You might be asking why John Oliver used the analogy of “a back mole” to describe Donald Trump. Oliver explained the reason – “It may have seemed harmless a year ago, but now that it has gotten frighteningly bigger it is no longer wise to ignore it.”
Oliver claims to understand why Trump’s supporters like him, as Trump is unpredictable and entertaining and could be seen as a “protest candidate.” For Oliver, though, “Donald Trump can seem appealing until you take a closer look, much like a lunch buffet at a strip club — or the NFL.”
Oliver is in a unique position to critique Trump as the current Republican front runner tweeted that he had turned down an invitation to appear on the “very boring and low rated” show, Last Week Tonight, because it was a “waste of time and energy.” However, according to Oliver, no one on his staff has ever invited Trump to be on the show, because it’s not a talk show.
Shocked! Unbelievable that MSNBC and Melissa Harris-Perry have butted heads to the point where they cannot straighten things out. Perry and MSNBC are apparently going their separate ways!
“Farewell #Nerdland,” she tweeted on Sunday, referring to the probing discussions on her weekend show. “Inviting diverse new voices to table was a privilege. Grateful for years of support & criticism.”
The network says MSNBC and Harris-Perry are parting ways.
She was scheduled to appear this Saturday and Sunday in the regular two-hour slot from 10 a.m. to noon. But Harris-Perry announced several days ago that she would stay away — in response to MSNBC’s pre-emption of her program for much of February for coverage of presidential politics.
Harris-Perry has focused on the politics of race, gender and social justice on her “Melissa Harris-Perry” show.
“Our show was taken — without comment or discussion or notice — in the midst of an election season,” Harris-Perry said in an email to her staff that was posted on her Twitter page on Friday.
MSNBC “would like me to appear for four inconsequential hours to read news that they deem relevant,” including more political news. “I will not be used as a tool for their purposes. I am not a token, mammy, or little brown bobble head,” said Harris-Perry, who is black.
“While MSNBC may believe that I am worthless, I know better,” she added. “I know who I am. I know why MHP Show is unique and valuable. I will not sell short myself or this show.”
Just last month, Rep. Tulsi Gabbard of Hawaii and Chair of the DNC refused to say which of the two Democratic candidates she would support for president. Today, she stepped down from her job on the DNC and announced her support for Bernie Sanders for President.
“As a veteran, as a soldier, I’ve seen firsthand the true cost of war,” Gabbard said in her announcement. “As we look at our choices as to who our next commander-in-chief will be is to recognize the necessity to have a commander-in-chief who has foresight. Who exercises good judgment. Who looks beyond the consequences – who looks at the consequences of the actions that they are willing to take before they take those actions. So that we don’t continue to find ourselves in these failures that have resulted in chaos in the Middle East and so much loss of life.”
This is what happens when a political party is in the midst of self-destruction. I remember it well when the Democrats dissolved between 1972 and 1984, and these last, frantic days should remind us that it’s not pretty or helpful when a major political organization goes nuclear.
Such is the Republican Party.
I have been saying, for quite some time, that I didn’t believe Donald Trump will be the GOP nominee this year, and I will cling to that belief until the numbers say that I’m wrong, but it’s fairly clear that ego, infighting, stubbornness and incompetence have put Trump on the brink of attaining that prize. For once, though, I don’t fully blame the Republican Party as much as I also blame the voters it nurtured and the utter disdain and hatred they have for President Obama and government in general.
There are still some Republican leaders who do understand what their actions have wrought, such as former NJ Governor Christine Todd Whitman, who says that she will support Hillary for president, even as they are now seeing that saying ultra-conservative things, but governing less so, has gotten them into a pot of boiling water they can’t climb out of easily.
The debate last week was bad enough; a WWE-type smack-down that had little to do with politics and everything to do with the stunted maturity of the party’s front-runner and the anger of the intellectual dwarfs who want to take him down. The candidates discussed precious little about what they would do as president, which in all cases would be a disaster for the middle class, women, minorities, anyone whose sexuality differs from the norm, potentially productive immigrants and most animal species, and focused on bodily functions and who might have lied the most. They then continued the fight through the week, referring to bathroom habits and other national security issues they believe are the keys to their success.
Christie has clearly had it with the Republican Party, and in his mind he has good reason. After all, he spent years cultivating supporters by giving time and speeches to candidates when they were running for office. Then, as Chairman of the Republican Governor’s Association he threw himself into party politics, doled out resources and, again, spent many months on the campaign trail, biding his time until the 2016 election, when he would gather up his favors and chits and be the instant front-runner for the presidency. The GW Bridge traffic jam destroyed his credibility and his actions on the campaign trail, including his torching of Marco Rubio in the debate just before the New Hampshire primary, proved to be not only his undoing, but the cause of his own political self-immolation.
And now Chris doesn’t have to spend more time in New Jersey being Governor, which I’m certain is one of his main reasons for making this endorsement. Christie is essentially over state politics and craves the national limelight and cable television programs. It’s Kim Guagdano’s gig now, but the Democrats have the power. Christie is fast becoming irrelevant on the state level.
Also, he probably sees Trump as the only candidate who would give him a job if (shudder) he wins the presidency. Does Christie on the Supreme Court grab your attention? It should.
Let’s see what happens on March 1, Super Tuesday, and in the big states that hold primaries between then and March 15. Trump is not likely to gather enough delegates to win the nomination and if Rubio can consistently get 20% or more in each state, he can stay close until April, when more big states will vote. Also, John Kasich will probably be out of the race very soon.
Republicans lost their minds a long, long time ago, and their frustrations have manifested itself in many ways. On CNN, a panel was assembled to talk about Thursday night’s Republican slug-fest, and a Republican on the panel had to admit that Republicans and the Republican party “have gone bat shit!”
Radio host Scottie Nell Hughes was visibly aggravated by Thursday’s GOP debate that saw candidates Donald Trump, Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz standing on the stage yelling at each other while CNN moderator Wolf Blitzer stood helplessly by.
Saying Rubio had pledged to not attack Trump, Hughes was dismayed by the change in tactics by the Florida senator during the debate.
“In 24 hours we see the most rabid frothing politician that I’ve seen yet,” she explained. “Spewing nothing but lies from him that night.”
Asked ” What does that do to the party?” Hughes went off on a rant that found her swearing on live TV — which she realized seconds after her outburst as the other guests laughed.
“It absolutely destroys our party,” she exclaimed. “I think both of those politicians — Governor Christie and Senator Graham are right. We have gone bat shit.”
New Jersey Governor Chris Christie endorsed Donald Trump yesterday. Yeah, that happened.
An unbelievable Pause goes here.
In the meantime, Ohio governor John Kasich is laying out his exit strategy from running a losing campaign for president.
“I will beat Donald Trump in Ohio, and that will be the beginning of a new day,” Kasich told a crowd in Nashville, according to the New York Times.
“Some of the other candidates, if they can’t win their home state, they got to get out, OK?” he added. “If I don’t win my home state, I’ll get out. But you know what? I’m going to win Ohio.”
The remark was a dig at his rival Marco Rubio, who is trailing Trump by 16 points in his home state of Florida, according to a recent Quinnipiac University poll.
Ohio goes to the polls on March 15. Another Quinnipiac poll puts Trump ahead of Kasich in Ohio by 5 percentage points, just outside the poll’s margin of error, but the governor has insisted that he will have no problem winning the state.
Republican presidential candidate Ben Carson was awarded a little spotlight from the media today when he said that President Obama was not raised like a typical African-American, but was “raised white.” Carson then went on CNN and doubled down on that original statement.
“I grew up in Detroit, and I grew up in Boston. In Boston, we lived in the ghetto. There were a lot of violent episodes there. There were rats, there were roaches. It was dire poverty,” Carson said, speaking of his mother who worked around-the-clock but refused to accept welfare. “Now, let me contrast that to the President, who went to private schools, grew up in a relatively affluent environment, had an opportunity to live in multiple cultures and different countries. I think that’s a very different experience.”
“He’s an ‘African’ American. He was, you know, raised white,” the retired neurosurgeon said. “So, for him to, you know, claim that, you know, he identifies with the experience of black Americans, I think, is a bit of a stretch.”
WASHINGTON - JANUARY 18: Central Intelligence Agency Director Michael Hayden listens to questioning during a hearing before the House Intelligence Committee January 18, 2007 on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC. The topic of the hearing was the "Current Assessment of Threats to U.S. National Security." (Photo by Win McNamee/Getty Images)
Photo by Win McNamee/Getty Images
Please don’t put ideas in the man’s head. Trump has already proven that he has zero morals!
Former CIA Director Michael Hayden’s pithy line, which he first uttered in a Showtime documentary and repeated to NBC News, underscores a serious issue: The GOP front-runner has vowed to bring back torture if he becomes president, but current and former CIA officials say the agency feels so burned by what happened when its post 9/11 interrogation program was exposed that it would refuse any such orders.
“Multiple investigations, grand juries, presidential condemnations and congressional star chambers have a way of doing that to you,” Hayden, who was CIA director at the end of the George W. Bush administration, told NBC News.
He then offered an even stronger version of his Showtime quote. “Like the man said, if you want somebody waterboarded, bring your own damn bucket.”
Trump said Wednesday he is convinced that “torture works,” so he would bring back waterboarding and “much stronger” methods.
I don’t know what is up with these Republican men and their demeaning view of women. Even John Kasich, easily considered the most level-headed in the group running for the Republican nomination for president, can’t seem to get past the women belong in the kitchen barefoot and pregnant mentality.
At an event in Virginia on Monday, Kasich bragged that women came out of their kitchen to support his first campaign in Ohio.
I don’t think this is what the GOP had in mind when they made the calendar and rules that would govern the primaries. The party clearly wanted to make it easier for a candidate to consolidate support and win enough delegates so they could then turn their attention to fundraising and the general election. This enabled Trump to win 44 delegates with only 33% of the vote. Nice job.
In the words of Rick Perry, “Oops.”
In the further words of Howard Dean, “AAAAHHHH.”
South Carolina has to be the loudest wake-up call ever recorded in a modern presidential race and the Republican Party elders clearly have no strategy to stop the bleeding. Trump won a fairly convincing victory and rendered the race for second as the only one worth watching. Now that Jeb! has left the race I imagine that phones will be ringing in the Carson and Kasich campaign offices and the person on the other end will not be shy about telling those candidates that their time is gone and that they should rally their supporters around Marco Rubio as the only person who can save the party from its angry candidates. Unless they want to rally around Ted Cruz, but I can’t see that happening.
Meanwhile, on the left side of the docket, Hillary Clinton all but shut the door on Bernie Sanders in Nevada, winning a solid victory in a state that the Democrats will need in the fall. Word is that Harry Reid made some phone calls to union officials saying that it was fine for them not to endorse a candidate, but could the officials at least urge their members to vote for Clinton. That seems to have worked. Now it’s on the South Carolina on Saturday where Hillary has a commanding lead. A win there and on Super Tuesday on March 1 will probably close out Sanders as a serious contender, though I would not be surprised if he continue his campaign until the end.
The upshot is that the Democrats will probably achieve what the GOP had hoped for; a well-funded nominee who has time to unify the party, make nice-nice with their opponent, and start moving to attract the moderate voters who will likely be the keys to their election.
I know that I’m bucking the conventional wisdom at the moment, but I still don’t see Donald Trump being the GOP nominee. I think the GOP will find a way, or at least die trying, to rally around a candidate that they can control and win. After all, 65% of the party’s voters aren’t voting for Trump. Someone has to be able to harness that between now and June. If I’m wrong, then the GOP is in big time trouble.
But time is running out. Beware the Ides of March.
Introduced by another failed Presidential Republican candidate, Lindsey Graham, Jeb Bush followed Lindsey’s footsteps and announced that he is effectively suspending his campaign after losing in Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina. And during his announcement, Jeb and his failed campaign heard some of the loudest applause his campaign has ever had.
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