You love NYC and the USA because you can have lunch and talk to a Croatian girl and a girl from Kenya and a boy from the Upper East Side, and it makes you think of your grandparents.

Have you tried explaining elections to people who didn’t grow up in a country with a rule of law? And elections not rigged and people who weren’t thugs running the place? And election night parties that, however hard fought, are fun and you end up liking the person you bitterly fought against?  And, you trust the outcome? And you eat bad sandwiches and enjoy them because you are exhausted, but safe?

They kinda laughed at me for taking it for granted. Which I wasn’t.  For not having to pay bribes to crooked officials and such. Actually, the Croatian girl got a bit pissed off even talking about it.  You end up apologizing.  Just cause, to paraphrase Aaron Sorkin, paraphrasing someone else, the apology is the price you pay for being alive, rich, and free, all at the same time.

Happy election day.  Oh, my grandparents.  Here’s an image of workers in Crabtree, PA. They are walking out of town to a union meeting.  They had to leave town because the company owned all the property in town and so they met at a farm outside of town. And, sometimes they got in fights there and back. Just saying, we don’t take it for granted.

 

Reopening the National Affairs desk at the In.  Trying to consolidate election day texts.  Politics should be fun.  Please feel free to join in.

So, I just lit a candle at St. Frances de Sales on 96^th Street, between Lexington and Madison. This morning. No shit. Slipped in before the morning mass, dropped some coins.  Said a prayer. After watching part of Trump’s press conference yesterday, I’m not sure, at the moment, what other response is appropriate. This is what a dictatorship looks like.

I haven’t watched a second of cable news since election night. No political blogs. Only the Business and Food sections of the Times.

Yesterday, I gave in to temptation and watched 15 minutes of the Trump press conference and later read some online coverage for the parts I missed. Yeah, this is what a dictatorship looks like, what democracy slipping away feels like. What some thuggish slob looks like when he is almost President of the United States.  A traditionally important and dignified position, not to get all history wonky.

Some people were clapping in the room at random times during the press conference. Tepidly clapping. Uncertain, because it wasn’t appropriate. They were apparently paid staffers, and I assume that their boss was holding up applause signs and waving his arms in the air whenever he wanted a big cheer. I don’t think there’s ever been a press conference with a U.S. president in which people were paid to applaud. In fact, I remember when I was a child, watching a Nixon press conference with my parents and asking my parents why no one was clapping for the president. And they explained what a press conference was.  And their explanation made sense to a five-year-old, but it doesn’t now.

Would anyone bet against Trump having tax-payer-funded employees applauding him when he’s actually president and deigns to do press conferences? Or, maybe worse, they won’t be tax- payer- funded, they’ll be paid by Trump, but afforded all the rights and privileges of a government employee. 

I watched because part of me thought he might, like, say the things that a normal president-elect would say, and that would make me righteously angry.  But, he didn’t do any of that. He’s never going to sound like a president. Or maybe this is what presidents sound like now.

He turned over the stage to a lawyer who provided the legal fig leaves for Trump’s contemptuous dismal of any ethical standards regarding conflicts of interest. As he left the stage, the president-elect pointed to a big stack of folders that supposedly, by virtue of its bigness, indicated how forthcoming he’s being about how corrupt he is. To paraphrase Toby Zeigler in the West Wing, I’d bet all the money in my pockets against all the money in your pockets that those folders mostly contained blank sheets of paper.

The press conference was like when I was in junior high school and would watch an episode of Dukes of Hazzard and pretend it was a good show. That was actually a fun thing to do for about two episodes and the kind of thing you did before there was an internet. Give it a try sometime. Pretend that the conflicts in the show are real. That the jokes are funny. That Tom Wopat was really trying. Imagine the director saying something like, “let’s do the scene one more time, but this time over Boss Hogg’s left shoulder. Tom, try to see Boss as a human being. The man underneath the white suit.”

Trump’s lawyer apparently provided a lot of details, but the gist of it was that Trump doesn’t think any of the current conflict of interest laws apply to him. His sons will run the family business, and Trump will donate to charity any profits from high-profile conflicts of interest, like that hotel he just opened in Washington, D.C.

The press conference was also like watching pro-wrestling back in the glory days—circa 1977-1988. The wrestlers would pretend it was a real sport. The wrestling magazines would list the top ten heavyweight contenders.  The announcers would make some effort to provide analysis for the matches. “Gonzalez is giving away thirty pounds to Sgt Slaughter. Let’s see how he counters that size advantage.” The interviews were unscripted and, like the president-elect, the wrestlers who were good at it could just roll along in their own bullshit.  And, yeah, I know that Trump appeared on WWE shows a few decades ago. But, to understand Trump, you need to search YouTube for vintage interviews with Classy Freddie Blassie and Luscious Johnny Valiant.

Sadly, I couldn’t be more serious about this.

So, let’s consider that D.C. hotel that the president-elect will continue to own. (First pause to consider how ludicrous that previous sentence is.) He will still own it, though his sons will manage it. He’ll donate any profits to charity. So, the President will continue to have a lease with the federal government. People who have business with the federal government, both foreign and domestic, will stay at the hotel in order to curry favor with the President. Whatever Trump-owned business entity that controls the hotel gets to count business at the hotel as top-line revenue. That entity then gets tax relief of some type for the charitable donations. Are they going to make the hotel a non-profit? Rebrand it as Newman’s Own?

And then, the President also gets the P.R. benefit of handing this money out as charity, which he didn’t have to do by law, but he’s such a great guy. I can already see him handing out oversized checks to the South Bronx Junior Achievement program or the Cedar Rapid FFA. With people being paid to clap.  

So, I’ve just written almost one thousand words about only the first 15 minutes of the press conference. I haven’t even gotten to the president-elect denying rumors that the CIA leaked about him and Russian hoowas. Because, hey, the intelligence community leaking sex stuff about the incoming president is just business as usual for any new administration. Check out the YouTube videos of Eisenhower’s January 1953 press conference where he explains away those grainy photos of him at the Eagle’s Nest in those heady few weeks after VE Day.

This is not the republic that existed from 1776-2016.  This is something different and will require a different language and a different means of political discourse. Trying to assess a Trump press conference by the normal standards for such things is like a film critic trying to decide which season the Dukes of Hazzard jumped the shark.

Or a sports columnist handicapping whether Luscious Johnny Valiant and his brother Jimmy can defeat Tony Garea and Larry Zybysko for the tag team title.

You’ve lost the game the minute you entered it.

This is a short post.

We’re only three days into Post-Republic American, and people are still stumbling through the ruble in some state of shock, rightly focusing on the almost immediate instances of racial intolerance and individual acts of violence that are being  documented all over the internet.  And everyone is bracing for the coming civil unrest and violence on a scale not seen since the late 1960s. As the shock wears off over the weekend, that’s when the night sweats and real Terror will kick in, when—like a gambler who just lost his life’s savings–we realize how much is gone and that we can never get it back.

Or maybe people just turn inward and resolved, and Post-Republic political life will have the dynamism and energy of a one-party state like Egypt.

Regardless of all that please remember in your prayers the social safety net, particularly Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid.  Actually, don’t just pray for them, let your congress person know that you will devote your life to their defeat, if they dare to destroy these programs that have been a pillar of middle class prosperity. If Trump voters really were voting for more stable economic futures for themselves and their families, then I assume they weren’t voting to dismantle the social safety net. Maybe that’s one thing that Trump and Hillary voters can agree upon.

I doubt that Trump has thought about Social Security, Medicare, or Medicaid for even five minutes and is only vaguely aware that they exist. I don’t think he gives two shits about them one way or the other.  If someone whispered in his ear that we should extend Medicare to all Americans, he’d be fine with it. But, that’s not what’s being whispered in his ear.

The right wing of the Republican Party opposed Social Security from the start. Opposed Medicare and Medicaid from the start and to this day. (Republicans in the senate and House broke almost evenly on the Medicare vote in 1965, 13 for 17 against in the Senate, 70 for and 68 against in the House.  But, that Republican Party had a large moderate and even liberal wing in the Northeastern states. It was the party of Nelson Rockefeller and Jacob Javits and that party hasn’t existed for a very long time.

Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid are square in Paul Ryan’s and the Right’s sites. They’ve been waiting for years for this, and the moment has arrived. Particularly if Senate Republicans eliminate the filibuster.

I want to keep this short so just three last points:

• I’ll make no long defense of these program here except to note that Social Security eliminated mass poverty among the elderly, which was a very big problem before Social Security. Thanks to Medicare, the elderly are the only segment of the population that enjoys near universal health insurance.
• The GOP won’t technically destroy these programs. They would leave something in place called “Medicare”, but it won’t be anything resembling the current program, but rather be reduced to some inadequate block grants to states, or health care tax vouchers or personal health savings accounts.
• They’ll say we can’t afford Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid anymore. That they are reforming them to save them; that we have to burn the village to save it. They’ve been saying this about Social Security since 1939 and about Medicare since 1965 and certainly since the Reagan Administration in 1980. And it’s not true. In fact, Reagan proved that lie by working with congressional democrats in 1983 on legislation that ensured Social Security’s solvency to this very day.  These programs are well-managed and stable, but they won’t be if the ruling party in our now one-party country destroys them.

So, whether you voted for Trump or are making personal decisions about what role you will play in whatever resistance movements arise, please insist that your representatives in congress don’t destroy Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid.

My first listicle! I’m pumped! I’m jacked! Here are things that few people are discussing in the wake of what happened on Tuesday, but that are likely to happen in the next four years.

I’ve taken to referring to the period between 1776 and November 8, 2016 as The American Republic and the period starting November 9 as Post-Republic. I contend that something significant ended on Election Day. This isn’t a good ole Republican v. Democrat spat over marginal tax rates. Election Day was the curtain falling on the system of constitutional government, rule of law, international alliances, and norms of political behavior that held sway during America’s post-war zenith.

I don’t think voters are focused at all on what’s to come. It’s vital to the nation that we have small government conservatives to advance a narrative and policies that check what might otherwise be endlessly expansive government.  But, since Reagan, the right wing of the Republican Party has been on a mission to delegitimize government. To make voters hate it. To make workers of all income levels less secure so that they vote from fear of the future. And, as Grover Norquist once said, “Get it [government] down to the size where we could drown it in a bathtub.” A generous and beautiful metaphor that aptly fits Week One of the Post-Republic.

Here’s my predictions for things that are quite likely to happen in years one through four of the Post- Republic. All of these initiatives are designed to degrade and destroy the government and further inflame economic anxiety among all classes of voters. And change the country in ways that no one considered when making their vote.

Hang it up somewhere so that you can play along and check them off as they occur.

 

• Eliminate the senate filibuster. This is crucial since it will allow the GOP program to mostly advance along majority votes. No more of this 60 votes required crap that the GOP used effectively to stymie Obama’s legislative efforts. There are still a lot of ways for a minority leader to gum up the senate works, and Chuck Schumer is hell on wheels, and a few Republicans like Jeff Flake will break ranks now and again, but a filibuster-less Schumer will be like a teen-aged tennis player from Romania unlucky enough to draw Serena Williams in the first round at Wimbledon—just swinging in the air while the ace’s zip by.

• Destroy private sector unions. Scott Walker will be coming to town and this will surely be part of his remit, like it was in Wisconsin when he went after the public sector unions and also the tenure system at the University of Wisconsin. The decline of unions is the single greatest reason so many blue collar people lack economic security. My father worked for Unity Township in PA for 28 years and was a member of the UAW. You don’t get rich with that job.  No big promotions. No end-of-year bonuses. But, you did have job security.  You could plan ahead and structure your expenses to fit the income.  We lived in Crabtree, PA, not exactly the garden spot of Western PA and drove a car to all our vacations. But, we had economic security.  The fewer workers, at any level, with job security, the more angry voters who will turn against the government, poor people, and foreigners.

• Begin destroying the civil service: Another sinecure of moderately compensated, but stable middle class jobs. Look for Trump and the GOP to drastically accelerate the outsourcing of government services to private, for-profit companies and to provide minimal resources for government oversight. Services to the public deteriorate. Voters can’t get anyone on the phone to help them. Respect for government falls even lower.

• Destroy Medicare. Medicare is the second most successful social program in history, but the GOP has wanted to destroy it since it began in 1968. With congressional majorities they can start the assault. They’ll be careful that the changes don’t affect current beneficiaries or people nearing 62—they don’t want old people taking to the streets of D.C., randomly firing sawed-off shotguns at double parked Lincoln Towncars. But, people in their 20s, 30s, and 40s will find their Medicare benefits transmuting into vouchers and health care savings accounts (ask yourself, even if you are affluent, after paying your bills, educating your kids, and trying to self-fund your retirement, how much money do you have left to self-fund your health insurance?)  Most younger voters aren’t paying attention to Medicare now so the objections will be minimal, and, in any event, ignored.

• Destroy Medicaid.All the Obamacare attention is focused on the exchanges, but the expansion of Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act was responsible for the most significant increases in coverage. The expansion is made possible by federal dollars flowing to the states to fund the expansion. In rolling back Obamacare, the GOP can easily eliminate this funding. Millions fall of the insurance rolls, but they are mostly poor people of all races and colors and so most voters won’t notice or care.

• Start to Destroy Social Security. The single most successful social welfare program. We are probably still too close the financial meltdown in 2008 for the GOP to try converting Social Security into a 401(k) plan, but there are lots of ways—raising the retirement age, further reducing benefits, understaffing Social Security offices, maybe means testing so that it’s no longer a universal program—that they can sabotage Social Security.

• Defy the federal courts. It’s highly likely that at some time during the Trump Administration, a federal court will issue a ruling that does not favor the Trump Administration. I’m sure Steve Bannon is already looking for a test case. Trump decides to ignore the court’s ruling. The court reminds him of their decision and he says, “Yeah, I heard you the first time.”  The Trump Justice Department stays silent.  The judge isn’t about to send federal marshals to the West Wing to start serving arrest warrants.  The moment passes. And, few voters even notice.  But the precedent is set for the executive branch to defy the judiciary with impunity. And the rule of law sags and buckles.

• Politicize federal prosecutors. We take for granted that the government’s power to prosecute and imprison people is benign and apolitical.  Much of that due to the exemplary work of bi-partisan prosecutors who take their responsibilities very seriously.  There was a period during the second Bush administration, when Karl Rove was pressuring prosecutors to bring charges for what appeared to be political reasons. The outcry from Republican and Democratic prosecutors, current and former, was quick and unanimous.  Don’t think for a moment that Trump won’t appoint prosecutors who are not as squeamish about going after the Boss’s enemies. It will happened. And most voters won’t even notice it.

• Politicize the IRS. Trump will surely use the IRS to similarly punish his opponents and enemies.

• Exert the power of the presidency in civil courts. Trump routinely uses his wealth to force less wealthy companies and people to spend money fighting him in court.  Although his companies will be in a Mr. Magoo-level blind trust, run by his children, many companies and individuals will find themselves on the receiving end of a law suits brought by a company that bears the name of the President of the United States.

******Bonus Round******

• About that hotel he built in the D.C. Post Office building. In the closing days of the campaign, Trump made a stop in D.C. to unveil his new hotel in the magnificent former D.C. post office building. I’m not aware of a single reporter who asked if he would sell the hotel if elected, since being president and holding a lease with the Government Services Agency is a clear conflict of interest.  Both Hyatt and Marriot, who lost out to Trump in the bidding for the property, filed complaints with the GSA on the grounds that Trump so massively overbid the project, thereby incurring tens of millions of dollars in debt, that they saw no business model by which the hotel could be profitable. Trump will either just make the GSA renegotiate the lease and have taxpayers forgive the debt, just ignore the lease and not make the payments, and/or force organizations and individuals doing business with the federal government to patronize the hotel.  “And, of course, be sure to mention to the Boss how impressed you are with the hotel.”

In the first ten minutes of the debate last night, Trump announced that if elected he would name a prosecutor and put his political opponent on trial.   This is a remarkably important moment in the destruction of the American Republic.

Trump went full late-stage French Revolution last night. There’s not much distance between what Trump said last night and actual political violence against one’s opponents.  There really isn’t.  Once you call your opponent a criminal and a traitor and strip them of all collegiately and humanity, once you whip up your followers into emotional ecstasy in a very personal way against your opponent, then you are that much closer to the guillotine.

It was a great debate for those of us who want to see the Republican Party disintegrate into a 1980s-Beirut-Lebanon-state-of-nature collection of warring factions.  Trump gave his 30 percent of the vote their fan fiction moment of unloading on Hillary Clinton to her face. But, he probably just handed the senate and maybe the House to the Democrats.

Do Trump supporters think for a moment that there aren’t many liberals who wished they could have seen George W. Bush or Henry Kissinger on trial for “war crimes?”  We didn’t put Nixon on trial after Watergate. It cost Gerald Ford the presidency, but the pardon of Nixon was the right move.  Because we aren’t a nation that puts our political opponents on trial. After the Civil War, we didn’t imprison Jefferson Davis and Robert E. Lee and other Confederates leaders. There were no show trails of humiliated and defeated slavers and traitors. Robert E. Lee lived out his remaining years as a college president, rather than being hung from a platform at the Brooklyn Navy Yard.

But, Donald Trump pledged last night, if elected, to use the prosecutorial powers of the federal government to imprison his political opponent.

That statement made him look like a president, but not a president of this country.

This morning, on MSNBC’s Morning Joe, former French revolutionary and show trail impresario Louis Antoine St. Just appeared on a panel with Donny Deutsch and Rudy Giuliani. Despite, having himself been guillotined in July 1794, St. Just observed that, “A nation regenerates itself only on heaps of corpses. Mika, I can promise you that after this, only patriots will be left.”

After the debate last night, Kelly Anne Conway appeared on CNN in a segment with deceased French Revolutionary, Gabriel Riqueti, the former Comte de Mirabeau. The massively corrupt and dissolute Mirabeau started the segment by noting that, “I am very tired and drunk, having spent the last 72 hours awake, eating, drinking, fornicating, and discussing political strategy.”

Kelly Anne—who emerged from two days of seclusion—looking as radiant as British Fascist Dianne Mitford—remarked, “it was a masterful performance. He took the case right to Hillary Clinton.”

Mirabeau responded that Kelly Anne had the bosom of Madame De Stael and the polemical fury of Jean Paul Marat. “If I were still alive,” he observed, “I would, as Mr. Trump might say, move on you like a bitch.”

At 9:23 p.m. eastern standard time last night, the Republican candidate for president promised to use the power of the state to prosecute his political opponent.  He threatened his opponent with jail time if she loses. Mark that down.

Donald Trump may well pull our constitutional chestnuts out of the bonfire created by his fire-bug candidacy.  There’s almost no way he’s stepping down as the Republican nominee.  Not as long as 20-30 percent of the voting public will still cheer him and watch his eventual cable news network. He made it clear months ago, and I quote, that he “doesn’t give a rat’s ass what Paul Ryan has to say.”

I thought it was cute this morning when some Republicans suggested that Mike Pence might threaten to step down as the vice presidential nominee as a way of pressuring Trump to resign, Pence, spending the day in his brother-in-law’s basement man cave, watching the Colts and flipping through scripture at half-time.

No, Trump’s not going anywhere, but if we’ve learned one thing from PussyGate, it’s that American democracy is a fragile thing and not to be squandered out of angry votes for jackass candidates.

I don’t mean to disparage Trump voters. I don’t doubt their motives. I can name at least 16 people with whom I am either acquaintances, friends, or family who are voting Trump.  I share some of their views on income inequality.  I don’t think any of them are stupid.  None of them have been affected by factories moving to Mexico. All of them have achieved some level of middle-class prosperity. At least three of them are casually racist. They are otherwise really nice people, and their racism doesn’t define them, but, let’s not pretend racism isn’t part of this.

But for all that, I don’t doubt their motives. I do fear their decision to give into frustration and vote for a clown candidate.  The lesson from PussyGate is that they can’t do that again.

We Don’t Need No Stinking Badges

We take our democratic institutions for granted.  Until, we allow them to be broken. There are nine members of the Supreme Court.  The president appoints them and congress reviews that appointment in a reasonable amount of time and provides a vote on confirmation.  Unless, we allow that custom to be broken. Nine justices?  Well, now it’s eight.  If Hillary wins, and the GOP hangs onto the senate, is there any reason for them to approve any of her nominees to the court?  If there are two more court vacancies in the next four years, why can’t we move ahead with a six-justice court?

Let’s imagine that Trump did step down. Maybe there are even worse revelations to come. He has a miserable debate this evening. Even Paul Ryan has to abandon him.  Kelly Anne Conway pockets her media fees and resigns, and it’s just him and Christie and Giuliani sitting in Trump Tower.

He resigns, and the anti-Trump faction of the Republican Party names Mike Pence as their nominee. And they ask states to create new ballots.  Except that a number of states have already started to vote. And many have sent out absentee ballots. And those states using paper ballots have already printed them.

Democratic governors and attorneys general would likely claim that they can’t create and distribute new ballots in three weeks.  Republicans would likely file law suits.  Democrats would file law suits in all fifty states.  And there would be civil rights and voting rights suits all over the place.

The Trump faction of the now-shattered Republican Party would go to court and the streets to protest the Pence usurper.

Kinda Taxation without Representation

What do you do about the people who have already voted?  Gee, I voted for Hillary because I really hate Trump, but I’d love the chance to vote for Pence. Can I have a do over?  I wanted to support the Republican candidate because I despise Hillary, but now my vote for Trump won’t make a difference. Can I have a do over so I can vote for Pence?  I didn’t register to vote because I loathe Trump and Hillary, but now that Pence is on the ballot, I’d like to register.  My state should extend the registration deadline.

All this stuff will end up in courts.  And when it can’t be worked out in three weeks, some people start to suggest delaying the election.  And who decides that? Congress, which is mostly all running for re-election. And many of these law suits will get ten-day fast tracked to the Supreme Court.  Which only has eight members.  Who could end up deadlocked in a tie.

But, maybe we get lucky. Maybe Platonic swing-vote justice Anthony Kennedy saves us all by voting the right way. Except, I’m pretty sure that my definition of “voting the right way” is different from at least 30 million of my fellow citizens.  So, then what? If only there was some consensual system under which the majority of voters could render their opinion, while respecting the rights of the minority.

Trump will save us from all this because he’s not going to quit. But, he and others have taken us right up to the edge. With a month to go.

Ah, to be young and alive and Ivanka Trump in those heady summer days before the GOP convention. She was Trump’s secret weapon.  Exhibit A of his greatest success. “Look at my great kids! How big of an asshole can I be with a family like that?” said the nominee of the party of Lincoln, Eisenhower, and Reagan.

She runs the family business. She’ll be his White House Chief of Staff. Maybe she runs for Governor of New York. So smart . . . so strong . . . look at that dress . . .

And, yeah, it turns out she’s likely pretty smart, because she’s walked away from her father’s campaign faster than a Republican governor in a swing state.  We last saw her make a convention speech introducing her father. The speech focused on family leave and women in the work place and would have fit perfectly into the Democratic convention’s Wednesday night schedule.

Other than that, as far as I can tell, her only other major appearance was a cameo last month when her father announced his maternity leave plan. I know that no one cares about policy in this election, but it’s worth noting that Hillary has proposed a significant expansion of paid family leave.  For men and women. And not just for pregnancy, but to support people with seriously ill or dying family members.

Trump’s proposal only covered pregnancy.  And only applied to women. And wasn’t paid leave, but merely a tax deduction. For the populist blue-collar candidate, it was an old school rich-guy Republican proposal.  Not even a tax credit, which directly reduces a person’s taxes, but a tax deduction which only reduces the income being taxed.  And almost 70 percent of Americans don’t itemize their taxes; they take the standard deduction. But, really, who cares, because it’s likely that Trump forgot about the proposal five minutes after his daughter made him announce it.

Other than that, I haven’t seen her on Morning Joe or The View or appearing at voter registration rallies in Ohio or Women Entrepreneur conferences at the Wharton School.

Ivanka’s friend Chelsea Clinton is doing several appearances a week for her mother.  Her brothers, Eric and Don Jr. are out there, charming the American public in a way that only third-generation billionaire real estate developers can, scribbling in their pocket-sized Moleskin note books lists of people they are going to “sue the shit out of” when this thing is over.

None of this is meant to be a criticism of Ivanka.  One of the last remaining areas of bi-partisan decency is that a candidate’s family members who are either too young or not inclined to participate in politics are off limits. It’s one of the reasons why when nude photos of Melania Trump were published, the Democrats didn’t make an issue of it.

But Ivanka, pre-convention, was one of Trump’s most popular spokespeople. She was out there.  And then she just stopped. He’s getting killed in the polls with women in every age and socio-economic group. Wouldn’t a leering, groping, fat-shaming, “hey-honey-twirl-around-for-me-would-ya?” candidate benefit from his business woman daughter campaigning for him?

At the GOP convention, we were presented with Trump’s family as a reason—perhaps the only compelling one—to trust him with the presidency.  Since then, the Trump men have been prominent in support of their father, while his wife and daughters have demurred.

Maybe Ivanka is the smart, strong one in the family.  I wonder who she’s going to vote for in November?

It just can’t go without comment. Yesterday, Fascist candidate Donald J. Trump spoke before a mass audience of supporters in Fort Meyers, Florida, rousing his followers to denounce a WEAK liberal democracy and WEAK, politically correct, NYPD and FBI for being WEAK in their handling of terrorist suspects. We are WEAK!

Seriously, this what the Republican nominee for President of the United States had to say about the apprehension of the suspect in the New York and New Jersey bombings this weekend. As we all know, the NYPD, FBI, and various Jersey police departments identified and apprehended this guy in twenty-four hours.

And a big shout out to the Linden, N.J. police, Linden being my sister’s place of residence for ten years, so I know it well.

I’ve included a link below of Trump’s Fascist rally in Fort Meyers.  At 18:44 in the clip, he goes bat-shit crazy in regards the apprehended bomber.  Here are the bat-shit crazy quotes about how the bomber is being given concierge treatment by our WEAK government. My comments in italics.

“He’s going to receive amazing hospitalization. He’ll be taken care of by one of the best doctors in the world.” 

Well, they took him to Newark so probably a good doctor, but best in world? And as soon as he’s not in threat of bleeding to death, he’ll be in a prison infirmary. And under interrogation.  

“He’ll be given a fully modern and updated hospital room.” 

WFT? Updated?  Did Trump remodel the Newark hospital?  Is he paying the contractors for their work? Newark FBI Bureau Chief:  “He gets the best room, you hear me?  The updated rooms! Someone get on 1-800-Flowers. I want flowers in that room, god damn it!!! Something seasonal!

“And, he’ll probably even have room service, knowing the way our country is.” 

Um, yeah, they are going to give him food. Because no one cares if he dies, but we’d like to interrogate him and, um, we don’t let people starve to death in our hospitals. And, it’s HOSPITAL FOOD, you stupid jackass.

“And on top of all of that, he’ll be represented by an outstanding lawyer.”

He’ll likely have a public defender, who may well be “outstanding”.  Because everyone gets a lawyer. Sixth amendment and all.

“His punishment will not be what it once would have been”  

What in the name of @#$%& is he talking about?  This isn’t Death Wish VI, and he’s not Charles Bronson.  “He raped and killed my family . . . . And got off on a technicality . . . . A technicality!!”

Forty-eight days until Election Day.  Trump’s not hiding who he is.  Which side are you on?

The link is here. The above comments are at 18:44.  For god’s sake, don’t watch the entire thing.  Or, actually, if you are a Millennial thinking of voting Libertarian, please do watch the entire thing.