dangerous, they’re taking our stuff and pulling us down.

It’s that mix of grievance and desire to reclaim what is being taken away, that desire for revenge that has been the centerpiece of Trump’s campaign from the outset, far more than any sort of economic arguments or anything else. Racial appeals, dog-whistle and all the rest are certainly not new in American politics. But having a major party presidential candidate running an explicit racist campaign is quite new. Again, the attacks on Judge Curiel is entirely of a piece with everything Trump has shown us since he kicked this campaign off almost exactly a year ago.

Donald Trump in 1994:

[I]n one 1994 interview of Trump with Nancy Collins of ABC News, Trump said so many disgusting things about the women in his life that it’s honestly hard to pick which one to lead with. Let’s start with this comment, though, where Trump says he had mixed feelings about his second wife, Marla Maples, an actress and television personality, working outside the home.

“I have days where I think it’s great,” Trump said. “And then I have days where, if I come home — and I don’t want to sound too much like a chauvinist — but when I come home and dinner’s not ready, I go through the roof.”

This comment makes it sound like Trump wants to “Make America Great Again” by going back to the 1950s, which is bad enough. It’s also, however, a chilling nod to his allegedly fierce temper. In 1992, Trump’s first wife, Ivana, alleged that Trump violently raped her during their marriage. She’s since walked back that allegation but has never actually denied the horrifying events she described in a deposition during their divorce.

In the ABC News interview, Trump also talked about the problems he had with Ivana working outside the home — specifically as a powerful executive whom he also employed.

“I think that putting a wife to work is a very dangerous thing,” Trump said. “If you’re in business for yourself, I really think it’s a bad idea to put your wife working for you.”

He said the greatest strain on his relationship with Ivana was hiring her to manage his Atlantic City casino. But the reasons he cited for the strain were pretty telling. He talked about how much it bothered him to hear Ivana “shouting” at someone on the telephone.

“I’d say, ‘I don’t want my wife shouting at somebody like that, I really don’t want that,'” Trump said. “And a softness disappeared. There was a great softness to Ivana, and she still has that softness. But during this period of time, she became an executive, not a wife.”

Eugene Robinson says the big winner of 2016 so far is Obama: “There remains the technical impediment that the president is constitutionally barred from a third term. But the longer the campaign goes on, the higher Obama’s approval rating rises. This should be bad for Donald Trump and good for the eventual Democratic nominee, almost certainly Hillary Clinton. But it is even better for Obama’s legacy.”

“According to Gallup, which has been charting the nation’s assessment of its presidents longer than anyone else, Obama’s approval stands at 52 percent, compared with 44 percent disapproval. That may not look impressive but it is actually quite good for a president nearing the end of his second term; Ronald Reagan, by comparison, had 49 percent approval at this point in his tenure.”

“We tend to appreciate presidents more after they leave office. The inevitable reassessment of the Obama years seems to be starting early — perhaps in apprehension of the years to come. Even Obama’s harshest critics have to admit he was a steady hand in the White House. Reflection upon this fact can only increase Clinton’s chances against a man who prides himself on being combative, capricious and cocksure.”

Taegan Goddard says Trump will be left alone to defend himself after what will now be known as The Speech.

What made Hillary Clinton’s speech attacking Donald Trump on foreign policy so effective wasn’t necessarily her delivery or the substance, though both were excellent. What made it work was the fact that it drove a giant wedge between the GOP nominee and most of the party’s elected officials.

While Republicans quickly rallied around Trump in the last few weeks, many are not very strong backers. Aside from statements from Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL) and Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR), almost no one defended Trump after Clinton’s speech.

They can’t defend him because they generally agree with Clinton that Trump doesn’t have the temperament to be president. They can’t defend him because they don’t agree with him on the issues. From a Muslim ban to free trade to building a wall on the Mexican border, Trump’s is out of line with the party leadership on so many issues.

The perfect example of this is Speaker Paul Ryan’s much-anticipated endorsement of Trump. After waiting nearly a month to get comfortable with the GOP nominee (while trying to create some distance), Ryan stayed silent after Clinton’s speech.

Markos: You have a Republican presumptive nominee who is trashed by the Democratic presumptive nominee, and no one comes to his defense, not even his party? This is some crazy shit, people.

First Read says the GOP is Trump’s party now, and vice versa: “On March 3, Mitt Romney delivered his own blistering speech on Donald Trump, which used some of the same lines of attack that Hillary Clinton included in her anti-Trump address yesterday… But today — exactly three months ago since that speech — Trump’s takeover of the Republican Party is now complete, especially after House Speaker Paul Ryan (Romney’s 2012 running mate) endorsed the real-estate mogul. Ryan tried to give himself distance by withholding his endorsement for 29 days after Trump became the GOP’s presumptive nominee, particularly given their differences over immigration, entitlements, trade, and Trump’s Muslim ban.”

“But it’s hard to disagree with this take from the Cook Political Report‘s David Wasserman: ‘Speaker Paul Ryan endorses nominee who wants to ban Muslims from the country. The hostile takeover of the GOP is now complete.’”

Jonathan Chait says Trump plans to enrich himself in office should disaster strike and he were actually given the keys to the White House:

[In a January debate], Trump affirms that he would place his assets in a blind trust, then proceeds to describe an arrangement that is the exact opposite of a blind trust [saying his children would run his companies for him, even though he would maintain ownership interests]. The purpose of a blind trust is to prevent a president from being influenced in his decision-making by his personal interests — say, if you owned stock in oil companies, any policies that boosted the price of oil would boost your portfolio. In a blind trust, your assets are sold off and controlled by a third party without your knowledge, so you don’t even know what you own.

Trump was proposing that he would continue to own all the same businesses and his kids would run them for him, creating an enormous temptation for him to make decisions that benefit his own self-interest. […] [N]ow he is [bullying] judges and foreign countries whose decisions harm his businesses. Today he pledged to reopen Trump University if elected. This goes way beyond mere conflict of interest, though there obviously is a major conflict of interest between his policy on regulation of for-profit universities and his ownership of one such institution. Trump envisions that, as president, his name would drive customers into his branded businesses. Basically, he’s promising to govern like an oligarch in a post-Soviet republic, but without bothering with subterfuge to hide the fact that he and his family are running the government for personal profit.

I am convinced that Trump is on the verge of a SIXTH bankruptcy, and that he decided to run for President to boost his profits/income. That may seem strange, since the obvious bigotry and fascism that he displays to the American people on a daily basis has caused a 60% decline in bookings at his hotels, but if he won, he could save himself financially as he describes. In other words, this is all a freaking scam.

David Wasserman says the missing white voter won’t save Trump: “The good news for Trump is that nationally, there’s plenty of room for white turnout to improve. If non-Hispanic whites had turned out at the same rate in 2012 that they did in 1992, there would have been 8.8 million additional white voters — far more than Obama’s 5 million-vote margin of victory. But before Democrats panic, here’s the catch, and it’s a doozy for Trump: These ‘missing’ white voters disproportionately live in states that won’t matter in a close presidential race.”

“The head of Hispanic media relations at the Republican National Committee is resigning this month in what appears to be another indication of the lingering discomfort some party officials have about working to elect Donald Trump president,” the New York Times reports.

James Hohmann: “Donald Trump is doing to the national GOP brand in 2016 what Proposition 187 did to California Republicans in 1994. He continues to inflict lasting, perhaps irreparable, damage to the party’s image among Hispanics. It is not hyperbole to say that Trumpism could relegate the party of Abraham Lincoln to long-term minority status.”

Brian Beutler says the Trump University Scam is a perfect metaphor for the Trump for President Campaign.

[In 2012,] “once people have learned that Romney was willing to fire workers and terminate health and pension benefits while taking tens of millions out of companies,” a prominent Democratic pollster told The Washington Post’s Greg Sargent four years ago, “they are much more ready to understand that Romney would indeed cut Social Security and Medicare to give tax breaks to rich people like himself.” If the Republican nominee is a heartless capitalist who cares naught for working people, then perhaps he really does want to serve the rich in office.

Trump University will serve the same purpose [in 2016 that Bain Capital did in 2012] for a campaign aimed at exposing a phony populist for what he is:

Trump U is devastating because it's metaphor for his whole campaign: promising hardworking Americans way to get ahead, but all based on lies

— Brian Fallon (@brianefallon) June 1, 2016

Democrats won’t want to attack populism per se, and will have a hard time convincing certain voters to take them at their word that Trump’s promises are fraudulent. He’s incredibly successful, after all! But Trump University will dramatize the truth about Trump for those voters in the same way Bain Capital dramatized Romney’s stone-heartedness. Trump says that he—and only he—has all the answers for the ailing middle class. That he will ply his business acumen on behalf of the everyman and turn his good fortune into theirs. All they have to do to secure his beneficence is fork over their votes. But it’s all a scam. All lies. And when his victims and former employees testify to this for the country, it will be devastating.

Rick Klein: “Donald Trump has said enough offensive things in enough offensive ways that it’s easy to lose the capacity for outrage. Even for Trump, though, his latest utterances about the federal judge assigned to a case brought against him deserve thought and scrutiny. Saying that a judge has an ‘inherent conflict of interest’ because of his Mexican heritage – not because of any business or personal interest in the stakes of the case – is making a judgment on qualifications simply based on race. It’s a fanciful notion that would upend centuries of jurisprudence and American tradition.”

“The fact that such a concept is being floated – and not in a coded or hypothetical way – is precisely why so many Republicans are offended and even terrified about the fact that Trump will be the Republican nominee for president. Coming just hours after House Speaker Paul Ryan put his intellectual heft on the line in supporting Trump is awkward for Ryan, and just about any other conservative who has grudgingly come to terms with Trump. It’s one thing to recognize the ways in which Trump is giving voters what they want. It’s another to pause and recognize how he’s sometimes been doing it.”

The Washington Post’s Ed O’Keefe and Mike DeBonis take a look “Inside Democrats’ Trump-fueled scramble to take back the House:” “It’s unlikely that Democrats win back the House, but we can’t completely rule it out,” said Nathan Gonzales, editor of the Rothenberg & Gonzales political report. “Donald Trump puts enough volatility into the national political environment that we have to keep an open mind to lots of different scenarios. Gonzales anticipates that Democrats will gain at least 10 more seats, but he said that picking up the 30 needed for the majority will be “a challenge.”…House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) boasted recently that she thinks she could reclaim the speaker’s gavel. If the election were held today, she said, “We would win. We would pick up more than the 20, we could get to the 30. But it’s not today.”…Privately, some Democrats say the party waited too long to find potential candidates.”

Markos Moultisas follows Jason’s lead here and rescues a great comment from a previous post:

Thin-skinned is the perfect taunt for [Donald Trump]. It puts him in a box where any attempt to strike back reinforces the image of him as responding because of his thin skin, it can be easily tied to the risk he poses to the nation, and it has the benefit of ringing 100% true. Plus, as a bonus, it elevates Hillary rather than debases her.

Great insight, really nailing why Hillary Clinton’s speech was so amazing that it literally stopped Trump’s tweetstorm on its tracks. (For real. His last tweet on her speech was at 3:18 ET, she mocked his live tweeting at 3:22). […]

But while “fraud,” “stupid” and “shallow” are character attacks, and good ones; “Thin-skinned” really hampers his ability to respond to attacks, because every response will reinforce that narrative. And since no other Republicans are apparently willing or able to defend him, he can’t depend on surrogates to bail him out. He really is on his own, and as this week showed, he’s not his own best surrogate. In fact, he’s pretty awful at it. And Hillary just made his life even more difficult.