Sunday Open Thread [7.31.16]

Filed in National by on July 31, 2016

Politico reports that Donald Trump was trapped with 10 people in an elevator before his rally in Colorado. He was rescued within 30 minutes by the Fire Department. Twenty minutes later he attacked the Fire Marshall in his speech.

Josh Marshall:

Over the course of the day, Donald Trump responded with a mix of disdain and churlishness to the parents of fallen Muslim soldier Humayun Khan. Trump suggested that as an observant Muslim Khan’s mother, Ghazala, may not have been allowed to speak and insisted that he too had made sacrifices for the country. ABCNews contacted the Khans again for an interview in which Khan’s father, livid, responded to Trump. Khizr Khan asked Trump’s children to “tell him to learn to behave, learn to be decent.”

Khizr Khan continued: “Running for president is not an entitlement to disrespect Gold Star families and [a] Gold Star mother not realizing her pain. Shame on him! Shame on his family! He is not worthy of our comments. He has no decency. He is void of decency, he has a dark heart.”

Ghazala Khan said: “Sacrifice — I don’t think he knows the meaning of sacrifice, the meaning of the word. Because when I was standing there, all America felt my pain. Without saying a single word. Everybody felt that pain.”

I confess I struggle with the emerging back and forth between Trump and the Khans. It’s good for the country because it shows what Khizr Khan aptly labels Trump’s “dark heart.” But I have no doubt that notwithstanding the well-wishes of so may the Khans will now be vilified, scrutinized and smeared by Trump’s supporters.

Well, they are Muslims after all, and Trump has promised to ban all Muslims.

Mark Sumner at Daily Kos:

In the last day, Donald Trump has responded to the Kahn family. In his statements, Trump managed to suggest that heartbroken Ghazala Khan was silent because she was suppressed by Islam, and that Trump’s sacrifices—which are apparently working hard and making a lot of money—were equal to those of the Khans. Trump again attacked the grieving family at his Saturday night rally.

I’ve said before that Donald Trump is a fascist. He is. He’s also a nationalist, a racist, a misogynist, and a bully who supports torture and lawlessness. But all those words are too weak. They’re not up to the task of defining the real problem with Donald Trump.

We’re used to dealing with politicians whose positions fall somewhere along a spectrum from left to right, and while we may often feel that they cling to these positions out of unenlightened self interest, what they are for the most part is wrong. Ronald Reagan was wrong when he pushed on America the idea of trickle-down economics. George W. Bush was wrong when he expanded the war into Iraq. They were wrong.

Donald Trump isn’t wrong. Donald Trump is evil.

It’s an old word. Old enough that it’s origins are obscure. It’s a word not much employed on the talk show circuit except when someone is trying to justify why they dropped on a bomb on some distant village. But it’s the appropriate term for Trump.

Donald Trump is evil in the most basic, most banal meaning of the term. He’s malicious. He’s selfish. He is deeply depraved.

His first instinct is to hurt. His second instinct is to hurt. His third instinct is to laugh over the pain.

Donald Trump is not the Lord of the Flies. He’s simply first among those who draw pleasure in pulling the wings off of flies; those whose greatest joy comes from making someone else feel worse. And his followers can pretend whatever they like, but they’re only there to see him kick someone who is already down, throw acid in someone’s wounds, and foul any hint of honor or dignity.

You know the saying about what it takes for evil to triumph. Don’t let that happen.



Kathleen Parker continues her retreat from the Party of Trump

A longtime Republican friend texted just as the Democratic National Convention was burying itself in balloons: “I’m sorry,” she said, “I’m a Democrat.”

Another Republican friend called after President Obama spoke Wednesday night: “I’m sorry,” he said, “I’m a Democrat.”

No apologies necessary. But thanks surely go to Donald Trump and his spineless Republican enablers. The party of Lincoln, a sometimes laughable bragging point for diehards whose racial attitudes survived the Civil War intact, is long gone. Its dissolution began at least with Richard Nixon, who embraced a Southern strategy that pandered to racists and set the course for today’s GOP.

Khizer Kahn told the Washington Post that Donald Trump’s latest statement about his Democratic convention speech was “faked empathy.”

Said Khan: “What he said originally — that defines him . . . People are upset with him. He realizes, and his advisers feel that [his original statement] was a stupid mistake. That proves that this person is void of empathy. He is unfit for the stewardship of this great country. You think he will empathize with this country, with the suffering of this country’s poor people? He showed his true colors when he disrespected this country’s most honorable mother… all the snake oil he is selling, and my patriotic, decent Americans are falling for that. Republicans are falling for that. And I can only appeal to them. Reconsider. Repudiate. It’s a moral obligation. A person void of empathy for the people he wishes to lead cannot be trusted with that leadership. To vote is a trust. And it cannot be placed in wrong hands.”

In response to Trump’s attack on his wife, Khan said the Republican nominee’s words were “typical of a person without a soul.”

It appears that Donnie is getting a little scared about having to debate Hillary Clinton in a few short weeks on actual, real, serious policy issues. His school yard taunts of “crooked Hillary” won’t work on a stage like they do on twitter. He can’t get around answering direct questions by deflection about her personality like he did when it was a stage of 16 candidates. The focus will be on him and her alone. And that terrifies him.

Nothing will make him look weaker than being bested by a woman who actually knows her stuff. And Hillary is an excellent debater. You can look back at the 2008 debates and she held her own quite well against the best the Democratic party had to offer. She is calm, poised, knowledgeable and most of all, she will get under Trump’s skin.

So Trump said that the debate schedule was rigged by Hillary and the Democrats to be up against NFL games and the NFL sent him a letter complaining. There are three lies in that. First, Hillary and the Democratic Party have nothing to do with the scheduling of the debates. An independent Debate commission does that. Second, the dates were released months ago, before the NFL schedule was released. Third…..

More polls are being released and I will have a full compilation of them tomorrow, but all show a significant bounce for Hillary. The poll above shows a 10 point bounce, going from +5 over Trump after the RNC to +15 now (46-31).

Trump is upset that Hillary didn’t congratulate him in her convention speech. It is simply amazing how much of a narcissistic sociopath Trump is. Did he congratulate her?

John McCain’s granddaughter is voting for Hillary. I have to imagine that she alerted her grandfather to that fact prior to going public, and if so, well that’s interesting.

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  1. anonymous says:
    July 31, 2016 at 9:59 am

    Thanks, DD. I was going to quote that Mark Sumner piece myself but you were on the job.

    That’s the threat here. Reagan and W were wrong; Trump is just evil.

    Or maybe just desperately mentally ill. What else would explain his recent claim to have never met Putin, when he previously bragged repeatedly about meeting him. What else would make him claim to have “sacrificed,” apparently mistakenly thinking the word means “any activity that doesn’t lead to sexual release.”

    None of these are signs of mental health. He needs to be locked up — in a psychiatric hospital.

  2. puck says:
    July 31, 2016 at 10:06 am

    “Clinton economy would create 10 million jobs…”

    In America?

    A new Trump ad (which I saw on TV this morning) has a 2005 video of Senator Hillary Clinton speaking in India to business executives about the prospects for outsourcing:

    HILLARY: No, I don’t think you can effectively restrict outsourcing…There is no way to legislate against reality, so I think that the outsourcing will continue.. but I don’t think there’s any way to, you know, legislate against outsourcing. I think that’s, you know, just a dead end.”

    MALE VOICE WITH INDIAN ACCENT: “That’s good news for a lot of us! Please join me in giving her a standing ovation! (applause)”

    The ad points out that Hillary received a $5 million donation from Indian politician Amar Singh in 2008.

    Trump will have plenty of ammunition for a debate (not that I think he knows how to use it effectively). The Trump PACs have been on fire with some very on-point ads on the economy. Let’s hope the female and POC firewall still doesn’t think outsourcing affects them or their families. And let’s keep on hoping that any points scored by the PAC ads will be erased by Trump’s own tidal wave of suck.

  3. Jason330 says:
    July 31, 2016 at 1:31 pm

    Behavioral psychologists are all over this and I’ll put up a full post on Monday, but suffice to say- nobody is going to be frightened into voting against trump and for Clinton. This is going to be a base mobilization election like Bush v Gore. I hope Clinton gets that in a way Gore didn’t.

  4. anonymous says:
    July 31, 2016 at 2:05 pm

    So you think Hillary was wrong to state an obvious truth? Interesting.

    I think the firewall speaks Spanish — or, as Trump would say, Mexican.

  5. anonymous says:
    July 31, 2016 at 2:08 pm

    “nobody is going to be frightened into voting against trump and for Clinton.”

    Speak for yourself. I have been.

  6. Liberal Elite says:
    July 31, 2016 at 4:39 pm

    @J “…nobody is going to be frightened into voting against trump and for Clinton.”

    Then how do you explain the recent behavior of the Koch brothers?

  7. mouse says:
    August 1, 2016 at 9:46 am

    This statement she made in India sickens me and is why so many of the Bernie supporters are so zealously against her. It’s the reason that I am willing to vote Stein and so reluctant to vote Clinton. Her supporters need to acknowledge, digest and deal with this exact issue and not attack me for bringing it up. If they don’t, it will them and not the people voting for Stein or not voting that will elect Trump!!!!!! I’m totally sick of the F-ing 1% screwing this nation’s workers so the POS 1% maggots can have ever more. If not a pacifist, I would be willing to take to the streets and go after the CEO class and their hegemony over the political process. I’m sure people will try to rationalize or dismiss her statement but to millions of people it looks like she is full support of the 1% who are screwing the nation. If Trump wasn’t such a psycho morally bankrupt buffoon, I would surely be voting for him as well and I’m as hard left liberal as there is. I hope the clinton folk understand that there millions like me out there and so far, she has done absolutely nothing to assuage my concerns dammit!

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