The Official Donald Trump Thread
Don King drops N-word in introducing Donald Trump in Ohio
Boxing promoter Don King accidentally used the N-word at a Donald Trump African-American outreach event in Cleveland.
A Donald Trump African-American outreach event in Cleveland turned awkward Wednesday when a prominent backer used the N-word.
Boxing promoter Don King was discussing the need for African-American entrepreneurship when he said, "I told Michael Jackson, I said, 'if you're poor, you are a poor negro -- I would use the 'n word' ...."
King did just that moments later, saying "if you are a dancing and sliding and gliding n----- ... I mean negro ..."
Boxing promoter Don King accidentally used the N-word at a Donald Trump African-American outreach event in Cleveland.
A Donald Trump African-American outreach event in Cleveland turned awkward Wednesday when a prominent backer used the N-word.
Boxing promoter Don King was discussing the need for African-American entrepreneurship when he said, "I told Michael Jackson, I said, 'if you're poor, you are a poor negro -- I would use the 'n word' ...."
King did just that moments later, saying "if you are a dancing and sliding and gliding n----- ... I mean negro ..."
Donald Trump Stops off for Some Cheesesteaks at Geno's 9/22/16
Dub Pap Whoever came up with the "tiny part" line deserves a raise.
Like · Reply · 11 · 13 mins
Henrik Ahlm Trump, here is a solid piece of advice
Trump, I'm an extremely busy man. However, I have a good heart and I see on your body language including not least your facial expressions that you are suffering tremendously! As your social media advisor I can h...See More
Like · Reply · 4 · 21 mins
3 Replies · 4 mins
Bill Nass "Category 5 hurricane poised to hit jamaica and come close to the us"...oh nvm let's bash trump on the front page
Like · Reply · 3 · 17 mins
Jo-Anna Cottle All that money he still looks like a troll n has a little part that he could pay to get enhanced...clearly show his wives are only the size of his wallet
Like · Reply · 6 mins
John Hinant http://www.nationalenquirer.com/.../exclusive-hillary.../
Like · Reply · 14 mins
1 Reply
Ronald Spicer "Tiny part"
I see what you did there, Daily News.
Like · Reply · 3 · 17 mins
Donald Trump appears in unearthed 2000 Playboy tour video featuring naked women touching themselves and each other
- Tweet
Republican presidential candidate Donald J. Trump made an appearance in a 2000 soft porn Playboy video.
(Playboy)
Meg Wagner Leonard Greene
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS
Updated: Friday, September 30, 2016, 11:13 PM
Turns out he’s the one with the sex tape.
Donald Trump popped his cork in a soft-core Playboy porn video unearthed just hours after he resumed his attack on a former Miss Universe, this time with charges she had performed sex on camera.
Before you go “eewwwww” at the notion of Trump and porn in the same sentence, know the cork he popped came out of an actual champagne bottle holding bubbly he poured over a Playboy logo during a benign segment of a 2000 video of a national Playboy Playmate tour that featured a stop in New York.
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inRead invented by Teads
The Playmate stops included Las Vegas, Chicago, Nashville and San Diego. When the tour hits New York, the video features all the city landmarks: the Statue of Liberty, the Twin Towers and Donald Trump.
Donald Trump attacks ‘disgusting’ ex-Miss Universe — again
A fully-clothed and cufflinked Trump welcomes the women with a bottle of bubbly, which he opens and pours on a Playboy-branded limo.
“Beauty is beauty, and let’s see what happens with New York,” the smarmy Trump says.
Trump appears in the videos New York City segment that displays city monuments.
(Playboy)
The video was obtained by BuzzFeed.com.
Other scenes from the film feature nude women who dance and pose in sexual positions. The naked women touch themselves and each other, sometimes with honey or while taking sensual baths.
SEE IT: Trump, under oath, planned to call Mexicans 'rapists'
The VHS cover of the video reads: “From luxuriating in a warm, soapy tub, to reveling at an exclusive night club, Carol and Darlene bare their sex appeal and lead you on a sensual journey of discovery.”
The film also reveals Trump has a soft side for immigrants.
“Darlene and her twin sister, Carol, have led extraordinary lives,” says a page from the Playboy.com bios of the video’s sibling stars.
22 photos view gallery
Nude Donald Trump erected in Union Square
“From the jungles of Peru to the beaches of Miami to the pages of Playboy, they’ve overcome poverty, isolation, terrorism, language barriers and physical calamity to become our first Playmates of the new millennium.”
Trump said Ivanka made him promise not to date younger than her
Hours before the video resurfaced, Trump launched a Twitter tirade against former beauty queen Alicia Machado, who endorsed Hillary Clinton after saying Trump shamed her for gaining weight after her 1996 Miss Universe triumph.
Trump, trying to discredit the curvy critic, suggested Machado had a sex tape, a likely reference to a grainy night-vision video of her having sex while appearing on a reality show.
Trump is the Republican presidential nominee — and his party’s platform calls porn “a public health crisis.”
Trump suggested Clinton helped the Venezuelan stunner get into the U.S. as a conniving election ploy.
Neo-Nazi Trump fan arrested for broadcasting 'hate is good'
In the video trump opens a bottle of champagne and pours it on the Playboy bunny logo.
(Playboy)
“Wow, Crooked Hillary was duped and used by my worst Miss U. Hillary floated her as an ‘angel’ without checking her past, which is terrible!” Trump tweeted early Friday, days after two decade-old allegations resurfaced that the 1996 Miss Universe was part of an attempted murder plot.
Trump again name-called Machado, whom he once reportedly dubbed “Miss Piggy” because she gained post-pageant weight, during the series of vicious 5 a.m. tweets.
“Did Crooked Hillary help disgusting (check out sex tape and past) Alicia M become a U.S. citizen so she could use her in the debate?” he asked.
While court records indicate Machado was once charged as an accomplice to an attempted murder, allegations she starred in a sex tape cannot be confirmed.
Clinton quickly condemned her rival’s tirade with her own lengthy Twitter rant and said it was just another attack on women.
Carol Bernaola and Darlene Bernaola, apparent Peruvian immigrants, appear in the video.
(Ron Galella/WireImage)
“This is ... unhinged, even for Trump,” she tweeted later Friday. “What kind of man stays up all night to smear a woman with lies and conspiracy theories?”
She added: “Trump obsessively bullies Rosie O’Donnell — an accomplished actor. He insulted Kim Kardashian for her weight — when she was pregnant. Pathetic.”
Machado also ripped the bombastic real estate mogul for his comments.
“The Republican candidate and his campaign team are once again generating attacks, insults and trying to revive defamations and false accusations about my life,” she wrote in Spanish on Instagram. “Through his campaign of hate, the Republican candidate insists on discrediting and demoralizing a woman, which is definitely one of his most terrorizing characteristics.”
The beauty queen-turned-actress rejected Trump’s notion that her citizenship was a campaign tactic.
“I became a citizen of this great country because my daughter was born here and I wanted to exercise my rights, including my right to vote,” she posted.
Machado is a vocal Clinton supporter and has even starred in online ads for the former First Lady. She has boasted online about how she intends to vote for Clinton in her first-ever presidential election as a U.S. citizen.
With News Wire Services
"A piece of shit" HAHAHA!
Donald Trump’s free fall, according to cartoons
By Michael Cavna October 11 at 12:24 PM
YOU CAN go low or you can go high, but if you’re a cartoonist with mere days left of Trump vs. Clinton, you certainly want to get the most out of what time you have left.
As the campaign’s final month promises to suck up most of the satirical oxygen in the room, a handful of metaphors are coming to the fore.
Numerous cartoonists have decided to hand over their visual to “the grope,” in a PG-filtered nod to the Republican nominee’s lewd back-of-the-Bush-bus hot-mic-ed comments. Christo Komarnitski, for one, depicts Donald Trump going low:
by Christo “Komar” Komarnitski / Bulgaria (CagleCartoons.com) 2016
Other artists, such as the left-leaning Darrin Bell, decided to make Trump put a move on the Statue of Liberty:
by Darrin Bell / WPWG 2016
The right-leaning Nate Beeler, by contrast, renders the statue as her own tower of strength, resilient to any Trump edifice along the American skyline:
by Nate Beeler / Columbus Dispatch (CagleCartoons.com) 2016
Another common theme is the growing rift between Trump and his party. To get that across, John Darkow builds a great wall — and has the GOP “paying for it” politically:
by John Darkow / Columbia Daily Tribune (CagleCartoons.com) 2016
Similarly, Randall Enos has the menacing birds of prey circling the elephant circus:
by Randall Enos / CagleCartoons.com 2016
In a similar vein, Tom Toles has Trump in a free fall, with no political plank to hold him up:
Entertainment Alerts
Big stories in the entertainment world as they break.
by Tom Toles / The Washington Post 2016
Other cartoonists, such as David Fitzsimmons and Pat Bagley, have chosen to nail Hillary Clinton’s debate face of superiority/confidence/smugness:
click here if you want to glimpse the bloody mess. His metaphor registers as an utter original.
By Michael Cavna October 11 at 12:24 PM
YOU CAN go low or you can go high, but if you’re a cartoonist with mere days left of Trump vs. Clinton, you certainly want to get the most out of what time you have left.
As the campaign’s final month promises to suck up most of the satirical oxygen in the room, a handful of metaphors are coming to the fore.
Numerous cartoonists have decided to hand over their visual to “the grope,” in a PG-filtered nod to the Republican nominee’s lewd back-of-the-Bush-bus hot-mic-ed comments. Christo Komarnitski, for one, depicts Donald Trump going low:
by Christo “Komar” Komarnitski / Bulgaria (CagleCartoons.com) 2016
Other artists, such as the left-leaning Darrin Bell, decided to make Trump put a move on the Statue of Liberty:
by Darrin Bell / WPWG 2016
The right-leaning Nate Beeler, by contrast, renders the statue as her own tower of strength, resilient to any Trump edifice along the American skyline:
by Nate Beeler / Columbus Dispatch (CagleCartoons.com) 2016
Another common theme is the growing rift between Trump and his party. To get that across, John Darkow builds a great wall — and has the GOP “paying for it” politically:
by John Darkow / Columbia Daily Tribune (CagleCartoons.com) 2016
Similarly, Randall Enos has the menacing birds of prey circling the elephant circus:
by Randall Enos / CagleCartoons.com 2016
In a similar vein, Tom Toles has Trump in a free fall, with no political plank to hold him up:
Entertainment Alerts
Big stories in the entertainment world as they break.
by Tom Toles / The Washington Post 2016
Other cartoonists, such as David Fitzsimmons and Pat Bagley, have chosen to nail Hillary Clinton’s debate face of superiority/confidence/smugness:
click here if you want to glimpse the bloody mess. His metaphor registers as an utter original.
‘Law & Order: SVU’ to air Trump-inspired episode two weeks before the election
BY Nicole Lyn Pesce
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS
Wednesday, October 12, 2016, 9:48 AM
“Veep’s” Gary Cole (r.) plays a politician whose election campaign is shaken after his troublesome past treatment of women comes to light.
(FilmMagic/Getty Images)
Change the “dun-dun” noise to “Trump-Trump.”
An upcoming “Law & Order: SVU” episode appears to be ripped from Donald Trump’s contentious presidential campaign.
The NBC crime procedural is notorious for taking cases from news headlines, and the Oct. 26 episode is a doozy. “Veep’s” Gary Cole plays a politician whose election campaign is shaken after his troublesome past treatment of women comes to light.
86 photos view gallery
New York Daily News covers of Donald Trump through the years
Hmm ... sound familiar?
The huuuge episode comes in the midst of Trump being called out for alleged lewd behavior in the past, both on the set of “The Apprentice” and backstage at the Miss Teen USA beauty pageant. And of course, the Trump campaign is still reeling from the “Access Hollywood” video released last week, where the former “Celebrity Apprentice” host bragged about groping women and grabbing their privates with the then co-host Billy Bush.
"Law & Order: SVU" has tackled many hot-button topics.
(NBC)
The “SVU” episode titled “Unstoppable” will air less than two weeks before the Nov. 8 presidential election, and also guest stars Currie Graham, Meredith Travers, Bianca Amato and Peter Gallagher. Reps for “SVU” won’t confirm whether Cole’s character is definitely inspired by Trump, simply reminding the Daily News that the show is fiction. But showrunner Rick Eid told The Hollywood Reporter last fall that, “It is possible we may try to explore a story involving some sort of brash demagogue with political ambitions.”
This 18th season of “SVU” is on a roll with hot-button episode. It also tackled the San Bernardino shootings and the Netflix true-crime documentary “Making a Murderer,” and Vice President Joe Biden even cameoed in the second episode this season.
BY Nicole Lyn Pesce
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS
Wednesday, October 12, 2016, 9:48 AM
- Tweet
“Veep’s” Gary Cole (r.) plays a politician whose election campaign is shaken after his troublesome past treatment of women comes to light.
(FilmMagic/Getty Images)
Change the “dun-dun” noise to “Trump-Trump.”
An upcoming “Law & Order: SVU” episode appears to be ripped from Donald Trump’s contentious presidential campaign.
The NBC crime procedural is notorious for taking cases from news headlines, and the Oct. 26 episode is a doozy. “Veep’s” Gary Cole plays a politician whose election campaign is shaken after his troublesome past treatment of women comes to light.
86 photos view gallery
New York Daily News covers of Donald Trump through the years
Hmm ... sound familiar?
The huuuge episode comes in the midst of Trump being called out for alleged lewd behavior in the past, both on the set of “The Apprentice” and backstage at the Miss Teen USA beauty pageant. And of course, the Trump campaign is still reeling from the “Access Hollywood” video released last week, where the former “Celebrity Apprentice” host bragged about groping women and grabbing their privates with the then co-host Billy Bush.
"Law & Order: SVU" has tackled many hot-button topics.
(NBC)
The “SVU” episode titled “Unstoppable” will air less than two weeks before the Nov. 8 presidential election, and also guest stars Currie Graham, Meredith Travers, Bianca Amato and Peter Gallagher. Reps for “SVU” won’t confirm whether Cole’s character is definitely inspired by Trump, simply reminding the Daily News that the show is fiction. But showrunner Rick Eid told The Hollywood Reporter last fall that, “It is possible we may try to explore a story involving some sort of brash demagogue with political ambitions.”
This 18th season of “SVU” is on a roll with hot-button episode. It also tackled the San Bernardino shootings and the Netflix true-crime documentary “Making a Murderer,” and Vice President Joe Biden even cameoed in the second episode this season.
Donald Trump 'excluded black female contestants from
calendar parties' and 'preferred All American women',
his former business associates claim
Donald Trump, pictured at a calendar event in 1993 and (right) earlier this week,
has been accused of banning black models from parties and calendar competitions
Donald Trump has been accused of banning black models from parties and calendar competitions by two former business associates.
He is also said to have neglected to pick black women from sets of photographs sent to him by Mr Houraney so they could work out who attended events.
Mr Trump has vehemently denied both claims, saying he did not receive pictures and did not exclude black women from events.
The couple made the comments in a civil lawsuit, which Ms Harth submitted over claims the politician groped her, the Boston Globe reported.
In her deposition, she said he also 'directed that any black female contestants be excluded' from the Florida party.
She added: 'He just wanted to make sure that the girls were up to his standards.
The couple made the comments in a civil lawsuit, which Ms Harth submitted over claims the
politician groped her in The Oak Room at The Plaza (above). Mr Trump has denied all the
claims.
'He was always very interested in every phone call about who had the great bodies and who didn’t, who was more beautiful. He was always on the search for the most beautiful.'
Mr Houraney, whose company ran pageants in Las Vegas, added that Mr Trump's type was: 'Blond hair. All American look. Not too tall, not too short.'
The complaint has since been dropped but Ms Harth insisted she stands by her allegations, according to the Globe.
Mr Trump denied groping or making sexual advances to Ms Harth.
MailOnline has contacted Mr Trump for further comment but has not yet received a reply.
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3545773/Donald-Trump-excluded-black-female-contestants-calendar-parties-preferred-American-women-former-business-associates-claim.html#ixzz4MzM1UIxm
calendar parties' and 'preferred All American women',
his former business associates claim
- Republican's former planned partners made the claims in court documents
- George Houraney and Jill Harth worked with him in the early 1990s
- Claimed he said 'black female contestants' could not attend a Florida party
- Also 'neglected to pick black women from sets of photographs', it was said
- Mr Trump vehemently denied the claims and said he did not look at images
Donald Trump, pictured at a calendar event in 1993 and (right) earlier this week,
has been accused of banning black models from parties and calendar competitions
Donald Trump has been accused of banning black models from parties and calendar competitions by two former business associates.
The Republican hopeful allegedly told planned business partners George Houraney and Jill Harth, who run the American Dream Calendar Girls company, that 'black female contestants' were not allowed to attend a Mar-a-Lago party in the early 1990s.
He is also said to have neglected to pick black women from sets of photographs sent to him by Mr Houraney so they could work out who attended events.
Mr Trump has vehemently denied both claims, saying he did not receive pictures and did not exclude black women from events.
The couple made the comments in a civil lawsuit, which Ms Harth submitted over claims the politician groped her, the Boston Globe reported.
In her deposition, she said he also 'directed that any black female contestants be excluded' from the Florida party.
She added: 'He just wanted to make sure that the girls were up to his standards.
The couple made the comments in a civil lawsuit, which Ms Harth submitted over claims the
politician groped her in The Oak Room at The Plaza (above). Mr Trump has denied all the
claims.
'He was always very interested in every phone call about who had the great bodies and who didn’t, who was more beautiful. He was always on the search for the most beautiful.'
Mr Houraney, whose company ran pageants in Las Vegas, added that Mr Trump's type was: 'Blond hair. All American look. Not too tall, not too short.'
The complaint has since been dropped but Ms Harth insisted she stands by her allegations, according to the Globe.
Mr Trump denied groping or making sexual advances to Ms Harth.
MailOnline has contacted Mr Trump for further comment but has not yet received a reply.
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3545773/Donald-Trump-excluded-black-female-contestants-calendar-parties-preferred-American-women-former-business-associates-claim.html#ixzz4MzM1UIxm
Katrina Pierson to Don Lemon "Trump is fighting the media specially CNN" @KatrinaPierson 
. . . from the tree?
Trump Jr.: Women Who 'Can't Handle' Harassment Should Teach Kindergarten
© The Associated Press FILE - In this July 19, 2016, file photo, Donald Trump Jr., son of Republican
presidential candidate Donald Trump, speaks at the Republican National Convention in Cleveland.
The younger Trump posted a message on Twitter
In a 2013 radio interview on the "The Opie and Anthony Show" surfaced by Buzzfeed News on Thursday, Donald Trump Jr. complains about women making charges of sexual harassment in the workplace, suggesting that women who have a trouble with men making certain comments should go teach kindergarten.
The comments came as Trump Jr. and the hosts were discussing whether women should be allowed at male-only golf courses.
“If you have a guys’ place you have a guys’ place," Trump Jr. said.
One of the hosts then lamented that women "complain" about "harassment."
"That’s why we hate having them around. They stop us from doing what we want to do," the host said.
Trump Jr. said that "in the club house, guys just want to be guys" and converse freely "even if you’re just talking s**t and it’s not really true."
One of the hosts then said that it's mostly "just bulls**tting around" and then suddenly human resources is intervening.
Listen to the clip at Buzzfeed News.
This article was written by Caitlin MacNeal from Talking Points Memo and was legally licensed through the NewsCred publisher network.
SOURCE: http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/polit...teach-kindergarten/ar-AAiX2jo?ocid=spartandhp
.
Trump Jr.: Women Who 'Can't Handle' Harassment Should Teach Kindergarten
© The Associated Press FILE - In this July 19, 2016, file photo, Donald Trump Jr., son of Republican
presidential candidate Donald Trump, speaks at the Republican National Convention in Cleveland.
The younger Trump posted a message on Twitter
In a 2013 radio interview on the "The Opie and Anthony Show" surfaced by Buzzfeed News on Thursday, Donald Trump Jr. complains about women making charges of sexual harassment in the workplace, suggesting that women who have a trouble with men making certain comments should go teach kindergarten.
The comments came as Trump Jr. and the hosts were discussing whether women should be allowed at male-only golf courses.
“If you have a guys’ place you have a guys’ place," Trump Jr. said.
One of the hosts then lamented that women "complain" about "harassment."
"That’s why we hate having them around. They stop us from doing what we want to do," the host said.
Trump Jr. said that "in the club house, guys just want to be guys" and converse freely "even if you’re just talking s**t and it’s not really true."
One of the hosts then said that it's mostly "just bulls**tting around" and then suddenly human resources is intervening.
Trump Jr. then said,
"I’m of that mindset — and I’ll get into trouble, I’m sure — I’ve been on this show enough, I’m sure I’ll get myself in trouble one of these days — but like, if you can’t handle some of the basic stuff that’s become a problem in the workforce today, like you don’t belong in the workforce. Like, you should go maybe teach kindergarten. I think it’s a respectable position."
"I’m of that mindset — and I’ll get into trouble, I’m sure — I’ve been on this show enough, I’m sure I’ll get myself in trouble one of these days — but like, if you can’t handle some of the basic stuff that’s become a problem in the workforce today, like you don’t belong in the workforce. Like, you should go maybe teach kindergarten. I think it’s a respectable position."
"You can’t be negotiating billion-dollar deals if you can’t handle, like, you know...” Trump Jr. continued. “But listen — there’s a place where you have to draw the line — but today the stuff you get in trouble for…”
Listen to the clip at Buzzfeed News.
This article was written by Caitlin MacNeal from Talking Points Memo and was legally licensed through the NewsCred publisher network.
SOURCE: http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/polit...teach-kindergarten/ar-AAiX2jo?ocid=spartandhp
.
Democrats, who tied Republican Sen. Pat Toomey to Donald Trump in another new ad last week, have reserved $17 million of TV airtime there. | Getty
Senate GOP faces late cash crunch
Democratic candidates and groups are set to spend more on TV ads in seven of eight key Senate states over the final four weeks.
By Alex Isenstadt, Seung Min Kim and Kevin Robillard
10/15/16 07:46 AM EDT
Senate Republicans, whose fragile majority has been threatened by Donald Trump’s tanking presidential bid, are suddenly confronting another problem: a lack of cash.
Republicans are set to be massively outspent on TV ads in seven of the eight states that are likely to decide control of the chamber. The spending disadvantage could badly hinder the GOP’s prospects, and it has led to growing frustration among the party’s top strategists — many of whom are convinced it’s long past time to cut Trump loose and focus almost exclusively on preserving the Senate majority.
Republicans say they are particularly concerned that Democrats will use their financial advantage to tie the GOP candidates to an increasingly toxic Trump, who is now besieged by numerous accusations of sexual assault. In the New Hampshire Senate race — where Democrats have seized on GOP Sen. Kelly Ayotte’s errant debate comment that Trump “absolutely” was a role model for children, which she hastily retracted — Democrats have booked nearly $16 million of TV airtime between Oct. 11 and Nov. 8, while Republicans have set aside over $12 million, according to a media tracking source. In Indiana, where another key contest is unfolding, Democrats are set to air over $7 million worth of commercials during the same time frame, while Republicans have booked around $4 million.
And in Pennsylvania, the gap is particularly large. Democrats, who tied Republican Sen. Pat Toomey to Trump in another new ad last week, have reserved $17 million of TV airtime there — more than double the $8 million Republicans are set to air.
It could get worse. As Hillary Clinton pulls away from Trump, Republicans are worried Democrats will shift resources down-ballot. The Democratic super PAC Priorities USA, which has been dedicated to electing Clinton, is considering investing in several Senate races.
“I think it’s very disconcerting,” said Steven Law, who oversees Senate Leadership Fund, the principal outside group defending the Republican majority. “What we’re seeing is, Democrats’ big money has concluded that the presidential race is banked. So now, it’s pouring into the most competitive Senate races.”
Law, a longtime ally of Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, said there was “almost giddy donor enthusiasm on the Democratic side.”
Despite their current advantage in TV reservations for the final weeks, Democrats still fear a last-minute infusion of cash into Republican coffers that could help tilt key races in the GOP's favor.
"As Trump gets increasingly more erratic and toxic, Democrats have to brace for the potential onslaught of Republican money being redirected to the Senate races to rescue their vulnerable incumbents," said Sadie Weiner, a spokeswoman for the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee. "It's important that our donors step up to help us do what we can to fight back."
Law’s group has already benefited from a handful of extremely large donations this year. Senate Leadership Fund and its affiliated nonprofit raised a whopping $42 million in August, including $20 million from Las Vegas casino magnate Sheldon Adelson and his wife, Miriam.
Yet, in the final stretch, Republicans risk being outspent – including in conservative states where their incumbents were once thought to be safe but are now under duress. In Missouri, Democrats have invested over $8 million, while Republicans have reserved just over $6 million. In North Carolina, Democrats have booked nearly $12 million, while Republicans have set aside around $9 million.
The GOP is scrambling. Last week, a number Republican groups, including the Club for Growth and Chamber of Commerce, held a conference call to discuss how to rush more money into Pennsylvania, where Toomey is fighting for his political survival. McConnell, meanwhile, has been urgently reaching out the party’s top donors and encouraging them to give to Senate Leadership Fund.
McConnell has also been leaning on his members. At a private lunch last month, he urged GOP senators to fork over more cash to the National Republican Senatorial Committee, which has been outraised by its Democratic counterpart by nearly $40 million. The lunch, which was held at the committee’s Capitol Hill headquarters, brought in $3 million, most of which came from South Dakota Sen. John Thune, the third-ranking Senate Republican.
Law, meanwhile, said he’d alerted his group’s donors “to this new surge of financial activity” from Democrats.
“My hope is that we’ll be able to continue to be competitive as we have been up to the last several weeks,” he added. “But whether we can close the gap entirely, I still don’t know.”
Republicans say it’s not too late to place additional reservations. According to one person familiar with Senate Leadership Fund’s plans, the group is likely to expand its TV bookings. The NRSC, meanwhile, is expected take out a loan, according to an aide, which would allow it to increase its late Senate spending. The organization also recently received a transfer of more than $4 million from the Republican National Committee.
But there are challenges. Two senior party strategists expressed frustration that Charles and David Koch, the billionaire industrialists who are among the party’s most generous benefactors, are not funding a fall TV campaign. Freedom Partners, a Koch-allied political group, has yet to reserve commercial time for the final four weeks leading up to the election. The Koch network has said that after spending tens of millions on commercials earlier in the campaign, it would be focused on ground game efforts during the final month, which they believe is a more cost-effective method of persuading voters.
The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, meanwhile, has only reserved about $650,000 for the final stretch — a small sum for such a powerful organization.
Instead, Republicans are largely relying on a trio of McConnell-allied entities: Senate Leadership Fund, Granite State Solutions (which is backing Ayotte in New Hampshire), and One Nation (a nonprofit group also run by Law). The three groups will account for over half of all the party’s TV spending during the final month.
“You never want to be in the red on a spending chart, but a lot of the groups that helped make a Senate majority back in 2014 are no longer on the field,” said Scott Jennings, a former top political adviser to George W. Bush. “You basically have Mitch McConnell and his groups against Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton and all that that entails.”
Others are questioning the approach of the NRSC, which spent heavily early on in this year’s campaign but now is short on cash for the final push. As of Friday afternoon, the committee had reserved just $5 million for the four week stretch — a small fraction of the $40 million booked by the DSCC. NRSC officials say they decided to spend money earlier in the campaign season in order to define Democratic candidates.
One national Republican strategist, however, called the decision a “giant gamble” and “a bit of a headscratcher.”
But without the early spending, NRSC aides argue, races in blue-tinted swing states like New Hampshire and Pennsylvania might already be over. “We made our reservations early so this strategy was communicated to outside groups and we believe that if this early spending wasn’t done we would be in a very, very bad place right now,” one NRSC official said.
The group also argued the spending gap shows the hollowness of Democratic arguments about the Kochs and heavy political spending.
“For the last two years all we heard from Harry Reid is how Republicans were outspending them. Breaking news folks, Democrats were lying and have trouble counting,” NRSC spokeswoman Andrea Bozek said.
Others are blaming the shortfall on a depressed Republican donor base. With many of the party’s deepest-pocketed contributors unhappy about Trump’s nomination, many are convinced, there has been less enthusiasm about giving to down-ballot causes.
Last week, Texas senators John Cornyn and Ted Cruz hosted what Republicans had hoped would be a big-splash fundraiser at the home of Houston energy executive Wil VanLoh, to benefit six incumbents up for reelection. The result, however, was anything but. The event raised only a fraction of what was expected, said one attendee.
“There's still a lot of money on the sidelines, especially in Texas, due to the current state of the party and its nominee,” said Jay Zeidman, a Texas health care executive whose family has given extensively to the party.
Trump, he argued, “is dividing more than bringing us together.”
http://www.politico.com/story/2016/10/senate-gop-cash-crunch-229830#ixzz4NA1rJBsz
Attachments
Trump calls for the end of ‘Saturday Night Live’ in Twitter rant, says grope accusers are lying
BYJASON SILVERSTEIN
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS
Updated: Sunday, October 16, 2016, 10:27 AM
The walking punchline presidential candidate couldn’t take a joke and spent his Sunday morning lashing out at “Saturday Night Live” for its latest mockeries of him.
He also — once again — accused multiple women of lying by accusing him of groping and sexual harassment.
The Donald is not amused by "Saturday Night Live."
(MARY SCHWALM/AFP/GETTY IMAGES)
“Watched Saturday Night Live hit job on me.Time to retire the boring and unfunny show. Alec Baldwin portrayal stinks. Media rigging election!” he wrote in the tweet that started it all.
SNL channels Trump’s women in scathing 'Melanianade' song
He packed a whole lot of paranoia into two followup tweets — claiming the polls are “close” (they aren’t), accusing his sexual harassment accusers of revealing “made up events THAT NEVER HAPPENED” and blaming the media for “rigging election” against him.
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Donald J. Trump✔@realDonaldTrump
Watched Saturday Night Live hit job on me.Time to retire the boring and unfunny show. Alec Baldwin portrayal stinks. Media rigging election!
7:14 AM - 16 Oct 2016
Trump was set off by “Saturday Night Live” sketches that mocked most of the disasters from the past week of his campaign — the grope accusations, the leaked “grab them by the p---y” video, the abysmal second debate performance.
Thecold open sketch,styled as a presidential debate, started with the candidates — played by Alec Baldwin and Kate McKinnon — as “Republican nominee Donald Trump and — can we say this yet? — President Hillary Clinton.”
(NBC)
(NBC)
Two sketches from "Saturday Night Live" mocked Donald Trump's week of scandals and disasters.
The show later featured"Melanianade,"a Beyoncé-styled kiss-off music video from the women in Trump's life.
SNL takes on 'worst' debate with stalker Trump, confident Clinton
Trump himselfhostedan "SNL" episode last November, when there was still hope he wouldn't be the GOP nominee. He gave himself a pat on the back for the performance, telling CNN the day after, "It was very well received and probably got very good ratings, who knows."
BYJASON SILVERSTEIN
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS
Updated: Sunday, October 16, 2016, 10:27 AM
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- Tweet
The walking punchline presidential candidate couldn’t take a joke and spent his Sunday morning lashing out at “Saturday Night Live” for its latest mockeries of him.
He also — once again — accused multiple women of lying by accusing him of groping and sexual harassment.
The Donald is not amused by "Saturday Night Live."
(MARY SCHWALM/AFP/GETTY IMAGES)
“Watched Saturday Night Live hit job on me.Time to retire the boring and unfunny show. Alec Baldwin portrayal stinks. Media rigging election!” he wrote in the tweet that started it all.
SNL channels Trump’s women in scathing 'Melanianade' song
He packed a whole lot of paranoia into two followup tweets — claiming the polls are “close” (they aren’t), accusing his sexual harassment accusers of revealing “made up events THAT NEVER HAPPENED” and blaming the media for “rigging election” against him.
Follow
Donald J. Trump✔@realDonaldTrumpWatched Saturday Night Live hit job on me.Time to retire the boring and unfunny show. Alec Baldwin portrayal stinks. Media rigging election!
7:14 AM - 16 Oct 2016
Trump was set off by “Saturday Night Live” sketches that mocked most of the disasters from the past week of his campaign — the grope accusations, the leaked “grab them by the p---y” video, the abysmal second debate performance.
Thecold open sketch,styled as a presidential debate, started with the candidates — played by Alec Baldwin and Kate McKinnon — as “Republican nominee Donald Trump and — can we say this yet? — President Hillary Clinton.”
(NBC)
(NBC)
Two sketches from "Saturday Night Live" mocked Donald Trump's week of scandals and disasters.
The show later featured"Melanianade,"a Beyoncé-styled kiss-off music video from the women in Trump's life.
SNL takes on 'worst' debate with stalker Trump, confident Clinton
Trump himselfhostedan "SNL" episode last November, when there was still hope he wouldn't be the GOP nominee. He gave himself a pat on the back for the performance, telling CNN the day after, "It was very well received and probably got very good ratings, who knows."
Alessandro de' Medici
Banned
http://www.philly.com/philly/news/2...color_in_Philadelphia_turn_out_for_Trump.html
Abdul Fattah, a Muslim man from Philadelphia, isn't offended by Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump's promise of a temporary ban on Muslims entering the United States if he is elected.
In fact, Fattah said, he actually is "grateful" for the proposed policy.
"A lot of Americans have the misconception that Donald Trump is racist toward Muslims," said Fattah, 39, who attended a rally on Independence Mall Sunday as part of a small group under the banner Muslims for Trump. "That's not what [the policy] is about whatsoever. It's about the extreme vetting of Muslims coming into this country, and I am in complete agreement of that."
Fattah said he is worried about Muslim immigrants entering the country illegally, "coming into communities, and saturating them with their hate."
Fattah was among about 100 demonstrators at Sunday's All American Rally for Trump. The event, organized by Texas activists Arvind Kumar, Satya Dosapati, and Black Men for Bernie founder Bruce Carter, who is now campaigning for Trump, sought to rally support among people of color in Philadelphia. The organizers said they are planning similar demonstrations in other swing states.
"Our long-term aim is to liberate the Civil Rights movement from bipartisan politics," Kumar said. "Nobody owns us. Just because of our race, we are not obligated to vote for one party or the other."
Other demonstrators wore tee shirts emblazoned "Chinese Americans for Trump." Some carried signs that read: "Muslims for Trump" and "Hindus for Trump."
Ruben Obed, a singer born in New Jersey and now living in Puerto Rico, attended as well and performed his original salsa song "Latino Anthem for Trump
Trump, Trump, Trump, this Latino's gonna vote for Trump," he sang.
Heidi Little, 45, who wore a Chinese Americans for Trump shirt, said she believes Trump can bring racial minority groups together and give everyone a "fair-and-square" chance at the American dream.
Little added that she isn't bothered much by the 2005 video released last week of Trump using vular language while speaking about women with former "Access Hollywood" host Billy Bush.
"I think that there are much more important issues in this country, and we should be rational," Little said. "We should be more focused on bigger issues in this country. I think [the video is] just a distraction."
"Michelle Obama is out there talking about Donald Trump and all these women," said Daphne Goggins, 53, a Republican ward leader from North Philadelphia. "I don't care about the women. I really don't."
Goggins, who is African American, said she supports Trump because of his education and economic policies, and because she is tired of the assumption that all black people vote for Democrats.
"We have to tell the Democratic party that they don't own us, like we're slaves still," Goggins said. "Black people need to wake up now. I can understand if they don't vote for Donald Trump, but I would love to see him" get elected.
The rally went mostly uninterrupted until Ryan Bott, who was on his lunch break, started to "boo" from a bench.
"It's all just fear-mongering. It's not true," Bott said, referring to the cheers that erupted whenever Trump's plan to build a wall on the Mexican border was mentioned. "I don't believe it's what this country is founded on."
The rally was scheduled for Oct. 8, but it was postponed twice due to rain from Hurricane Matthew.
About 100 people attended Sunday.
"The Black community has voted to our own detriment," Goggins said. "They're trained to pull that lever for Democrat, so I'm hoping to dent it as much as I can so we can win Pennsylvania."
Abdul Fattah, a Muslim man from Philadelphia, isn't offended by Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump's promise of a temporary ban on Muslims entering the United States if he is elected.
In fact, Fattah said, he actually is "grateful" for the proposed policy.
"A lot of Americans have the misconception that Donald Trump is racist toward Muslims," said Fattah, 39, who attended a rally on Independence Mall Sunday as part of a small group under the banner Muslims for Trump. "That's not what [the policy] is about whatsoever. It's about the extreme vetting of Muslims coming into this country, and I am in complete agreement of that."
Fattah said he is worried about Muslim immigrants entering the country illegally, "coming into communities, and saturating them with their hate."
Fattah was among about 100 demonstrators at Sunday's All American Rally for Trump. The event, organized by Texas activists Arvind Kumar, Satya Dosapati, and Black Men for Bernie founder Bruce Carter, who is now campaigning for Trump, sought to rally support among people of color in Philadelphia. The organizers said they are planning similar demonstrations in other swing states.
"Our long-term aim is to liberate the Civil Rights movement from bipartisan politics," Kumar said. "Nobody owns us. Just because of our race, we are not obligated to vote for one party or the other."
Other demonstrators wore tee shirts emblazoned "Chinese Americans for Trump." Some carried signs that read: "Muslims for Trump" and "Hindus for Trump."
Ruben Obed, a singer born in New Jersey and now living in Puerto Rico, attended as well and performed his original salsa song "Latino Anthem for Trump
Trump, Trump, Trump, this Latino's gonna vote for Trump," he sang.
Heidi Little, 45, who wore a Chinese Americans for Trump shirt, said she believes Trump can bring racial minority groups together and give everyone a "fair-and-square" chance at the American dream.
Little added that she isn't bothered much by the 2005 video released last week of Trump using vular language while speaking about women with former "Access Hollywood" host Billy Bush.
"I think that there are much more important issues in this country, and we should be rational," Little said. "We should be more focused on bigger issues in this country. I think [the video is] just a distraction."
"Michelle Obama is out there talking about Donald Trump and all these women," said Daphne Goggins, 53, a Republican ward leader from North Philadelphia. "I don't care about the women. I really don't."
Goggins, who is African American, said she supports Trump because of his education and economic policies, and because she is tired of the assumption that all black people vote for Democrats.
"We have to tell the Democratic party that they don't own us, like we're slaves still," Goggins said. "Black people need to wake up now. I can understand if they don't vote for Donald Trump, but I would love to see him" get elected.
The rally went mostly uninterrupted until Ryan Bott, who was on his lunch break, started to "boo" from a bench.
"It's all just fear-mongering. It's not true," Bott said, referring to the cheers that erupted whenever Trump's plan to build a wall on the Mexican border was mentioned. "I don't believe it's what this country is founded on."
The rally was scheduled for Oct. 8, but it was postponed twice due to rain from Hurricane Matthew.
About 100 people attended Sunday.
"The Black community has voted to our own detriment," Goggins said. "They're trained to pull that lever for Democrat, so I'm hoping to dent it as much as I can so we can win Pennsylvania."
Alessandro de' Medici
Banned
http://www.counterpunch.org/2016/10/14/the-ruling-classs-hatred-of-trump-is-different-than-yours/
The Ruling Class’s Hatred of Trump is Different Than Yours
by Paul Street
Much, maybe most, of the nation’s corporate, financial, and imperial establishment loathes Donald Trump. When’s the last time one of the corporate media’s presidential debate moderators actually argue with one of the two major party presidential contenders, as did the wealthy ABC News reporter Martha Raddatz (enraged by Trump’s lack of enthusiasm for a United States military confrontation with Russia in Syria) last Sunday?
More than fifty Republican “national security” “elites” have joined several top Republican office-holders, a good number of typically Republican newspaper editorial boards, and the “liberal” New York Times’ editors in proclaiming Trump too stupid, sexist, juvenile, racist, volatile, ignorant, and vicious to be trusted with the keys to the White House.
The master class’s fear and loathing of Trump – one of their own, sort of – can be detected in the normally Republican-leaning corporate elite. A recent Wall Street Journal report finds that not a single solitary Fortune 100 chief executive has endorsed Trump or donated to his campaign. Hillary Clinton has accepted campaign contributions funds from 11 of these corporate captains. Four years ago, just five F-100 CEOs gave to Obama while a while nearly a third donated to Mitt Romney.
In a recent Times editorial, the Wall Street executive Steve Ratter (the slimy financier Obama put in charge of his Wall Street-friendly auto bailout) noted the “paradox” of the super-wealthy business mogul Trump’s stark unpopularity with those in his own exclusive class:
“He has spent his entire career among business executives and yet that constituency is voting with hard cash that he should not be president…no Republican presidential hopeful in memory has been so unpopular in the business community…At a board meeting two weeks ago, I chatted separately with two prominent Republican businessmen, One, the chief executive of a Fortune 100 company, said that he had never voted for a Democrat but couldn’t support Trump. The other a private equity investor who had voted Democratic only once, said that he was so scared of a Trump presidency that he has donated ‘every cent possible’ under the campaign finance rules to Hillary Clinton” (S. Rattner, “Trump, The Next Big Short,” NYT, October 10, 2016, A21).
Apparent in campaign finance data, big capital’s preference for the neoliberal and de facto moderate Republican Hillary over Trump is evident also in global stock market. “As Mrs. Clinton’s dominance of the first presidential debate became apparent,” Rattner reports, “investors cheered: markets around the world rose and the dollar strengthened…[reliable forecasters estimate] that a Trump victory would cause stocks to lose 7 percent, while a Clinton victory would lead to a 4 percent increase.”
You hate Donald Trump too my fellow lefty (I assume that broad descriptive term covers at least 90 percent of the people who read this essay) and for some very good reasons. I’m no exception. Anyone who doubts my disgust for Trump – not to be confused with admiration or even “lesser evil” tolerance for Hillary Clinton (accurately described as a “right-wing fanatic” and a “lying neoliberal warmonger” even by left thinkers arguing for progressives to vote for her on “lesser evil” grounds) – can go read a recent teleSur English essay in which I attributed Trump’s rise in no small part to the “the vicious culture of neoliberal mass idiocy.”
There’s a big difference, however, between our portside, bottom-up contempt for Trump and the Establishment’s top-down and intra-elite scorn for the Republican presidential nominee. There are probably more than a few members of the United States ruling class who are genuinely offended by some or all of Trump’s worst attributes: racism, nativism, sexism, climate-denialism, and authoritarianism. Still, most folks in the nation’s unelected and interrelated dictatorships of money and empire would certainly be willing to put up with the prospects of a viciously sexist, racist and classist Trump presidency if they didn’t think it would be really bad for business, for U.S. global power, and for the legitimacy of American authority at home and abroad. It isn’t they who would be most victimized by a Trump presidency, after all, and it’s a really big reach to think that any but a few of them could care less about those who would suffer most under a (highly unlikely) Amerikanner-Trump administration.
At the same time, Trump has earned equal if not greater disdain from the richly bipartisan ruling class and power elite for saying some curiously accurate and even sensible things that left progressives have reasons to agree with. Here are some of the statements for which Trump cannot be forgiven by a financial and imperial super-class that has never really accepted him as a fellow member despite his wealth:
+ “Free trade” (really untrammeled global investor rights) ala Bill Clinton’s North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and Barack Obama’s proposed Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) has cost untold masses of “forgotten” working class Americans their livelihoods.
+ The American political system is “broken” by big money special interests that undermine and distort democracy – something Trump says he knows all about because of his own history as a deep pockets funder of politicians, including the Clintons.
+ The nation is in horrific shape under the rule of corrupt, dollar-drenched “free trade” Democrats and Republicans. Much of the country’s infrastructure is crumbling, for example. Urban Black America is in a terrible state whatever the skin color of the current U.S. and U.S.-born president.
+ Hillary’s done nothing, or close to it, across thirty years of not-so “public service” to protect ordinary U.S. citizens against hard times – quite the opposite in fact.
+ “Crooked Hillary” Clinton is backed by super-wealthy financial elites who reasonably expect her do their bidding even as she deceptively claims to want to serve the people against the wealthy Few.
+ Hillary talks like a friend of working class folks on the campaign trail but tells elite backers behind closed doors that her actual and “private” positions on policy are often quite different and more Establishment-friendly than her (vote-seeking) “public” positions.
+ Hillary holds much of the nation’s white working and middle class populace in sheer aristocratic contempt, calling many such people “deplorable” and “irredeemable.”
+ The corrupt Goldman Sachs-backed Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee used dirty tricks to undermine and defeat Bernie Sanders.
+ Hillary ran a corrupt “pay nfor play” game with foreign and multinational nations and investors through the Clinton Foundation during her time atop the U.S. State Department.
+ Hillary “Queen of Chaos” Clinton (she of the leading U.S. ruling class think-tank The Council on Foreign Relations) has been a recklessly imperial foreign policy disaster, from her support for the disastrous regime-changing invasion of Iraq, her leading of the charge for calamitous regime change in Libya, her determined advance of blood, regime-changing (she hopes) madness in Syria, her (and Obama’s) advance of the Islamic State, and her heedless upping of the ante of geopolitical confrontation with nuclear Russia in Eastern Europe and Syria.
+ S. policymakers who were serious about wanting to defeat the Islamic State and other barbarian, radical-Islamist jihadists in the Middle East would step back from their saber-rattling against Russia and Syria, both of whom are dedicated to “crushing ISIS.”
To be sure, my paraphrasing of Trump’s more sensible and accurate statements make them sound more coherent and leftish than they are. I doubt that Trump could be bothered to read more than one page of the left foreign policy analyst Diana Johnstone’s indispensable book Queen of Chaos: The Misadventures of Hillary Clinton (AK Press, 2015). It’s way too much to expect him to include Honduras (see the opening chapter of Johnston’s book for a useful history) in the list of nations that Hillary has helped ruin. Still, the bullet-pointed language above is close enough to what he’s actually said during this election cycle for the nation’s Deep State owners (the real masters behind the marionette theater of electoral politics) to hate him – this for reasons different than the ones that inform lefties’ disdain for Trump. Even as it leads publicly and in politically correct fashion with the problems of Trump’s sexism, racism, boorishness, and temperament, the thing that the Establishment really finds most reprehensible about Trump is his unpardonable penchant for telling true tales out of ruling class school – tales that many of us on the left have been telling from less privileged vantage points and without the white-nationalist and sexist venom that leaps off Trump’s noxious persona and out of his mouth. The terrible aspects of Trump that we find most horrific are different from what the ruling class finds most inexcusable about him – though it must be added that smart elites understand that his sexism, racism, nativism, and buffoonery threaten to spark popular uprisings and foreign derision that do not serve elite business and imperial interests. That last is a key point. A Trump presidency could well spark rebellions and resistance the ruling class would very much prefer to avoid
Does Trump mean the things he says that overlap with left critiques of Hillary Clinton and of the broader U.S. domestic and imperial order? I have no idea what really goes in the sociopathic brain of “the Donald.” The fascistic right (and Trump may be partly neo-fascist at some level) has a long history of mimicking certain parts of left rhetoric (the Nazis advanced national “socialism” after all) to gain mass appeal. Some of Trump’s more seemingly left-friendly rhetoric strikes me as part of a calculated strategy to win disaffected Bernie fans along with working class votes. Another source could be intra-elite spite, highly personal bitterness at an Ivy League-minted aristocracy that has never really accepted the crude man-child Donald Trump into its inner and upper circles. Whatever the motivation behind his jabs at the ruling elite and its imperial policies, an American ruling class that is still quite far from embracing fascism even in a mild and Trumpian form is not about to pardon Trump for giving crude voice to such critiques from within the top .01 percent and on a vast public stage.
Meanwhile, Trump – now 11 points behind actually crooked Hillary in national polls and with just a one-in-six chance of winning – is useful to the ruling class in a curious and dark way. Nearly three months after the predictable (and predicted) surrender of the somewhat sincerely populist, social-democratish Bernie Sanders campaign, Trump aids and abets the reigning corporate media and politics’ culture’s longstanding project of slandering populism as a reactionary and backwards instinct of the foolish, unwashed masses – the “bewildered herd.”
Elite commentators love to mock and marginalize the childish mindset of those who think that everyday people (the “rabble”) should actually be in charge of their own societal and political-economic affairs (imagine!) and thereby deprive elites of their supposed natural right to rule. Linking such populism to right-wing cretins like Donald Trump – a recurrent habit at places like The New York Times and CNN – is one of the ways in the slander is advanced, helping clear the way for more politically correct neoliberals like Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton to seize the nominal reins of executive branch power at least in Washington.
The Ruling Class’s Hatred of Trump is Different Than Yours
by Paul Street
Much, maybe most, of the nation’s corporate, financial, and imperial establishment loathes Donald Trump. When’s the last time one of the corporate media’s presidential debate moderators actually argue with one of the two major party presidential contenders, as did the wealthy ABC News reporter Martha Raddatz (enraged by Trump’s lack of enthusiasm for a United States military confrontation with Russia in Syria) last Sunday?
More than fifty Republican “national security” “elites” have joined several top Republican office-holders, a good number of typically Republican newspaper editorial boards, and the “liberal” New York Times’ editors in proclaiming Trump too stupid, sexist, juvenile, racist, volatile, ignorant, and vicious to be trusted with the keys to the White House.
The master class’s fear and loathing of Trump – one of their own, sort of – can be detected in the normally Republican-leaning corporate elite. A recent Wall Street Journal report finds that not a single solitary Fortune 100 chief executive has endorsed Trump or donated to his campaign. Hillary Clinton has accepted campaign contributions funds from 11 of these corporate captains. Four years ago, just five F-100 CEOs gave to Obama while a while nearly a third donated to Mitt Romney.
In a recent Times editorial, the Wall Street executive Steve Ratter (the slimy financier Obama put in charge of his Wall Street-friendly auto bailout) noted the “paradox” of the super-wealthy business mogul Trump’s stark unpopularity with those in his own exclusive class:
“He has spent his entire career among business executives and yet that constituency is voting with hard cash that he should not be president…no Republican presidential hopeful in memory has been so unpopular in the business community…At a board meeting two weeks ago, I chatted separately with two prominent Republican businessmen, One, the chief executive of a Fortune 100 company, said that he had never voted for a Democrat but couldn’t support Trump. The other a private equity investor who had voted Democratic only once, said that he was so scared of a Trump presidency that he has donated ‘every cent possible’ under the campaign finance rules to Hillary Clinton” (S. Rattner, “Trump, The Next Big Short,” NYT, October 10, 2016, A21).
Apparent in campaign finance data, big capital’s preference for the neoliberal and de facto moderate Republican Hillary over Trump is evident also in global stock market. “As Mrs. Clinton’s dominance of the first presidential debate became apparent,” Rattner reports, “investors cheered: markets around the world rose and the dollar strengthened…[reliable forecasters estimate] that a Trump victory would cause stocks to lose 7 percent, while a Clinton victory would lead to a 4 percent increase.”
You hate Donald Trump too my fellow lefty (I assume that broad descriptive term covers at least 90 percent of the people who read this essay) and for some very good reasons. I’m no exception. Anyone who doubts my disgust for Trump – not to be confused with admiration or even “lesser evil” tolerance for Hillary Clinton (accurately described as a “right-wing fanatic” and a “lying neoliberal warmonger” even by left thinkers arguing for progressives to vote for her on “lesser evil” grounds) – can go read a recent teleSur English essay in which I attributed Trump’s rise in no small part to the “the vicious culture of neoliberal mass idiocy.”
There’s a big difference, however, between our portside, bottom-up contempt for Trump and the Establishment’s top-down and intra-elite scorn for the Republican presidential nominee. There are probably more than a few members of the United States ruling class who are genuinely offended by some or all of Trump’s worst attributes: racism, nativism, sexism, climate-denialism, and authoritarianism. Still, most folks in the nation’s unelected and interrelated dictatorships of money and empire would certainly be willing to put up with the prospects of a viciously sexist, racist and classist Trump presidency if they didn’t think it would be really bad for business, for U.S. global power, and for the legitimacy of American authority at home and abroad. It isn’t they who would be most victimized by a Trump presidency, after all, and it’s a really big reach to think that any but a few of them could care less about those who would suffer most under a (highly unlikely) Amerikanner-Trump administration.
At the same time, Trump has earned equal if not greater disdain from the richly bipartisan ruling class and power elite for saying some curiously accurate and even sensible things that left progressives have reasons to agree with. Here are some of the statements for which Trump cannot be forgiven by a financial and imperial super-class that has never really accepted him as a fellow member despite his wealth:
+ “Free trade” (really untrammeled global investor rights) ala Bill Clinton’s North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and Barack Obama’s proposed Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) has cost untold masses of “forgotten” working class Americans their livelihoods.
+ The American political system is “broken” by big money special interests that undermine and distort democracy – something Trump says he knows all about because of his own history as a deep pockets funder of politicians, including the Clintons.
+ The nation is in horrific shape under the rule of corrupt, dollar-drenched “free trade” Democrats and Republicans. Much of the country’s infrastructure is crumbling, for example. Urban Black America is in a terrible state whatever the skin color of the current U.S. and U.S.-born president.
+ Hillary’s done nothing, or close to it, across thirty years of not-so “public service” to protect ordinary U.S. citizens against hard times – quite the opposite in fact.
+ “Crooked Hillary” Clinton is backed by super-wealthy financial elites who reasonably expect her do their bidding even as she deceptively claims to want to serve the people against the wealthy Few.
+ Hillary talks like a friend of working class folks on the campaign trail but tells elite backers behind closed doors that her actual and “private” positions on policy are often quite different and more Establishment-friendly than her (vote-seeking) “public” positions.
+ Hillary holds much of the nation’s white working and middle class populace in sheer aristocratic contempt, calling many such people “deplorable” and “irredeemable.”
+ The corrupt Goldman Sachs-backed Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee used dirty tricks to undermine and defeat Bernie Sanders.
+ Hillary ran a corrupt “pay nfor play” game with foreign and multinational nations and investors through the Clinton Foundation during her time atop the U.S. State Department.
+ Hillary “Queen of Chaos” Clinton (she of the leading U.S. ruling class think-tank The Council on Foreign Relations) has been a recklessly imperial foreign policy disaster, from her support for the disastrous regime-changing invasion of Iraq, her leading of the charge for calamitous regime change in Libya, her determined advance of blood, regime-changing (she hopes) madness in Syria, her (and Obama’s) advance of the Islamic State, and her heedless upping of the ante of geopolitical confrontation with nuclear Russia in Eastern Europe and Syria.
+ S. policymakers who were serious about wanting to defeat the Islamic State and other barbarian, radical-Islamist jihadists in the Middle East would step back from their saber-rattling against Russia and Syria, both of whom are dedicated to “crushing ISIS.”
To be sure, my paraphrasing of Trump’s more sensible and accurate statements make them sound more coherent and leftish than they are. I doubt that Trump could be bothered to read more than one page of the left foreign policy analyst Diana Johnstone’s indispensable book Queen of Chaos: The Misadventures of Hillary Clinton (AK Press, 2015). It’s way too much to expect him to include Honduras (see the opening chapter of Johnston’s book for a useful history) in the list of nations that Hillary has helped ruin. Still, the bullet-pointed language above is close enough to what he’s actually said during this election cycle for the nation’s Deep State owners (the real masters behind the marionette theater of electoral politics) to hate him – this for reasons different than the ones that inform lefties’ disdain for Trump. Even as it leads publicly and in politically correct fashion with the problems of Trump’s sexism, racism, boorishness, and temperament, the thing that the Establishment really finds most reprehensible about Trump is his unpardonable penchant for telling true tales out of ruling class school – tales that many of us on the left have been telling from less privileged vantage points and without the white-nationalist and sexist venom that leaps off Trump’s noxious persona and out of his mouth. The terrible aspects of Trump that we find most horrific are different from what the ruling class finds most inexcusable about him – though it must be added that smart elites understand that his sexism, racism, nativism, and buffoonery threaten to spark popular uprisings and foreign derision that do not serve elite business and imperial interests. That last is a key point. A Trump presidency could well spark rebellions and resistance the ruling class would very much prefer to avoid
Does Trump mean the things he says that overlap with left critiques of Hillary Clinton and of the broader U.S. domestic and imperial order? I have no idea what really goes in the sociopathic brain of “the Donald.” The fascistic right (and Trump may be partly neo-fascist at some level) has a long history of mimicking certain parts of left rhetoric (the Nazis advanced national “socialism” after all) to gain mass appeal. Some of Trump’s more seemingly left-friendly rhetoric strikes me as part of a calculated strategy to win disaffected Bernie fans along with working class votes. Another source could be intra-elite spite, highly personal bitterness at an Ivy League-minted aristocracy that has never really accepted the crude man-child Donald Trump into its inner and upper circles. Whatever the motivation behind his jabs at the ruling elite and its imperial policies, an American ruling class that is still quite far from embracing fascism even in a mild and Trumpian form is not about to pardon Trump for giving crude voice to such critiques from within the top .01 percent and on a vast public stage.
Meanwhile, Trump – now 11 points behind actually crooked Hillary in national polls and with just a one-in-six chance of winning – is useful to the ruling class in a curious and dark way. Nearly three months after the predictable (and predicted) surrender of the somewhat sincerely populist, social-democratish Bernie Sanders campaign, Trump aids and abets the reigning corporate media and politics’ culture’s longstanding project of slandering populism as a reactionary and backwards instinct of the foolish, unwashed masses – the “bewildered herd.”
Elite commentators love to mock and marginalize the childish mindset of those who think that everyday people (the “rabble”) should actually be in charge of their own societal and political-economic affairs (imagine!) and thereby deprive elites of their supposed natural right to rule. Linking such populism to right-wing cretins like Donald Trump – a recurrent habit at places like The New York Times and CNN – is one of the ways in the slander is advanced, helping clear the way for more politically correct neoliberals like Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton to seize the nominal reins of executive branch power at least in Washington.
Alessandro de' Medici
Banned
Great article if I do say so myself.
"You're telling me that the candidate who snorted his way through the first two debates is accusing the other candidate of taking drugs?" White House spokesman Josh Earnest had a sharp response to Donald J. Trump suggestion that candidates take a drug test before the next debate.
Wish I could take it seriously.
Donald Trump singing the song Mahna Mahna during Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton Second Presidential 2016 Debate.
Donald Trump hinted that he may not accept it if Hillary Clinton beats him on Election Day. However, he seems to have forgotten that he previously said the exact opposite thing on camera.