Another day, another Trump outrage (and don’t worry, it won’t hurt.)
Here’s the latest:
Donald Trump previewed on Monday what could be his excuse if he were to lose the general election in the fall: It’s “rigged.”
“First of all, it was rigged,” Trump said of the Democratic primary race between Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton and Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont.
He continued: “And I’m afraid the election is going to be rigged. I have to be honest. I think my side was rigged. If I didn’t win by massive landslides … I hear more and more that the election on November 8, can you believe, we’re almost there.”
Trump would be the first candidate in modern presidential times, if not ever, to potentially blame an election loss on voter fraud or a rigged election.
Another first! And I don’t even have time to list all of Trump’s loony conspiracy theories. A wonderful quality when dealing with complex foreign crises. When our (potential) next president looks out at the world, he sees nothing but “grassy knolls”.
Trump also turns his supporters into evil people:
Taking questions from the audience at a rally in Carson City, Nev., the Indiana governor was asked how he could “tolerate” Trump disrespecting military families.
“Time and time again Trump has disrespected our nation’s armed forces and veterans and has disrespect for Mr. Khan and his family is just an example of that,” Catherine Byrne asked, as the crowd started loudly booing. “Will there ever be a point in time when you’re able to look Trump in the eye and tell him enough is enough? You have a son in the military. How do you tolerate his disrespect?”
They booed that question? I’d be like, “Well I like Trump, but he was out of line calling McCain a loser, so fair question.” It goes without saying that Pence refused to answer the question. Here’s a comment I received yesterday:
Scott, I did all my laughing at Trump when I supported Cruz in the primaries. But after Cruz lost, it became time to understand Trump enough to determine if I could support him or not. As it turns out, I’ve learned there is much more going on than his detractors think. Reading Scott Adams is a good place to start. On Russia, google the Stephen Cohen interview from a couple days ago. Trump is playing a much, much smarter game than people think. (emphasis added.)
His comment may seem like a joke, but Steve F seems to actually believe what he wrote. The film that best describes America over the past 12 months is “Invasion of the Body Snatchers”. Trump has actually stolen the brains of these people.
PS. I highlighted “it became time” as that was a “tell” that Steve did not randomly discover that Trump was a brilliant genius, rather he saw the danger posed by Hillary and decided it was time to let the pod creatures take over his brain. It was all voluntary, and probably didn’t hurt a bit.
A June poll from the Hinckley Institute-Salt Lake Tribune shows the two are virtually tied with 35 percent for Donald Trump and 35 percent for Hillary Clinton. That is as close as a Democratic candidate has been to victory in more than half a century.
(In fairness, another poll has Trump up by 9%—so average them at 4.5%) I’m 60 years old, and during my long life I’ve only met one group of people who are consistently good people—Mormons. I have not met a single Mormon who is a jerk. Gee, I wonder why Trump is tied while Bush won the state by 46 percentage points?
Those thinking of moving to Canada next year should look at Utah, it has better weather.
Update#2: Ezra Klein ponders the character of a man who might soon be handed the nuclear briefcase:
Trump, for no reason at all, responded to this speech wondering whether Ghazala Khan hadn’t spoken on the stage because, as a Muslim woman, her husband wouldn’t permit her to talk in public. “If you look at his wife, she was standing there,” he said, on national television. “She had nothing to say. She probably, maybe she wasn’t allowed to have anything to say.”
Trump’s slander of Ghazala Khan was cruel. It was factually untrue. But it was also deeply, profoundly counterproductive — a man so angry about being cut off in traffic that he crashes his own car in revenge.
Tags:
2. August 2016 at 06:37
You have to love the geniuses who read a cartoonist’s blog and are so credulous they become convinced Trump is a super genius. Why don’t we try Occam’s razor instead – do you think Trump is a master communicator super genius 10-meta levels above all us dummies (except our cartoonist friend, of course), or is he just an old fashioned populist demagogue?
People lap up this master clown story, coming from Scott Adams, the guy on Twitter saying the DNC lowered national testosterone levels, saying he can “master any political skill in an hour”!
This level of delusion is remarkable. These people are going to be shocked in November, either when Clinton wins, or when Trump wins and they suddenly realise he’s aways been a moron.
2. August 2016 at 06:39
It goes without saying Scott that I dont recommend reading Scott Adams on Trump. His stuff is teenage boy delusions of grandeur crossed with high school level political analysis.
2. August 2016 at 07:05
I could absolutely believe that Trump would respond to an overwhelming loss in the presidential election by saying, “I didn’t lose, I don’t lose, it was rigged, blah, blah, blah”. The guy is always making excuses for his failures.
2. August 2016 at 07:10
Trump supporters boo common decency:
http://www.redstate.com/streiff/2016/08/02/watch.-donald-trump-crowd-boos-military-mom-asks-common-decency-video/
Not surprising.
2. August 2016 at 07:36
Scott,
As a Mormon, I’m flattered, but believe me, we breed plenty of jerks.
I am proud of Utah’s repudiation of Trump though.
2. August 2016 at 07:46
Ben, I glanced at it once. I’ll give him credit for predicting the rise of Trump (which I utterly failed to see), but otherwise I didn’t see anything earthshaking.
SG. Oh no! Don’t spoil my illusion that there is still one Shangri-La left in America.
2. August 2016 at 07:59
Hi Scott,
I find myself thinking about Carlo Cipolla’s “The Basic Laws of Stupidity” pretty regularly these days.
In particular the First Law: “Always and inevitably everyone underestimates the number of stupid individuals in circulation.”
And also the Fourth: “Non-stupid people always underestimate the damaging power of stupid individuals.”
There are plenty of perfectly intelligent people who either support Trump or are on the fence about Trump (people I know). A lot of them just don’t understand how little upside there is on a bet on Trump. They overestimate him in many ways — his intelligence, his sincerity, his consistency, etc. They’re too trusting. They don’t just immediately see him for what he is: a stupid person. (See Cipolla’s First Law)
Because they don’t immediately see Trump as an idiot, they are constantly trying to “figure him out,” like he’s some kind of a puzzle or a riddle or a Rubik’s cube or whatever Tyler Cowen means when he uses the word “Straussian.” They way, way over-think him. They develop a bunch of weird Rube-Goldberg-Machine-like predictions about what possibly, maybe, probably, potentially might happen under a Trump presidency, or what might possibly be going on up in that skull of his, as if it were even worth thinking that far ahead. Speaking with them is like debating what might happen if we elected a wolverine the President of the United States… like, why is that even a question? It’s a wolverine!! But they don’t see that the furry quadruped that I recognize almost immediately is in fact a wolverine, they just see a regular, non-stupid male human.
I feel less anger at these people than pity, because I know that they’ll be disappointed with the outcome of the election no matter what happens, eventually. (See Cipolla’s Fifth Law)
This doesn’t explain the bulk of Trump supporters, just the smart ones.
2. August 2016 at 08:30
I can believe that. However we know they exist and have existed. In fact I think Trump is comparable to both Joseph Smith and L. Ron Hubbard (minus the literacy, intelligence and attention spans of both men of course).
2. August 2016 at 08:49
@Jacob: well said. You need to add the fact that many (most?) smart Trump supporters go through those contortions because they detest Hillary Clinton so much that they have to justify voting for a wolverine by coming up with reasons why it’s not a wolverine. Anything to defeat Her.
And I get it, she’s terrible. I just don’t get how others don’t get that Trump is worse.
I also don’t get why the Hillary haters have to vote Trump. Why not Johnson, or write in someone? Especially in ‘safe’ states, where your vote means nothing, why vote for Trump?
2. August 2016 at 09:02
Jacob,
The term I’ve heard regarding smart or normally intelligent people justifying belief in stupid things is “motivated reasoning.” Here’s a prime example of how motivated reasoning can go wrong.
2. August 2016 at 09:06
“I’d be like, “Well I like Trump, but he was out of line calling McCain a loser, so fair question.””
-Booooo. Trump did apologize for calling McSame a loser, but later experience has shown he was absolutely wrong to do so. There is no reason at all McCain should have been apologized to.
Donald Trump wasn’t anywhere near hard enough on the Khans. What they did was disgusting. They want to use their son’s death to import more Muslims to kill more U.S. soldiers -as you know, more U.S. soldiers have been killed by Muslims here at home than Muslim soldiers have died in battle abroad- while exacting sympathy for those potential killers from undecideds. That is absolutely despicable, and if I were Trump, I’d call them out on it.
“They don’t just immediately see him for what he is: a stupid person. (See Cipolla’s First Law)”
-A stupid person could not take on the largest field of candidates in a presidential primary season ever -and still TRiUMPh. That takes genius. The fact Trump doesn’t think like academics who could never win a primary doesn’t make him any less intelligent.
BTW, the chance Utah goes for Trump is about the same chance as it would go to McCain in 2008: 100%.
http://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/2016-election-forecast/utah/#now
“And I don’t even have time to list all of Trump’s loony conspiracy theories.”
-“Vast right-wing conspiracy”, anyone?
“And we know that he arranged for a lot of those emails to be released.”?
https://twitter.com/mtracey/status/759945704919949313
Her is much more prone to conspiracy-theorizing than Donald Trump. It’s ridiculous. There’s the Donald Trump standard, and there’s the standard for everybody else.
“Trump would be the first candidate in modern presidential times, if not ever, to potentially blame an election loss on voter fraud or a rigged election.”
-This could have potentially happened a few times: 1876, 1960, 2000, and possibly 1916 as well. These elections were close enough for voter fraud to have decided the outcome.
2. August 2016 at 09:11
“I just don’t get how others don’t get that Trump is worse.”
-Name five ways he’s worse. Trump is better from the perspective of
*court appointments
*(stated) foreign policy
*the minimum wage
*special interests
*immigration policy, DC statehood, etc.
“Especially in ‘safe’ states, where your vote means nothing, why vote for Trump?”
-Why write in Gore? Why not Nader?
2. August 2016 at 09:13
A stupid person could not take on the largest field of candidates in a presidential primary season ever -and still TRiUMPh. That takes genius.
The fact that politicians win elections doesn’t make them geniuses. To think that is the opposite of genius.
2. August 2016 at 09:15
Evaluating Trump on the basis of his stated positions is also the opposite of genius. He’s demonstrated repeatedly that we shouldn’t trust a single thing that comes out of his mouth.
2. August 2016 at 09:21
Scott, trying to reason a Branch Trumpidian out of their faith in Trump is like trying to use evidence to convince a three year old that Santa isn’t real. They’re “pre-contemplative.” Using evidence only causes a back-fire effect.
2. August 2016 at 09:46
@ E. Harding,
Is there anything that you could possibly read on the Internet that would convince you not to vote for Trump? If so, please be specific. (Please don’t say “Really good reasons not to vote for Trump…” or anything tautological like that.)
I am including any things at all that Trump himself could possibly say or do that you could then read on the Internet as well. Anything at all, I’m curious.
@ Tom Brown,
I LOL’d hard at that YouTube clip. A very efficiently spent 16 seconds.
@ msgkings,
I believe people are not considering Gary Johnson et al because they (correctly) believe that third-party candidates have an approximately zero percent chance of actually winning, and if you haven’t noticed, Trump supporters in particular really, really like “winning.”
**************************************
In the spirit of Scott’s post about Hillary not understanding demand (taking a swipe at Hillary instead of at Trump for once), I will note that Cipolla’s description of a bandit is about as applicable to Clinton as Cipolla’s description of a stupid person is applicable to Trump:
“The bandit’s actions follow a pattern of rationality: nasty rationality, if you like, but still rationality. The bandit wants a plus on his account. Since he is not intelligent enough to devise ways of obtaining the plus as well as providing you with a plus, he will produce his plus by causing a minus to appear on your account. All this is bad, but it is rational and if you are rational you can predict it. You can foresee a bandit’s actions, his nasty manoeuvres and ugly aspirations and often can build up your defenses.”
This is another way of saying that Hillary’s refusal, even now, to admit that she sent classified material on her private email server (etc.) and lied about it repeatedly, makes perfect sense. Or her insistence that she had a significant role in passing the Children’s Health Insurance Program (she didn’t). Etc. etc. Your negative (a mistaken belief) is her plus (a vote).
2. August 2016 at 10:08
@Tom Brown: Harding posts like a person with a slightly below average IQ, because he has a slightly below average IQ.
2. August 2016 at 10:20
“Is there anything that you could possibly read on the Internet that would convince you not to vote for Trump?”
-It takes two to tango. Trump would have to prove himself not just bad for a primary candidate (which, during the primaries, he definitely wasn’t), but worse than Clinton.
If you are broadly aware of my perspectives (and I think longtime readers of my comments are), I think you would understand what would make me vote for Her. Take a look at my list of five ways Trump is better than Her. The more false these get, the less Trump is preferable to Her.
The list of things that would make me switch my vote is so simultaneously numerous and exceedingly unlikely that there is no point in listing them here.
If the entire Establishment media began to hate on Clinton and bow the knee before Trump, I’d definitely be concerned.
msgkings lies, as my IQ is over 120. I don’t know why he keeps repeating that line, as it’s so obviously false.
“The fact that politicians win elections doesn’t make them geniuses.”
-Read my comment again. Her winning the Democratic primary doesn’t make Her a genius -she lost last time while winning overwhelming margins with Whites. Trump winning the Republican primary does make him a genius.
2. August 2016 at 10:27
A good line from TheResurgent’s worst writer (Steve Berman):
2. August 2016 at 11:44
Is there anything that you could possibly read on the Internet that would convince you not to vote for Trump? If so, please be specific.
You did not ask, but I’ll tell you anyway.
Since striking poses in the voting booth is not my deal (and people who fancy themselves paladins of social and civic virtue are commonly insufferable humbugs – see Corey Robin or Robert Hughes), I’m cognizant of who the competing candidate is. Something would, like a bank examination, have to dramatically alter one’s evaluation of the relative merits of the candidates. The thing is, there’s quite a mess of public information about these two, one of whom has been an obtrusive public figure for 25 years and the other for nearly 30 (Tom Brown wants Trump’s tax returns, pining after some esoteric piece of information that he fancies will be discrediting). The competing candidate in turn comes with a nexus of associations.
The Democratic Party, is, in its Washington manifestation, a criminal organization in regard to which it has in the last 20 years grown impossible to utter one congenial word. The Republican Party is merely a collection of flat-footed careerists in thrall to the Chamber of Commerce and their donors.
Walter Mondale was merely ill-advised on a number of issues. He was, in most respects, a mensch. Except for a disagreeable hauteur, so was Michael Dukakis (leaving aside his regard for Laurence Tribe). The Democratic Party had an opportunity this year to nominate someone who has a history of being a mess of a man, but who is straight from the shoulder. This they did not do.
As for Trump, he’s garish, like the sets on Fox News. It will be exhausting having him in office. He’s a serial adulterer (though the extent of that is not well-established), he says whatever pops into his head, he appears to be on some sort of lark where he shows the world he can climb this mountain. However, he is a man of some accomplishment in life and he has some demonstrated talent for building organizations, little platoons and large ones. I’d have preferred Governor Walker, but I don’t get my preferences, I get the some of other people’s.
What’s been amusing about Scott Sumner’s chatter on this issue is that the comparative merits of various candidates or parties is not the subject. The actual condition of public life is not the subject. The subject is invariably is Donald Trump the cthulu like character that Scott Sumner fancies he is. Of course he isn’t, but we’re all ‘idiots’ and ‘morons’ for taking exception to the lurid grotesques he insists on painting.
We do not have the public life I’d want. We have the public life we have. Our legal system is shot through with fraud, the academy couldn’t be more pretentious and dysfunctional, upper class culture seems warped, the young seem motivated in their conception of public life by something akin to branding, the secular decay in standards of personal conduct is quite appalling (and applies at all levels). Chesterton supposedly said ‘there’s a whole lot of ruin in a nation’, but even with that in mind, we live in low, dishonest times.
Years ago, the Washington Monthly ran a Herblock-like cartoon which had a ruined car up on blocks, a mess of parts strewn around a lawn, and the junk all with labels like ‘social promotion’ and ‘junk curriculum’ and ‘tenure’. A man working on the car is labeled ‘education establishment’. He’s holding up a part and he says ‘oh, that’s the problem. Need more money’.
That’s Sumner. He stands among all the ruin in the world, and he fancies the problem is Donald Trump. Trump does typify the demise of shame in our world, but so do Dan Savage and Bruce Jenner. That’s our world. Sumner’s contemporaries have been the most responsible for making it what it is and the young don’t seem bothered at all by all the grossness. Twenty years ago, the young seemed open to being the progenitors of some cultural improvements. That was then, not now.
2. August 2016 at 12:48
To be fair to Trump, inviting the Khans onstage to make a partisan attack on Trump is an old trick the Dems use regularly. Call if The Jersey Girls Gambit. And, it did manage to deflect any attention to a true outrage at the Dem convention;
http://www.anncoulter.com/columns/2016-07-27.html
————–quote————-
But as the country reels from the cold-blooded murder of five policemen in Dallas and three in Baton Rouge, Lezley McSpadden, mother of Mike Brown, America’s most famous cop-assaulting criminal, appeared on stage at the Democratic National Convention.
Welcome to Hillary’s convention, celebrating the anti-police group Black Lives Matter!
….
Why does the Democratic platform endorse Black Lives Matter? And, most importantly, why was Mike Brown’s mother on stage at the Democratic National Convention?
….
Officer Wilson was completely cleared in the shooting of Mike Brown. As the investigations proved, Big Mike had violently assaulted Wilson, grabbed for his gun, and was charging the officer when Wilson shot and killed this raging behemoth.
However half-heartedly, Hillary claims to oppose cop-killing, so why is she using her convention to promote the biggest lie in the pantheon of anti-cop lies, and to celebrate a man whose most famous act was to violently assault a police officer?
Because of the despicable lies put out by BLM agitators, Wilson had to give up his career, move his family and will be forced to live in fear for the rest of his life. The town of Ferguson was destroyed, businesses burned to the ground, police officers attacked, people injured, the National Guard called in, and massive taxpayer money expended to contain the riots.
But at the Democratic Convention, Lezley McSpadden (mother of Mike Brown) was wildly cheered.
….
Donald Trump, along with every other Republican ever to run for president, is required to repeatedly “disavow” David Duke — someone he’s never met, never mentioned, never thought of— and certainly didn’t invite to speak at his convention.
But Hillary invites to her convention the mother of a man whose criminality destroyed a police officer’s life, tore the country apart and gave birth to a murderous cop-hating movement. Will a single reporter ask Hillary to disavow that?
—————-endquote————–
2. August 2016 at 14:10
According to this, that’s a BS line from CCC-lovin’ Ann.
2. August 2016 at 14:12
Some fun facts about Mr.Khan
His law firm specializes in the EB5 visa-buying (fraud) program. Could go on about this, worked in it myself, google “EB5 Jay Peak”
His law degree is from Saudi Arabia. He’s had some interesting things to say about Sharia! http://dailycaller.com/2016/08/01/khizr-khan-has-previously-written-extensively-on-sharia-law/
One wonders what he thinks about Taqiyya!
2. August 2016 at 14:19
A short one from Erick Erickson:
2. August 2016 at 14:28
@Tom Brown
Unironically quoting shill Erickson?
Sad
2. August 2016 at 14:37
@Justin,
And he’s a shill because he doesn’t support your candidate? He doesn’t support mine either. Should I regard him as a shill as well? Who’s he “shilling” for anyway?
2. August 2016 at 14:42
Tom Brown, you’ve provided support for Coulter’s broader point; Trump HAS denounced David Duke (in the past) and certainly didn’t invite him to speak at the Republican convention.
Why do you think Hillary and the Dems are getting a free pass on their racism?
2. August 2016 at 14:45
Personally, I’m not an admirer of BLM, however RedState points this event out:
Here’s What Happens When Police and Black Lives Matter Come Together In Peace
Admittedly, later this happened (from the DC branch of BLM).
2. August 2016 at 16:04
Jacob, Good comment.
Harding, You said:
“Vast right-wing conspiracy”, anyone?”
What part of “loony” do you not understand? There were indeed a mass of right wingers going after the Clintons. I grant you that the term “conspiracy” was over the top, and I see Hillary as being at close to Nixon levels of paranoia. But Trump is in a whole nuther league. Trump just completely makes this stuff up. These days almost every famous person’s death is a conspiracy to Trump. Practically every other presidential candidate is foreign born. He’s a nonstop source of conspiracy theories. Just today he produced a new one, the election is rigged.
2. August 2016 at 16:09
To the vehemently anti-Trump, but only slightly anti-Hillary crowd, please respond to this:
https://i.sli.mg/4w8vPL
2. August 2016 at 16:42
“Trump just completely makes this stuff up.”
“And we know that he arranged for a lot of those emails to be released.” is totally not just completely made up, eh?
“Practically every other presidential candidate is foreign born.”
-Fact is, the runner-up in the Republican primary was foreign-born. Whether you like that fact or not is not my concern.
“Just today he produced a new one, the election is rigged.”
-Nothing too far from Hillary’s Putin conspiracy theory. Judges are throwing out voter ID laws left and right. Why? To rig the election.
Again, there’s the Donald Trump standard, and there’s the standard for everybody else.
2. August 2016 at 18:50
Scott –
With another outrage coming out every day from Trump, and all his fans bizarre defenses of him and insistence that he’s a political genius, it’s hard to see a good side. But the prediction market says Hilary has an 82% chance of winning. And now Hilary is up by 9 points in the polls.
http://www.cnn.com/2016/08/01/politics/trump-vs-clinton-presidential-polls-election-2016/index.html
Since I helped you coin the word “Sumtrarianism”, I’d like to suggest another, “Trumpenfreude” – the pleasure derived from Trump losing, and laughing at his devoted fans.
I even have a suggestion for your blog headline the day after the election – “Trump Is a Loser”.
http://www.themoneyillusion.com/?p=28215#comment-376173
2. August 2016 at 20:39
@Negation, let’s not get ahead of ourselves. Never underestimate the stupid things an angry fearful ignorant electorate can “accomplish”.
2. August 2016 at 20:41
Interesting tweet from Katy Tur here though:
https://twitter.com/KatyTurNBC/status/760676000401334272?lang=en
3. August 2016 at 01:50
“Julian Assange: So, those Hillary Clinton emails, they connect together with the cables that we have published of Hillary Clinton, creating a rich picture of how Hillary Clinton performs in office, but, more broadly, how the U.S. Department of State operates. So, for example, the disastrous, absolutely disastrous intervention in Libya, the destruction of the Gaddafi government, which led to the occupation of ISIS of large segments of that country, weapons flows going over to Syria, being pushed by Hillary Clinton, into jihadists within Syria, including ISIS, that’s there in those emails. There’s more than 1,700 emails in Hillary Clinton’s collection, that we have released, just about Libya alone. “http://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2016/07/julian-assange-hacked-emails-include-info-hillarys-arming-jihadists-including-isis-syria/
3. August 2016 at 05:36
Negation, I like Trumpenfreude.
3. August 2016 at 06:40
This nicely summarizes latest outrages:
https://twitter.com/NBCNightlyNews/status/760827937432100864?lang=en
3. August 2016 at 06:43
Trumpenfreude: in the original German that’s Drumpfenfreude.