Category Archives: Popular Culture

Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Popular Culture, Social Commentary

Russian Actors And Seminar Callers

11 Comments

An interesting theory about the Trump phenomenon:

No doubt some of the protestors at Trump events protesting against Trump were also paid protestors. But what if much of the social agitation online for Trump is manufactured?

On radio, I assure you it is. Last Tuesday night, my radio show saw a wave of callers calling in to complain about what I was saying that very night on radio. The callers assured my call screener they were listening. The calls were coming from area codes all over the nation and they were very angry about what I had just said on the radio that very night about Trump.

I was on vacation. The guest host had been talking about local matters and had not even mentioned Trump. Hello, seminar callers. Likewise, many of the calls to my radio station demanding I be fired or disciplined for insulting Trump have come from people making statements about my radio show that clearly indicate they have not listened to the show or the station.

Similarly, whenever I get a wave of emails attacking me for things about Trump, frequently the same IP address pops up. On Twitter, the waves come from people with rarely used or new Twitter accounts that are suddenly all in for Trump — every tweet an attack against someone or Trump propaganda. More often than not, the accounts have pictures of someone other than the the person tweeting and most do not use real names.

Certainly it could be people with low social connectedness, as Michael Barone has noted, but it sure seems odd to suddenly get a a wave of #whitegenocide tweets from accounts that are just suddenly active and all in to attack people who oppose Trump.

Donald Trump right now has support from about 35% of the smaller of the two American political parties. That is different from 35% of the nation as a whole. His polling is so terrible, Utah, Mississippi, Georgia, North Carolina, and other states become in play for Hillary Clinton in ways they would not with a different candidate.

But his supporters are convinced they are actually a majority because they have entered an echo chamber (and a cult) where everyone agrees with them, they are the loudest voices, and they don’t see anyone online who can stand up to the overwhelming presence of Trump support. Everywhere they turn there are more people just like them.

Given that Trump has only the support of a third of the smaller of the two American political parties, that level of support makes no sense unless there is more than meets the eye.

I think this is definitely a part of it.

Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Popular Culture

Trump’s Wisconsin Debacle

53 Comments

I agree with Ed Morrissey: Even ignoring what a terrible president he would be, I think it showed that he would be a disastrous candidate in the general election as a Republican.

It only took two weeks for Trump to demolish what looked like a lock in Wisconsin. His campaign spent weeks in Wisconsin, and yet did nothing to learn what voters there think or what they want in a nominee. Trump’s fortnight was a disaster of his own making, and a glimpse of the high risk a Trump general election candidacy would provide the GOP.

That risk might be tolerable if Trump gave an indication that he recognized the problem. In his statement after the loss, however, Trump instead railed about having to endure an “onslaught” of negative advertising and hostile media. Just what does Trump expect to find in the general election if he wins the nomination? If Trump folds only because of negative advertising and hostile media, that alone should have unbound delegates thinking twice about a Trump nomination, especially with Hillary Clinton and a mainstream media already hostile to Republicans waiting after the conventions.

He’s worse than ignorant. He’s incapable of learning.

Law, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Popular Culture, Social Commentary

Wisconsin Loser

3 Comments

…issues loser statement on losing.

What a dummy.

As Steve Hayes and others have suggested, every reporter in every interview should demand that he provide evidence that Cruz broke the law.

[Update a couple minutes later]

Irony:

[Update a few minutes later]

Why Carly Fiorina is such a good surrogate.

She’d be an excellent VP pick for Cruz.

[Update a few minutes later]

Will Trump learn from Wisconsin?

Magic 8 Ball says, “Outlook not so good.”

[Update a while later]

I love this:

As our own John Podhoretz noted, Donald Trump has lowered the bar for himself to such an extent that even displaying the ability to read a prepared text from a teleprompter compels some political analysts to coo over Trump’s “presidential” comportment. It is certainly true that another display of basic literacy may force some columnists to make their peace with Donald Trump as the likely Republican nominee. But that person — the rational, reassuring, policy wonk – is a fabrication. The real Donald Trump, who reveals himself in the candidate’s extemporaneous ramblings, refuses to be stifled. Candidates set the tone for their campaigns; not the other way around. The Trump campaign is a reflection of the reality of their candidate, and the reality is just nuts.

Let’s make him Commander in Chief!

Business, Economics, Political Commentary, Popular Culture

Trump’s Campaign Staff

29 Comments

Remember, he hires the best people.

Remember when Obama’s people claimed that he could manage the government because his campaign was being run so well? Well, Trump can’t even manage a campaign.

[Update mid-afternoon]

Why I’ve changed my mind on Trump:

I realized — like I was shot with a diamond bullet — that there is no “there” there. Trump has no ideas, no philosophy, and no governing principles. He is little more than a salesman selling himself. He is a hollow man, a stuffed man, headpiece filled with straw.

Not only doesn’t he know much, he doesn’t care to find out, which is much worse to my mind. Read this article from Spengler about how Trump doesn’t read. (“What I noticed immediately in my first visit was that there were no books,” says D’Antonio. “A huge palace and not a single book.”) If somebody like this were to run the foreign policy of the world’s most powerful country, it would be an unmitigated disaster. In a narcissistic fit, he may start World War III without a clue as to what to do after it begins. Only then will it dawn on him that not everything in the world is a transactional deal.

Once I realized this, other examples became evident. There are Trump’s extensive ties with top Democrats, like Senator Harry Reid and the Clinton family, as well as establishment Republican figures like Senator Mitch McConnell. There is also his (very recent) past support of left-wing causes, including illegal immigration. Most tastelessly, he has personally attacked conservatives who have been fighting the good fight for a lot longer than Donald Trump has, and with much fewer resources. Take his disgraceful feud with Michelle Malkin. Donald, Michelle was pulling her weight back when you were cutting checks to Anthony Weiner and employing illegal aliens.

A con man, a show man, and empty-headed buffoon.

Law, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Popular Culture, Social Commentary

Is Trump Toast?

11 Comments

My snarky neighbor, Kurt Schlichter, thinks so. And wow, he seems to dislike him even more than I do, if such a thing is possible.

I did note on Twitter this weekend that if there’s anything Trump and his incompetent boobish minions understand less than how delegate selection works, it’s how to run a third-party campaign.

[Update a few minutes later]

Trump’s lies are a loyalty test for his followers:

The Donald Trump of the last week is the exact same Donald Trump many of us saw a year ago or five years ago. He’s always been full of sh*t. He’s always been a total ignoramus when it comes to public policy, lacking the simple sense of patriotic duty to do his homework on the issues. He’s always been a nasty and boorish cad. He’s always pretended to be a conservative while working on liberal assumptions of what conservatives want to hear.

His “punish the women” comments were of a piece with his refusal to condemn the Klan on CNN. It’s not that he wants to punish women who have abortions — I’d bet he’s paid more abortion bills than he will ever sign — it’s that he thinks that’s what pro-lifers want to hear. It’s not that he’s a Klansman or that the pillowcases at Mara Lago come with eyeholes cut out in advance. It’s that Trump thinks lots of his fans like the Klan and he wants to pander to them.

I have heard first-hand stories from people who’ve worked with Trump about how he disparages women’s appearance routinely. That’s who he is. If you’re attacking him because he retweeted a bad picture of Heidi, that’s not you being principled, it’s you getting cold feet. Indeed, I am sure that the same opportunism that has caused so many supposedly principled conservatives to hitch their wagons to Trump is now causing some of them to question their choices, not because Trump has changed but because the climate might be changing around them.

By all means, if Trump continues to unravel (a huge if), please abandon Trump. But don’t think for a moment that the rest of us will automatically take your word for it when you say this or that statement changed your mind about the man. He hasn’t changed, your calculations have.

But can I go back to Michelle Fields for a moment? I think that whole affair was really instructive.

Trump is a master of a kind of passive aggression — though it can often just seem like plain old aggression. When caught in a lie, Trump doesn’t merely stick to the lie, he enlarges it. Not only did Lewandowski do nothing wrong, he saved Trump from an assault! That pen could have been a bomb! A bomb!!! (Remember when he suggested a protester who charged the stage was with ISIS?)

By embracing and enlarging the lie, Trump gives his most ardent fans no escape. They must either fall in line with yet another comfortable story about how their leader is both supremely right and a victim of deceit or open themselves up to the possibility that this one instance of deception and boorishness isn’t unique but utterly representative, which it is.

I think many of us have known people like this. Inveterate liars and other kinds of sociopaths test the limits of polite society. They break the implicit bargain that says you can get away with lying only so long as everyone agrees not to notice. Obvious lies are insults, because they rest on the assumption that the person being lied to is either too stupid to recognize the lie or too weak to say anything about it. In this sense, Trump has been insulting his biggest supporters from day one.

It certainly appears that way.

[Update a while later]

More thoughts from Roger Kimball:

The point, as Andrew McCarthy observed in a much-read column, is that Trump is the effect, not the cause of the deterioration of our shared political assumptions. Many people believe that Trump is leading a new populist movement. In fact, he is the garrulous Howdy-Doody puppet of forces he represents but does not control. As Gurri observes, “the dizzying rise of Trump can best be understood as the political assertion of a newly energized public. Trump has been chosen by this public, . . . and he is the visible effect, not the cause, of this public’s surly and mutinous mood. . . . The right level of analysis on Trump isn’t Trump, but the public that endows him with a radical direction and temper, and the decadent institutions that have been too weak to stand in his way.”

I think that’s right. Gurri believes that the public’s “surly and mutinous mood” has something to do with a new “revolt of the masses,” one brought about partly by the decadence of our political institutions but also, and more pointedly, by the destabilizing spread of instant if superficial connectedness wrought by the internet.

The problem is neither Obama or Trump, but an electorate that could make them president.

[Update late morning]

Dear Trumpkins, this is why people don’t like you.

They confuse “political incorrectness” with mindless crude boorishness.

[Update a few minutes later]

No, Joe Scarborough, “Republican” is not synonymous with “conservative.”

Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Popular Culture, Social Commentary

Losing Wisconsin

79 Comments

Why it could cost Trump the nomination.

Let’s hope. As Matt Lewis notes, he’s been behaving even more stupidly than usual as of late.

[Update early evening]

How to dump Trump:

No longer is Donald Trump a trifle, a fillip, an entertainment, the personification of the liberal caricature of Republicans, easy to mock, easier to dismiss, a phenomenon at which to awe, an avenger of the people who has the right enemies. He’s a threat to American democracy. And he must be stopped.

I don’t say this lightly. I’m as critical of our elites as the next talk radio host. Their uncritical attitude toward globalization would embarrass Dr. Pangloss. Immigration, trade, and internationalism have costs. But these costs must be weighed against the benefits, and then ameliorated prudently, gradually, and steadfastly. Trump would have us believe our troubles will vanish as soon as we build his wall, raise tariffs, and exit NATO. It’s a fantasy.

And it is precisely this embrace of wishful thinking that makes him so dangerous. Politicians lie. But there is a difference between the lying common in democracies—a Clinton family specialty—and the construction of alternate realities more common to autocratic regimes. Trump, his rallies, and his Twitter mobs fall under the second category. Trump is expert at asking, “Who are you going to believe: Me or your lying eyes?” He not only gets marks to fall for the con. He convinces them to embellish and to extend it, to harass skeptics and critics, to spew bile and hatred. He’s convinced a large swath of Republican voters to see vulgarity as strength, braggadocio as character, brashness as capability. He inverts standards of judgment and of truth, and if he is allowed to reshape the GOP in his image there is no telling where he’d turn next.

The case of his campaign manager is instructive. Just look at the police video. You’ll see why Corey Lewandowski was charged with simple battery. But Trump and his minions weave an intricate web of lies to deny, excuse, defend, and celebrate their man. That young woman who asked a question? To them, she’s not a reporter. She’s a security threat, publicity hound, hoaxer who enjoys the attention. That their messages contradict doesn’t matter. The lies serve the overarching goal of appearing strong, decisive, unflinching, and untamed. If this is how Candidate Trump responds to a conservative journalist for a friendly publication, how would President Trump behave toward his opponents?

I don’t want to know the answer. Nor should you. Hence the task of liberal democracy: Stop Trump. How? The quickest way would be to deny him the 1,237 delegates required to win the GOP nomination on the first ballot. John McCormack of the Weekly Standard has done the math: Beat Trump in Wisconsin, in Indiana, and in Nebraska, split the delegates in Oregon and Washington, defeat him in South Dakota, Montana, and California, and he’ll fall short.

It’s an uphill battle. But not entirely utopian: Trump has lost some momentum as his campaign turns into a circus that embarrasses most Republicans. And the cause is noble. If Trump doesn’t win on the first ballot, then the convention will be thrown to the delegates. And the complexity of the proceedings will favor the well organized, the best resourced, and the most influential members of the party. The Trump campaign is none of these things.

Yes. Also, I would note that if there is anything that Trump doesn’t understand about how the GOP delegate apportioning works, it is how the process of running for president independently works. It’s a fantasy for both him and his supporters.