What has issued forth from Trumpland, which should be the name of a bizarre, orange-hued theme park, not this presidential campaign from hell, has truly astonished. The hate-spewing carnival barker smashed his previous record, each day erasing the memory of his previous outrage with a brand-new one. Legal scholars called him a walking constitional crisis. Yet the wise elders of the Republican party, John McCain and oh-so-responsible Paul Ryan, decided this was a great time to throw this madman their support.
Some lowpoints for your consideration.
1. Trump’s spokesperson Katrina Pierson reveals she is still a very confused puppy.
Donald Trump is apparently very happy with the work that his certifiably insane national spokesperson Katrina Pierson is doing for him. She’s being trotted out all over the place to comment on the important matters of the day. Pierson appeared on CNN this week to speak about her deeply held beliefs on the ethnicity of the federal judge who is hearing the class action lawsuit that has been filed against the scam known as Trump University.
First came Trump’s dogwhistle. "The judge is a hater of Donald Trump," he said. "I think Judge Curiel should be ashamed of himself. I think it’s a disgrace that he’s doing this. The judge, who happens to be, we believe, Mexican, which is fine…I think the Mexicans are going to end up loving Donald Trump.”
Dear Mexicans: Donald Trump thinks it's fine to be Mexican, and that you will end up loving him. You will forget about the wall, the deportations and the slurs and just love him because he loves eating tacos at Trump Tower on Cinco de Mayo so much.
What started as merely a loud dogwhistle became an all-out campaign later in the week, when Trump doubled down and argued that the judge should recuse himself from the case based on his ethnicity. CNN host Alisyn Camerota just had a few little points to make about the strategy of attacking the judge’s ethnicity. “The judge isn't Mexican," Camerota said to Trump spokesgal Pierson. "He was born here. He's American."
Pierson, showing similar moves as her boss, dodged and weaved. "I'm not saying he's Mexican," she insisted.
"But Mr. Trump is saying he's Mexican," Camerota pointed out.
"He says we 'believe,'" Pierson said.
Yeah, it’s just their belief! You can’t attack them for their beliefs!
She said this before completely going off on some bizarre conspiracy theory, which puts her solidly in her boss’ headspace.
Clearly, Trump must never tell Katrina Pierson, “You’re fired.”
2. In the midst of his most insane week ever, Trump lets this doozy fly.
It’s the little things that Donald Trump says, the little off-the-cuff remarks, that are so very telling. The big things are shocking enough. Seriously arguing that a judge’s Mexican heritage disqualifies him from ruling on a case is as bad as it gets, or at least that’s what we think this week. Yes, the man is a menace to democracy, legal experts now agree. He shows a remarkable ignorance about the role of the press and how the justice system works. He’s a threat to the first, second, third, fourth and fifth estates. Shocking, insane, jaw-dropping, beyond the pale... we are running out of adjectives, even compound ones!
And then he lets this little one slip at a rally: “Look at my African American.”
He was mid-rant, smack in the middle of a tirade about all the people protesting against him, how dare they, when Trump decided to point out a black man in the crowd, his very own black man.
“Look at my African American over here,” Trump said, pointing at an apparent supporter who was off camera. “Are you the greatest? You know what I’m talking about? Okay.”
My African-American?
Trump then began to tell some stories about other friends who are black. Why, there was the black U.S airman who punched a Trump protester in the face at a March rally in Tucson, Arizona.
“When the African American cold-cocked this guy, this guy never know what happened, everybody thought the African American was against me, and it was the opposite,” Trump went on. “He was this great guy, military guy.”
Perhaps he was precisely the sort of “military guy” Trump tried to stiff out of a promised donation to veterans, later becoming enraged when the media called him out on it.
“Look at my African American.”
Every one should have one.
3. Supposedly smart guy says insulting judge for being Mexican is not technically racist.
Bloomberg journalists Mark Halperin and John Heilemann were discussing the fact that Trump keeps going after the judge in the lawsuit against Trump University because the judge is of Mexican descent. Idiot Trump thinks that Judge Gonzalo Curiel’s heritage should disqualify him from the case because Trump keeps saying super racist things about Mexicans, therefore the judge probably dislikes Trump.
Ya think?
Even Megyn Kelly, who just finished kissing and making up with Trump, found this outrageous.
“He did it over and over again, he kept calling Curiel a Mexican, right?” Heilemann said, “It is not even dogwhistle politics. It is just pure racial politics.”
Yep, seems he has nailed it.
“No, it’s not racial,” Halperin responded.
Say what?
“It’s racial politics, it is,” Heilemann insisted.
“Mexico isn’t a race,” Halperin said.
This is what is known as a distinction without a difference.
Heilemann explained why this was totally wrong, how Trump’s comments were clearly designed to stir up racial animus, and Halperin finally allowed that it was “racially tinged,” but he just wanted to point out Mexican is not a race.
Why does he want to point that out?
4. Former head of gun rights organization thinks it’s a good time to threaten democracy.
The NRA held its annual national confab this week: lots of heavily armed people discussing guns and where to store them. In the kids' room, one expert suggested. No one will think to look there!
Meanwhile, making it abundantly clear whose political side the gun crazies are on, Larry Pratt former head of Gun Owners of America announced on Gun Owners News Hour radio show that if the Republicans don’t win the White House and appoint pro-gun judges to the Supreme Court, there could be hell to pay.
If the Supreme Court makes rulings that aren’t rabidly pro-gun, conservatives just might have to resort to the “bullet box,” the ballot box having failed them, he suggested. We might have to “reassert the proper constitutional balance,” Pratt said. “And it may not be pretty."
This must be an example of those good guys with guns we’ve heard so much about.
h/t: RightWingWatch
5. Sean Hannity says possibly the most idiotic thing he has ever said... and that is not easy.
Sean Hannity is up there in the pantheon of Fox airheads. Often his airy head is inflated with hot air. The longtime Trump sycophant and Bundy family acolyte was extremely worked up this week about some behavior he thinks is downright un-American.
Perhaps you're thinking that un-American behavior is Trump’s angry response at the press for exposing his hypocrisy about veterans and the money he promised to donate to them then did not. Or Trump’s other truly un-American moment when he attacked a respected federal judge and suggested his ethnicity should disqualify him from a case.
Ha!
Hannity was incensed about anti-Trump protesters and what he called “mob violence” against Trump supporters. And while he is at it, it’s Obama’s fault and Clinton’s, and Democratic presidents in general. We have not had a good law-and-order president since Richard Nixon, Hannity said, perhaps forgetting that Nixon resigned because he committed a crime. Never mind. Hannity expressed his worry that it’s the '60s all over again with all these protesters in the streets.
Hannity wants to see a crackdown. This need for law and order is Donald Trump’s “path to the presidency,” he said, making it quite clear that he does not really understand that term, which usually refers to delegates and vote counts. At the same time, he made it very clear that, in his view, now would be a very good time for a fascist leader to rise and take control of the unruly mob, “burning American flags and waving Mexican flags,” and protesting Trump.
Thankfully, no one listens to Hannity, whose hot inflated head may soon pop off his body and simply float away.
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