Last month, in the wake of the presidential election, a reporter for CNN.com asked me to comment on the argument that explanations of Donald J. Trump’s victory that tended to emphasize the role of racism, sexism, and other expressions of prejudice in accounting for the Republican success in the Electoral College might soon give way to another narrative that closely resembled what the writer terms the Lost Cause explanation of the Civil War and Reconstruction.
That piece, with my small contribution, appears here.
To be sure, I think an explanation of Trump’s triumph that rests primarily on charges of racism, sexism, and so on in the American electorate is incomplete and flawed. There were plenty of reasons why Trump defeated first his Republican primary challengers and then Democratic candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton. The list is too long to discuss in exhaustive fashion, but one can focus on Trump’s successful appeal to a sense of grievance, Clinton’s campaign management, the ways in which Vermont senator Bernie Sanders exposed weaknesses in the Clinton appeal that proved useful to Trump, and so on. In critical states Trump’s emphasis on jobs and attack on globalization, open borders, and free trade struck a chord with voters, much to the surprise of Democratic strategists and more than a few pundits who never quite saw what was coming. When asked to predict the outcome, I thought that Clinton’s win would be far narrower than some people were predicting, and events in the last week of the campaign suggested to me that there was cause for worry in key states. Trump ran the table in critical battleground states, and the (perceived) upset was complete.
Nor do I think that all of Trump’s supporters are racists, sexists, homophobes, white supremacists, or whatever. That’s nonsense and a poor way for Democrats to try to explain away defeat. That said, to deny that people who are open (and not so open) about being racist, sexist, homophobic, white supremacist, and so on flocked to Trump in large numbers is hard to deny (we’ve covered several of them in this blog). Nor is it easy to deny that many Trump supporters who proclaim that they do not share such attitudes and who resent being cast into a basket of deplorables (a turn of phrase that rightly came back to haunt Clinton as an example of stupid and mindless elitism) have remained rather quiet about signs that some people who have expressed what many find to be bigoted views have risen to places of power and influence in the incoming administration. One does not have to be a bigot to be complicit in bigotry, and those folks will find themselves in increasingly uncomfortable situations if they are sincere about what they believe … or maybe they haven’t been so sincere in the first place. We’ll see.
But, in this season of greetings and giving, I share with you a note I received less than an hour after I was notified that CNN.com had posted the piece:
You must not have a whole lot of niggers living out there in Arizona near you because back east these devils rob, shoot, kill, rape and destroy just about most of our communities in our portion of the country. They make life hell for not only the majority here in America but also themselves. They have no idea why they do the things they do, let me fill you in mr. social scientist, it’s millions of years of instinct with this race! No one anywhere in the world over pays them any mind in the civilized world and nor do they allow them to have any say in government or rule of law in any other country than the USA and with good reason. Their own people sold them into slavery to begin with. I don’t hate them nor anybody for that matter, I just really pity them but myself unlike people like you living in only the bubble of the USA think that we as a nation need to sell our future down the drain to temporarily appease them. You need to take in reality and look long term, not what is going on right now, the latest fad or the next few years. CNN is shit hole and can’t be trusted with anything real to begin with, it’s a propaganda channel that drives an agenda for the elite, the elite’s kids star on their show.
Stop hating yourself and start standing up for the majority in this nation. You leave anything to the africans and civilization ceases to exist! So, when you apply a label to ME, please remember to label me as a “REALIST” They don’t want to hear the truth but the truth is they are subversive and slowly but surely destroy America. I have no problem with Latino people nor any other race of people on the planet, they are an asset to our nation! They work and they take care of their families, two things niggers don’t do at all and their instinctual, primitive behaviors are the driving factors to the plethora of their problems. One would think they own NO mirrors as they could then look into them to see where their problems come from? I use the word “nigger” as this is what these people call each other.
MY FREE SPEECH!
Rarely has someone so effectively made the point about the beliefs of some Trump supporters as in this note.
I do resent being called a social scientist, although I have used the social sciences in my work. And, please, it’s Dr. Social Scientist, if you must call me such.
I’ve always thought that such rants are evidence that proponents of white supremacy are actually insecure folks who fear that they are examples of inferiority, as indeed they are. So be it. I guess they acknowledge that they need white supremacy to survive.
Crossroads 
Hilarious…he’s not a racist, he just hates other ethnicities. Sort of like how Himmler and his SS butchered Jews and Slavs, but not out of ethnic or race hatred, mind you, but in an act of “sanitizing” Europe from a “dangerous bacillus.”
So many times people commit horrors to “do the right thing…”
All while talking self-righteously about how the SS men shouldn’t get sick and die from the same bacillus by stealing from the dead Jews, since the property of dead Jews belonged to Nazi Germany.
Well, Himmler also said that it was permissible to practice genocide, but not for personal profit. He profited anyway…
That’s what I was trying to say.
And you did…very well. I was merely amplifying and agreeing with your point.
Himmler was a VERY scary man.
Left me wondering just what kind of a hissy fit he’s going to throw if Trump makes good on his promise to rebuild the inner cities and develop programs to increase African American employment. He not only promised this on the campaign trail but during his post-electuon victory tour. Trump, for all his many weaknesses, is not buying what this guy is selling. I predict this dude will be calling Trump a traitor to his race before long.
I think many Trump supporters will feel that they have been deceived before too long.
Some of them are already saying so, angry over his support of Israel…if he doesn’t backpedal or reverse that (which I think he will, actually), they’ll be hopping mad.
I’m actually of the sort who does want to see these inner-cities be revitalized.
Say what you want about the white middle class who got shafted (and I’m a Bachelor’s degree holding graduate who lives in a crappy area for work), blacks need it too.
Well, I’m glad we agree on something! However, if so many southerners hadn’t fought Reconstruction so hard, perhaps, we wouldn’t need to fix things today. The Great Migration might have never occurred and the inner cities as we know them today might never have existed.
“One does not have to be a bigot to be complicit in bigotry, and those folks will find themselves in increasingly uncomfortable situations if they are sincere about what they believe …”
I have no doubt you know this, but this could be equally said of some folks who don’t support Trump. Some claim bigotry against Trump supporters is a reason why Trump won. The truth about some folks’ bigotries got out of hand this election year, and now some of those folks find themselves in the uncomfortable situation of a Trump presidency.
I’ve already said that the “basket of deplorables” statement is what it is, and Clinton rightly paid for it. How much more do you want me to say on that subject?
Those folks, after all, don’t send me such letters as reprinted above. Are we seeking moral equivalence here? I know you better than that.
You are fortunate not to get those lefty post-election hate messages, but unfortunately they are out there. On of my dear cousins posts them on Facebook at an incredible rate. I had to stop following her. One wonderful message likened a potential assassination of Trump as the moral equivalent of the generals plot to kill Hitler. And, to think right after the election the post was “hate won.” I guess hate lost, too! 😉
Amen, OHIOGUY. There are graduate-doctoral level people actually comparing today to the Weimar Republic. I want to just hug all these people out of it and let them know it’s going to be okay.
Some of the reactions to Trump being elected remind me of a story my parents told me about Pentecostal students of theirs coming to school inconsolable one day in 1970s literally thinking the world was going to end that very day.
My buddy at work said the world has ended already…when the Red Sox trounced the Yankees in 2004 to win the ALCS and the World Series.
Which just proves that they don’t know anything about Weimar Germany. The U.S. Constitution doesn’t have Articles 25 and 48 of the Weimar Constitution. No U.S. President has the power to toss out Congress and order new elections like Article 25, or the explicit power to suspend civil liberties like Article 48. Even Congress has limitations on suspending the writ of habeas corpus, though my guess – and Lincoln’s – is that the Constitution doesn’t outright ban the President from suspending the writ.
Those points are very true, but Hitler rammed his Enabling Act through the Reichstag after that building was wrecked in the February fire…a national outrage or horror that leaves the nation frightened and terrified would easily enable Trump to “put the Constitution on the shelf for the duration of the present crisis.”
Remember that the evacuation of hundreds of thousands of Japanese-Americans and stripping them of their possessions, property, and livelihoods was ruled legal by the US Supreme Court in the case of In Re Korematsu. Furthermore, when Chief Justice Taney issued his decision in Ex Parte Merryman, Lincoln simply ignored it. Lincoln had the Army. The Supreme Court does not.
And let’s not forget the Alien and Sedition Acts, the Palmer Raids, Joe McCarthy, the House Un-American Activities Committee, COINTELPRO…when you get down to it, constitutional democracy is only as strong as the will of the people to support it. When that will and energy is gone, dictators can and will do what they like. “Power was lying in the gutter,” Lenin supposedly wrote, when the tossed aside Alexander Kerensky’s Provisional Government with what was little more than the flick of his wrist (Socialist art to the contrary).
It really isn’t that hard to impose a dictatorship on a nation. Democracy is a new form of government — only about 240 years old — compared to the more familiar and well-tried systems of monarchy and dictatorship, whose various incarnations have existed for thousands of years.
I think the only thing people really want to vote for are winners in “American Idol,” best footage in “America’s Funniest Home Videos” and the starting lineup in the MLB All-Star game. Everything else is much too hard work…they just want a strong man at the helm who will eliminate street crime, annoying “libtards” and their supporters, carefully scapegoated ethnicities, and give them full lunch pails…
I don’t think we can afford to get cocky about the ability of our institutions to withstand someone like Trump. OTOH, getting into talk about assassination EVEN as a hypothetical is also destructive to those institutions.
You want to hug people? Well now you have permission to hug a woman, if she’s hot enough, a “10.” You can grab her by the whatever, unless there’s blood coming out of it. Remember, they can’t do anything about it, if you’re a celebrity. Remember not to touch anyone who is a fat pig. Disgusting!
What Clinton rightly apologized for was using an overgeneralized term that she should have realized could and would be used against her. However, the difficulty that we faced in this election was that Trump’s candidacy encouraged some very bad groups and people to emerge from the shadows and demand a generous place at the table and Trump didn’t really try to disassociate himself from them. There is no way we should normalize these groups as just another participant in the body politic with whom we disagree. That was what Clinton was trying, clumsily, to get at.
One of the most effective things Trump did throughout the campaign was, whenever he was confronted with very well-documented concerns about him, he countered by claiming loudly and repeatedly that his opponent and/or critic was guilty of as bad an act, or even worse, without really caring whether there was any merit to his counterattack. Unfortunately, much of the media (the broadcast media in particular) is obsessed with the appearance of neutrality to the point of false equivalency.
I want you to say what you want to say. I think we agree about the
“basket of deplorables” comment and probably many other anti-Trump supporter comments. I am just making sure such comments get expressly called out as bigotry. Bigotry is bigotry, even if we delineate some kind of moral hierarchy to it.
No, actually, I think using the term “basket of deplorables” was inept politics but I think to call it bigotry waters down and dilutes the term past recognition. It is NOT giving a moral hierarchy to bigotry to take that position. Even in her original comment, Clinton made it clear that she was NOT talking about all Trump supporters. In 2008, the crowds at far too many of Palin’s rallies got pretty ugly but that was child’s play compared to what we saw at Trump’s rallies. Look at the latest from Carl Paladino wishing ugly and terrible deaths on President Obama and his adviser Valerie Jarrett and not only repeating the right wing canard that Michelle Obama is a man plus wishing her let loose in the outback of Zimbabwe where she’d live with a gorilla. This is not some fringe nut job. He was co-chair of Trump’s campaign in New York state. It’s also nothing that should have come as a surprise to Trump. Paladino actually managed to become the Republican candidate for governor in 2010 but when down to defeat when a large number of his racist and overtly sexual e-mails became public. In addition, Trump not only puts Bannon at the head of his campaign, he puts him in a top position in the incoming administration in the White House.
I think Clinton’s initial comment was overly broad and the choice of language distracted from the point she was trying to make abo. However, I think refusal to acknowledge when a candidate for the presidency’s supporters include giving voice and respectability to such forces is also dangerous.
I don’t think all or substantially all Trump voters are racist, sexist, etc. but it troubles me that it didn’t seem to be a deal breaker to them that Trump is.
Carl Paladino is an unbelievably ghastly human being…what’s really upsetting is knowing that in 2018, when the Russians are RUNNING our elections, he’ll probably be elected New York’s governor by 185 percent of the vote.
When they ask him how he got so many votes in some all-black district in Brooklyn, he’ll likely give the same answer Ferdinand Marcos gave an American reporter about getting 100 percent of the vote in some portion of Luzon in the Philippines…”Oh, they remember me from my old guerrilla days from World War II.”
Paladino will probably prattle about having worked in that part of Bedford-Stuyvesant or Bushwick as a kid, and how everyone loved him back then…
Incidentally, Marcos was a THIRD Lieutenant in the Philippine guerrillas, which is an officer cadet’s rank. And his guerrilla band not only did very little to defeat the Japanese in WW2, they seem to have cooperated with the invaders…
I agree w/ Margaret, in that calling some of Trump’s supporters “deplorable” is not bigotry, but a perhaps clumsy way of speaking the truth. What hurt her was that the comment was reported as largely applying to anyone supporting Trump, when it clearly was aimed at a specific subset of his supporters.
Just as an aside, the ultimate closeness of the election—80,000 votes in three states—means (IMO) that everything mattered. You can’t point to any single thing and say “This was the reason Trump won,” because there are a half-dozen or so *other* things which, if they had gone differently, would have given HRC the victory. It all was important.
Calling them “deplorables” was a mistake and insulted them…many of Trump’s supporters are not evil or criminal people. Yes, he has many such backers, but it’s not fair to label all of them with that term. Saying that hey had been “conned” or “hoodwinked” by the Combover, and suggesting that they would be betrayed by him would have been more appropriate, as they were conned and will be betrayed.
Clinton, in her apology, made it clear that she regarded her primary mistake was in using language that opened itself to making the term appear to apply to far more people than she intended. However, if we refuse to acknowledge that there was a significant group of Trump supporters who made it clear that they supported him BECAUSE they were racist/misogynistic/xenophobic, etc. They were open about their views. Trump’s heart never seemed in any efforts to distance himself and his association with people like Bannon and Paladino certainly set out a welcome mat for bigots.
You are inaccurate. Criticize Hillary as you like, but base your remarks on facts.
One can say that Clinton’s statement was poor politics, but it did not label all Trump suppporters as deplorable. If you take the trouble to look at her whole paragraph, she described around half of them as deplorable, in order to stress the need to reach out to people supporting Trump owing to economic distress. We can argue about her fractions, but that sounds both generous and truthful to me. Screaming about doctored or edited Statements by Hillary and others is an old and successful Republican trick.
Keep on tryin’.
I think I will repair to my Ivory Tower until this all passes. I look Middle Eastern, have an accent, of mixed ethnicity, educated, occasionally teach –Looking grim. Guess I’ll go eat worms.
There’s a lot of overlap between Confederate apologists, CBF defenders and Trump supporters. The sense of grievance and that any gain by a nonwhite, non male and non straight person or group is a loss to them, the real Americans. I doubt if you’ll find someone waving a Confederate flag and concerned about his heritage isn’t a Trump supporter.
The other overlap between Trump and Confederate apologists is the inability to distinguish fact from fancy. When Trump was flogging the Obama was a Kenyan thing, some people were bothered by the racism. What bothered me was you would have to be a fool to believe it. Trump’s not a fool, but whether something is true or not just isn’t important to him. Confederate heritage types, gassing on about the tariff etc. have to ignore immense amounts of information to hold on to their….what, innocence, maybe? They can’t distinguish between what is factual and what they want to be a fact. They don’t care if its true or not, and egghead professors with their fancy book larnin’ ain’t gonna convince them otherwise.
It’ll be interesting to see if they repeal the 13th Amendment…
I read this post a few days ago, but at the time, I didn’t explore the CNN article. Today, in my inbox, was a notification of a post Kevin Levin just did about this article. I took the time to read it this morning.
The comments above are not surprising. I was among many who believed that Clinton was going to prevail. I was wrong. I wasn’t however surprised. I was always prepared for that outcome, which is why I was able to move on immediately after the initial and brief shock. It’s true, we can’t paint Trump’s supporters with too broad a brush. I don’t think most people that opposed Trump literally believe that every single Trump supporter is a racist, homophobe, sexist, etc.. I know enough of them in real life that I can say with much certainty, that Dr. Simpson is correct by noting that Trump tapped in to a deep sense of grievance. In real life, I work in a trade. My coworkers are all unionized workers. Most of the people I work around Day to day are blue collar, salt of the earth, Second Ammendment obsessive, Bible thumping Christian sheeple. I can only speak from first hand experience and observation, and I can testify that white America (and yes, I’m generalizing) is most certainly racist. My own flesh and blood brother (who works in Government position) is one of the most racist people I know. For anyone to suggest that race is not one of the biggest underlying issues that affected this election, well sorry, you’re just wrong. But it wasn’t just race, it’s also class. There is a huge American class divide.
Folks, my employer is HUGE on diversity and inclusion. It’s absolutely the most diverse place I’ve ever worked, but it is also divided by a structure of management vs unionized associate. The push for diversity is top down, but I can attest that the white working class people I know are very, very racist. I know, because I hear everything they say. As soon as a black is out of hearing range, they do a complete 180. It’s magically like you’re now talking to a different person. That’s the truth. It’s really sad, but what’s worse is that we pretend everything is ok, and tip toe around what’s going on beneath the surface. America doesn’t want to deal with this problem, because it requires introspection, and fear. It’s easier to keep kicking the can down the road, and continuing to allow all of the underlying tension to keep building. Not a good idea.
We need to have a real, honest national discussion on these issues. I can’t apply my experience across the board, or can I? It’s possible that location has a lot to do with it. I don’t know, but I doubt it. I think what’s more likely, is that what I have encountered is just reality across the country.
Given that the last Republican president was ALMOST an amateur at governance and a draft dodger who had inherited his wealth and position and been surrounded by yes men most of his adult life, and then promptly ran the ship of state aground with the result that 3,000 people died on American soil in an utterly foreseeable terrorist act, then promptly launched the nation into not one but two unwinnable ground wars on the cheap (with another 4,000 US dead), and then lurched into the worst economic crash since the Great Depression, one can only imagine what an actual amateur whose foreign policy revolves around legitimizing a Russian dictator will manage…
Safe bet the US will invade the Big Muddy Version 3.0 sometime in 2017-2018 under the leadership of the Gropingfuhrer…
What was Lincoln’s policy, again?
Executive Mansion
Washington, Aug. 23, 1864.
This morning, as for some days past, it seems exceedingly probable that this Administration will not be re-elected. Then it will be my duty to so co-operate with the President elect, as to save the Union between the election and the inauguration; as he will have secured his election on such ground that he can not possibly save it afterwards.
LINCOLN
Simple enough for the CinC to find grounds to save the Union – “all enemies, foreign and domestic” seems more than appropriate… arrest them all as co-conspirators with a foreign power and call for a new election next November; transfer power to the Vice President in January as Acting President for the interim. Based on the election results, 75 percent of the American electorate would be content with such an action.
Rally ’round the flag, boys…
Jacksonian,
I can only thank you for reminding us, me, especially, of Lincoln’s policy: Does anyone doubt he’d have come this far, to fail to act on it, before he’d finished what he’d started?
I appreciate your point. “Simple enough for the CinC to find grounds to save the Union – “all enemies, foreign and domestic” seems more than appropriate…save the Union between the election and the inauguration”
Easier for Lincoln, AS Republican president, to carry out his policy seamlessly.
Our President couldn’t get away with it, even if/though he should–being Democrat. He wouldn’t have the backing.
And, so, if not the President, where is a Republican in the Lincoln mold? There’s not a one who didn’t fold.
Also, having read all the previous commentary, istm most are making too many allowances for Der Drumpfenfurher and his fan base.
Nor do I believe Hillary was being awkward or ‘whatever’; she was truth-telling.She’s not careless in that way.Everything she does & says in public and to the press is calculated and calibrated.–she hurled it out there on purpose knowing it would stick, have maximum impact; knowing then she could take it back, apologize; like they all do who shake things up and then retract. It’s become a common media tactic.
Helga
The president is commander-in-chief until midday Jan. 20; he has full command of the executive branch, and thus has all the support he needs, if he will act. Better to be Lincoln than Buchanan.
Lincoln would have had three months in 1864, and thanks to Grant and Sherman, he could have made the most of it. The current cinc has a little less than three weeks, but operational tempo is significantly faster in 2016 than it was in 1864, and he is in command.
Considering the obvious connections between the president-elect’s campaign and his foreign sponsors, the case for a clear and present danger can be made – as in:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/global-opinions/trump-campaign-guts-gops-anti-russia-stance-on-ukraine/2016/07/18/98adb3b0-4cf3-11e6-a7d8-13d06b37f256_story.html?utm_term=.5655fcc70363
The Washington Post is a known spreader of fake news about Russian influence: http://fortune.com/2016/11/25/russian-fake-news/
Are you suggesting that the president-elect’s campaign staff did NOT work to make sure the Republican platform was revised to remove the call for giving weapons to Ukraine to fight Russian forces?
Because it is quite clear that president-elect’s campaign staff did just that, and, in fact, the GOP platform was, in fact, revised as described.
One can only wonder why that was so important to the president-elect…
Yeah. How on earth could anyone possibly think that Russia and its former KGB official/current dictator would indulge their hacking addiction in order to screw with a US election?
Anyone who doesn’t think the loonies on the alt-left aren’t as wacky as the loonies on the alt-right hasn’t read the recent posts on this thread.
For the record, Julian Assange has stated that Wikileaks did not obtain the Clinton emails from a “state actor,” including the Russians. That is leading to speculation that it was some rouge member of her staff.
I don’t think Assange has a lot of credibility at this point. In the first place, he’s not about to admit if he’s gotten this information from the Russians. In the second place, the wording of his denial is odd. So he says didn’t get it from a “state actor to Russia”. That leaves room for receiving it from Russia through a third party. Also, there were a lot of other e-mails involved to which a member of Clinton’s staff would not necessarily have access, especially the devastating leaks to the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee http://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/13/us/politics/house-democrats-hacking-dccc.html. Now, not all of this was release via Wiki-leaks, but it’s telling that none of this hacking involved Republicans as targets. With all of Assange’s sources, he couldn’t manage to get something? One can only imagine the e-mails, etc., in the RNC as it became clear that Trump had a real chance of becoming the party’s nominee.
“Now, not all of this was release via Wiki-leaks, but it’s telling that none of this hacking involved Republicans as targets.”
Not from lack of trying: http://thehill.com/policy/defense/310683-report-russians-failed-to-hack-rnc
Actually, it was precisely for lack of trying. The article says, “Sources close to the investigation also told the newspaper that the attempted attack on the RNC was much less persistent and aggressive than the effort against Democratic officials.
According to the report, hackers targeted only a single email account of a former RNC staffer.” Really?!? The term that applies is de minimis. That hardly represents a serious attempt. It’s going through the motions.
In any event, the question remains. Many on both sides of the aisle agree that a serious investigation is needed to not only examine what happened but to see what needs to be done to protect the integrity of the electoral system in the future. Why does the President-elect want to just blow it off?
And you believe the RNC? A little critical thinking would go a long way.
A “rouge” member of the staff? What, you mean a parlor pink?
Let’s see – a third nation cut out is accused of acting as an agent for a foreign power, denies the accusation, and that constitutes proof that they were not in your eyes? What a useful…
The current president elect’s campaign made a point of removing a plank of his party’s platform critical of a foreign power, well before the general election; that same foreign power and the current president-elect have – and continue to make – a point of expressing their mutual support for changes in US policy toward the foreign power.
The current president-elect’s opponent was, undeniably, far more critical of the same foreign power, as has been the current president and C-in-C.
Yet you see no obvious case to be made for action by the current commander in chief.
Secretary Floyd would have found you a very useful person in 1859-60…
Your conspiracy theories are pretty far fetched.
Assange said his source was not the Russians or any other “state actor.” He is obviously not going to release the identity of his sources. In fact, he’s seldom gone even this far, but he felt he had do something to counter the Obama misinformation campaign. Given his previous track record, I’d say Assange deserves being considered pretty reliable. I’ll bet you thought so too when some of his earlier work made the GW Bush administration look incompetent.
I encourage you to listen to the Sean Hannity interview with him. The first hour of the interview was released last night. I believe a second segment will be aired tonight. I found the interview fascinating.
Let me make clear that I’m not a great Trump fan. I voted for Kasich in the Ohio primary in an attempt to block Trump. But, the alt-left histrionics recently are making me reassess my previous conclusion that Trump is an asshole. In relative terms, present company excluded, the far left is showing their ability to make even less sense than Trump in his most awkward moments. It appears that the Trump team may be in a much better position to lead our country than I would have imaged.
At any rate, Trump will be inaugurated in about two weeks. We will not have a coup d’etat. Obama will not declare martial law. So, we’ll all just have see how it goes. I predict that my old CMS colleague, Ben Carson, will do a great job as HUD secretary.
Well said. The word now from Assange is that Podesta fell for phishing emails and used “password” as his password. Given how gullible people are when it comes to phishing emails, and how often “password” is used as a password year after year, his claims are credible.
What conspiracy theories? The president elect’s campaign team made watering down the GOP platform regarding a foreign power’s aggression against a neighboring country a priority; that is a a well-documented fact. One can only ask why.
Again,given the utter incompetency of the last GOP administration (3,000 dead on American soil, 4,000 American dead overseas, a decade of bloody stalemate in Southwest Asia in a war made possible by lies about Iraqi WMD … this is what you look forward to?
What a pathetic sycophant you are.
“But, the alt-left histrionics recently are making me reassess my previous conclusion that Trump is an asshole.” Do yourself a favor and keep reassessing. Trump not only cuddles up with an authoritarian dictator who unilaterally seizes other folks’ terrain, is pals with Assad, and clearly utilizes his KGB talents in the hacking realm. Now he takes the word of Julian Assange over that of the intel community.
Julian Assange said he did not receive his Clinton emails from a “state actor,” not the Russians or any other government. This is not inconsistent with the probability that the Russian government as well as half the governments in world were able to hack Hillary’s private server as well as those of the DNC, where Podesta used “password” as his password. Assange said a 14-year-old boy from his basement could have gotten into Podesta’s emails. I’m not saying the Russian hacking shouldn’t be investigated, just trying to put some of the more ridiculous charges floating around into some perspective.
Of course, now the Assclown-Elect apparently is backing off the absurd position he had been taking when he adopted the statements of a disreputable criminal like Assange. So he’s back to Position C – it had no influence on the election. That’s based on as much “fact” as were his contrivances.
What was it Ziegler kept saying? “That position is no longer operative.”
One has to ask, why is the only position Trump has ever been consistent about is a change innUS policy toward Russia?
Smoke, meet fire.
I eagerly await the Hotel Red Square videos.
“We are at war with Eurasia…we are at war with Eastasia. We have always been at war with Eastasia.”
“Report on chocolate ration doubleplus ungoodful. Rectify.”
Soon we’ll have “unpersons.”
Is the irony lost on some of you that Obama has now pardoned a person, convicted of treason, whose crime was giving military secrets to Julian Assange and Wikileaks? This crime was committed back in the day when the left loved Wikileaks and its head guy. This is all so strange that it would be rejected as a plot in a B movie.