The Guardian describes Donald Trump's latest rally:
It was a standard Trump stump speech, full of evidence-free claims that his 2020 election defeat was fraudulent; baseless accusations that overseas nations were sending to the US “most of their prisoners”; and a laughable assertion that a gathering of supporters numbering in the hundreds was really a crowd of 45,000.
It also touched on the surreal. Biden, he insisted, had raised the price of bacon four-fold. “We don’t eat bacon any more,” Trump said.
This might be the most trivial Trump falsehood ever, but that's sort of the point. He'll literally make up anything.
The price of bacon is up a mere 14% since Trump left office, and if you adjust for wages it's cheaper than when Trump left office. Meanwhile, total bacon production is 13% higher than it was when Trump left office. For better or worse, the American love affair with bacon is far from over.
Why would anyone make up lies as frivolous as this? Because Trump lives in a fantasy world where everything has to be the worst ever in history unless he was personally involved with it. His brain is so badly beyond repair that I suspect he literally can't help himself, and he's surrounded by sycophants who will never confront him with the truth. This is not a man fit to be president of the United States.
His brain is so badly beyond repair that I suspect he literally can't help himself
Gee, wouldn't it be nice if there were a way we could transform the dynamic of the campaign so as to focus on Trump's brain issues for a change?
https://x.com/mattyglesias/status/1811237180536164679
Sigh...
"Pelosi opens the door, subtly, to replacing Biden"
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2024/07/10/nancy-pelosi-joe-biden-drop-out-congressional-democrats/
Know hope.
No, she didn't.
Like, literally. It's an article about nothing.
Ahh, yea, maybe by you shutting up now.
but then kevin drum wouldn't be able to look his tuesday afternoon lunching club in the eye.
Sadly, the MSM considers "Trump Makes Nonsensical Claims in Rambling, Incoherent Speech" to be more or less a dog-bites-man story these days. As always, Dems are graded on a grownup curve whereas Republicans are allowed to be wilding toddlers with oppositional defiance disorder.
trump lies with every breath. it's been reported and reported and reported. one medium even tracked the number of lies he told during his 4 years in office. the net consequences to trump: zip. he could tell his followers that the moon is made of green cheese and they'd either believe him or make up some excuse why he said that. to some extent it reminds me of german citizen reaction to nazi atrocities; "if the fuhrer only knew..."
He's the guy at the Eat 'n Park who always sits in a front booth all morning raving at anyone who can't avoid walking by and who talks to nobody in particular the whole time he's at the salad bar. And if you accidentally get too close he'll grab you by the elbow.
His fat ass says otherwise.
trump tells a lie. and in other news, it's thursday. i do not know for the life of me why ANYONE believes a single word of that "man's" mouth.
Because they WANT to believe, and they want to believe because they want to BELONG. He could say the sky is orange and we can't even drive on the highways anymore because there are no more highways really, and all his followers would nod enthusiastically, take it as evidence of their deep-seated beliefs (it's cuz of those immigrants and all that welfare and also Nancy Pelosi), and rejoice that everyone around them is doing the same.
It's not about reality. It's about being part of the In-Group, which is better than those silly "facts" those know-it-alls keep talking about. It's cultism.
i know it's cultism. but why trump? he's inept, a proven liar, lazy, a crook, inarticulate, fat and ugly. years ago i heard someone describe john wayne gacy, the serial murder, as an onion. you peel him apart layer by layer, hoping to find something, and in the end you find nothing. there's nothing there. same with trump.
Why Trump? Because he's actually trying to do it with all the corruption skills he's practiced for his entire life.
He thinks he's the Mozart of getting away with it, --though if he were no one would notice, --but thinking he's the Mozart of getting away with it, and that a lot of people do notice and can't stop him, that must be an ego rush all the cocaine in the world couldn't create.
Exactly. Particularly when he drones on in time with the background music, another thing never seen before with a politician's speeches.
Also I repeat my demand a thumbs up/down function here, goddam it.
I also helps that they are as dumb as a bag of hammers.
To paraphrase Colbert, it doesn't matter if it *is* true as long as it *feels* true. And that Democrats are a bunch of woke pussies who want to force you to give up bacon and go vegan *feels* true to his supporters.
ETA -- or what stilesroaster said downthread -- sorry I didn't see that comment first.
Actually, I'm a woke Democrat who makes my own bacon. And my wife and I both eat it.
The frivolous lies have a non-trivial purpose. Trump has conditioned a large fraction of the electorate to be resentful of liberals. His lies, as long as they reinforce that resentment, tighten the bond between Trump and the MAGA.
He also lies by taking credit for things he didn't do. One that stuck with me -- also in the running for "most trivial Trump falsehood ever" -- came early in his first term. He claimed that there had been no fatal commercial airline crashes in the US in the previous year because he had been "very strong" on airline safety. This ignored the reality that (a) he had changed no policies and devoted no new resources to airline safety, and (b) there had been no fatal crashes in the previous 8 years, either.
You could come up with about a million similar examples. That one probably stuck because it was early in the history of Trump World. Trump World is not the one the rest of us live in.
Nailed it
GOP haves just want him to crush taxes
GOP have-nots just want him to crush liberals
And yet, when reporters ask Trump fans why they like him so much they nearly always cite his honesty as one of the main things they like about him.
But I think the media systematically misunderstands that. A lot of people don't care if he lied about porn stars or the price of bacon. They think he's honest about what matters to them, namely what he wants to do. And he is indeed clear that it's fascism or failing that an Orban-style de facto one-party state.
Biden is clear too about where he wants to go, but does not appear honest about his abilities. There are different kinds of dishonesty and Dems are I think making a big mistake in thinking people don't mind the secretive cabal around Biden.
And also that he's "honest" in a "deeper" way -- not about trivial "facts" or "logic" but about feelings and beliefs, VERY much including resentments, bigotry, tribalism, and even overt hatred. If it's pointed out that what he says is not true, it's waved away with "oh I don't care about that" or "well it might as well be true."
They think he's gonna hurt the people they hate, and they hear that in every word he says.
He is very good at figuring out what feels true to his audience and then sayin that.
And he hops from topic to topic like a bumblebee -- it's kind of disorienting to listen to -- until he finds something that gets a response, and then he just works that until it's played out. (And even then, what he says is often nonsensical.)
Lifelong con man is good at it. As someone once said, you can fool some of the people all of the time. I think it was one of those Presidents who were almost as great as Donald was. In this case "some" is apparently about a third of our fine countrypersons.
from,
https://www.rawstory.com/joe-biden-2668726016/
Really? It seems like the reporter is working for the Trump campaign. Nowhere in there did it say how the Trump campaign is doing anything.
It says they're focusing on young Hispanics like a laser beam while the Biden campaign, and Democrats in general, are completely ignoring them, suggesting strongly that this will make the difference for Trump.
Though I'm not as sold on the thesis as the man saying it because he also seems to be implying it would be better to ignore the swing states, which I find implausible.
But in what way are they focusing on Latinos? What are they saying/doing/promising that makes Latinos think Trump is an option? Everything I see from Trump surrogates is hatred for brown skinned people, particularly Latinos.
How are they doing that?
Saying you're focusing isn't focusing.
How are Democrats ignoring them?
It seems to take the Trump team's statements as facts.
He's a Republican political consultant.
Assuming he's on the level here, this is their view.
Is he right? I don't know, but he could be.
::FATAL ERROR:: BEGIN CORE DUMP.....
I remember reading several sources a while back about the GOP shutting down all their minority voter outreach offices - including this in the NYT on March 13.
So, did they decide to put the money into renting those blue Jewish space lasers? How that kind of laser beam focus make young Hispanics flock to vote R?
The "reporter" is literally acting as a stenographer for Mike Madrid, a "Latino GOP consultant".
It's nothing but a copy paste of GOP talking points about how awesome Trump and the GOP are according to them.
Interesting. So Hispanic voters are being won over by Trump's plans to round up undocumented Hispanics into concentration camps? Fascinating.
The social conservative mind is a marvelous thing.
Never thought the leopard would eat MY face, etc. etc.
it's like the title of the 90s alternative album. suicide pact -- you first.
The strange thing about Authoritarians is that their desire for a strong ruler doesn't just mean that the ruler should brutally punish their enemies, but it extends to themselves having a strong ruler.
And, of course, they can't bring themselves to believe that the ruler would ever do anything bad to them. They keep this belief, right up to the very end.
Latinos are a mixed bag. A lot of the wealthier ones look down on the poorer ones, just like they did when they all lived back in Mexico or Chile or Costa Rica. Central and South America has racism too, with whiter Latinos discriminating against darker skinned Latinos. Not sure why anyone would assume all Latinos have class solidarity just because they all speak the same language. (English speakers also look down on other English speakers too, especially back in the warring Catholic-Protestant era.)
And the Latinos who answer polls are probably more secure in their jobs, lives, etc. so they just assume "I won't be deported because I'm a taxpayer and have built a whole productive life here." They simply refuse to realize that, when Stephen Miller runs out of Latinos to deport from the fields and the hotel housekeeping departments, they'll turn on the "good" Latinos next. The cattle cars will be full, no matter how high up the socioeconomic scale they have to go, until the country is "white enough" again for the MAGA faithful.
Also, there's a lot of fudgery happening with Latinos in polls lately. I suspect it's because polls are paying people to respond "if you qualify" and one of the easiest ways to make sure you qualify is to claim you're a minority group, since pollsters have always had problems getting "enough" Latinos/Blacks/Asians, etc. to participate. Some of this "Latino" polling is probably just white people lying about their race/ethnicity to get Amazon gift cards.
Some of them, but most seem to find the idea Republicans would stop at undocumented a bit dubious.
Donald depends on people including Hispanic voters to leave logic and facts behind, particularly less educated voters who don't know a lot about how the world works. Most Latino people are here legally. All Puerto Ricans are here legally. Maybe they don't want any competition. Maybe they resent some other groups that Donald hates.
You probably know the LBJ quote, and it's a classic trope that the most exploited people will fight each other for the scraps instead of seeing the big picture of who is actually the enemy exploiting them.
Actually, the groups Donald hates includes all of his followers who aren't Maralago types, but that is irrelevant to him if he can get the trailer trash to vote for him. In this case that is absolutely all that matters to him. Otherwise it's entirely about money. And this is about money too if he can trash all the cases and judgments against him.
Why no stories about how the elderly are fleeing Trump in droves? Why are you ignoring this?
Excellent question!
Somebody should ask CNN and the NYTimes.
Trump's disregard for facts seems to be diametrically opposite to Kevin's respect for them.
Nobody adjusts for inflation or thinks in percentages when it comes to their income vs. expenses. They just don't. I know Kevin likes to do both, and so do I. I took a job in Northern VA specifically because the higher salaries here more than outweighed the higher living costs here, and it meant my fixed student loans would be taking a lower % of my overall monthly income, leaving me with more disposable income. But most regular (which is to say very innumerate) people just see price tags early on in their working life, and then very strongly believe that's the "correct" price forever, and get outraged if it goes up in any noticeable way.
So for example, even though my friends now make 2-5x what we all made fresh out of college, most of them recall gas being below $2 when we all first started driving, so therefore gas being now like $4 is "outrageous." Doesn't stop them from buying and driving gas guzzlers, mind you. But it's still "outrageous" even though they obviously can still afford it.
The same exact thing is happening with bacon, and everything else we routinely buy. All the price tags are higher than we remember, and a good majority of people get outraged by that, even if they can easily afford the higher prices because of higher incomes.
Where oh where does t-Rump get his ideas for his bloviation? Are they from his nightmares or eavesdropping on his baskets of deplorable. It's the stuff of bad cartoons, fit for an idiot, which he is.
They bought his special brain in Tiffany's Special Brain store, (an important store for a select clientele).
It's like a Faberge egg of a brain. Delicate. Beautiful. There's never been a brain like it.
The price increases of bacon have been a common refrain: https://jabberwocking.com/the-price-of-bacon-is-up-8-1/
This is basic culture war rhetoric. "Real men" eat bacon. "Real men" feel under attack, so clearly woke Bidenomics must be raising the price to atmospheric levels. It's all about destroying the lifestyle of "Real" America. It's a bit surprising Trump hasn't thrown in some related jibes about pushing everyone to eat quinoa. He'd have a field day mispronouncing that one.
The more bacon they eat the better. The price should be subsidized down to zero. Not just the fat and calories, but nitrites are strongly correlated with bowel cancer.
No unprocessed turkey bacon for them!
If Donald Trump crumbled up bacon and stirred it into his coffee would anyone be a bit surprised? Even for a moment?