Tag: Donald Trump

Trump Wanted to ‘Hit’ Democratic Convention Speakers

Buck Banks

You know what I wanted to. I wanted to hit a couple of those speakers so hard. I would have hit them. No, no. I was going to hit them, I was all set and then I got a call from a highly respected governor. … I was gonna hit one guy in particular, a very little guy. I was gonna hit this guy so hard his head would spin and he wouldn’t know what the hell happened.

— Donald Trump, telling ABC News that he wanted to “hit” some of the Democratic convention speakers “so hard” while watching them.

Parents of American Muslim War Hero Call out Donald Trump

Jon Ponder
Khzr Kahn offers to lend Donald Trump his copy of the U.S. Constitution
Khizr Kahn offers to lend Donald Trump his copy of the U.S. Constitution

A few pundits are comparing this speech by Khizr Khan, the father of a soldier killed in action in Afghanistan, to the famous “Have you no sense of decency?” moment in that ended the communist witch-hunting career of Sen. Joe McCarthy in 1954.

There are striking parallels between the two incidents. Both McCarthy and Donald Trump are power-crazed, virulent demagogues. And both had connections to mob lawyer Roy Cohn. McCarthy mentored Cohn during the communist baiting hearings he held in the Senate. Years later Cohn was mentor to young Donald Trump.

(And here’s something that probably shouldn’t come as a surprise. Fox opted to break away during Kahn’s speech. The network ran an anti-Clinton Benghazi “Swiftboat”-style ad instead.)

Video and transcript of Khzir Kahn’s speech follow.

[…]

Early Haters Now Support Trump

Buck Banks

500

Number of wealthy Republicans who “poured close to $16 million into the Republican National Committee’s convention account leading up to this week, according to disclosures made to the Federal Election Commission through last Friday. The biggest donors, giving more than $100,000 each, are also a veritable roll call of the stop-Trump movement, among them the billionaire investor Paul E. Singer and Marlene Ricketts, who bankrolled early efforts to deny Mr. Trump the nomination,” reports the New York Times.

Anti-Clinton Sentiment Far Outweighs Pro-Trump Support

Buck Banks

13

Of the 19 scheduled speeches on Tuesday night were mostly anti-Clinton (Sharon Day, Asa Hutchinson, Leslie Rutledge, Michael Mukasey, Ron Johnson, Chris Cox, Mitch McConnell, Paul Ryan, Kevin McCarthy, Chris Christie, Shelley Moore Capito, Ben Carson, and Kimberlin Brown), reported First Read. “That’s compared with six that we viewed as being mostly pro-Trump (Dana White, Andy Wist, Natalie Gulbis, Tiffany Trump, Kerry Woolard, and Donald Trump Jr.) What do those six speakers have in common? They aren’t GOP politicians or politicos. All of last night’s pro-Trump speeches came from Trump’s family, friends, and business associates.”

Trump Represents a Three-Decade Decline of the GOP

Buck Banks

Trumpism may have parallels in populist, nativist movements abroad, but it is also the culmination of a proud political party’s steady descent into a deeply destructive and dysfunctional state. … While that descent has been underway for a long time, it has accelerated its pace in recent years. We noted four years ago the dysfunction of the Republican Party, arguing that its obstructionism, anti-intellectualism, and attacks on American institutions were making responsible governance impossible. The rise of Trump completes the script, confirming our thesis in explicit fashion.

— Norm Ornstein and Thomas Mann, on Vox.