
“Everybody says the birther thing was great!”
Donald Trump is preparing to lie today about his role in the birther movement. Will the media let him?

“Everybody says the birther thing was great!”
Donald Trump is preparing to lie today about his role in the birther movement. Will the media let him?

“Sorry Venkman– I’m terrified beyond the capacity for rational thought.”
Recent polls have become terrifying. But can the biggest potential disaster since the Civil War actually win?

Steve King thinks Colin Kaepernick is basically ISIS, and that anyone who disagrees isn’t American.

“And her hair, what’s up with that?”
Are Trumps insane projections a strategy, or just an insight into his lack of character, and is there a difference?

There are many, many reasons why jihad appeals to so many young Muslims, but the continued cruel indifference of Gitmo is up there.

Not that you need any more proof that Donald Trump is the most unserious person ever to run for President (even counting Gary “Aleppo?” Johnson, who is mostly serious), but…
After months of laboring in obscurity and waiting on paychecks that did not arrive, most of Donald Trump’s Washington policy shop quit, with some telling theWashington Post they decided to jump ship after realizing the GOP nominee wasn’t interested in immersive debate prep.
Some staffers said the last straw came following two marathon sessions in early August to plan how to prepare Trump for the upcoming presidential debates, but the campaign abruptly shifted strategies. One former staffer told the paper, “The New York office realized that their candidate would not be receptive to that level of intense preparation.”
Not receptive. Because he has a very good brain, you know?

So, who is worse, the sociopath or the enabler?
There are some things– like, for example, what is happening literally anywhere in the world– you should “brush up on” before deciding to run for President.

A weird and ill-thought-out tweet provided one of this miserable gut-kick of an election’s biggest unintentional laughs, save every time Jeb Bush spoke, but also highlighted its single-biggest dishonesty.

“It’s physical, sure, but not exactly beautiful, you know?”
I promise no more Trump for the rest of the week.* I’m as sick of this as you are. And without even getting into the substance of his immigration speech, I just want to point out two quick parts (from the transcript on Vox).
Number one. Are you ready? Are you ready? We will build a great wall along the southern border. And Mexico will pay for the wall. 100%. They don’t know it yet, but they’re going to pay for the wall. And they’re great people. And great leaders. But they’re going to pay for the wall.
On day one we will begin working on an impenetrable physical tall powerful beautiful southern border wall.
This is a little more substantive.
Countless Americans, who have died in recent years, would be alive today if not for the open-border policies of this administration, and the administration that causes this horrible, horrible thought process. It’s called Hillary Clinton. This includes incredibly Americans like 21-year-old Sarah Root.
I honestly don’t know if I’ve ever seen such a combination of genuine stupidity and genuine danger in a single person.
Anyway, I promise* that the rest of the week will be more fun stuff like ISIS.
*promise not binding

I run the best casinos. Believe me.
I’m not concerned– relative to my sweaty panic over the possibility that the worst person in America has a legitimate shot to become the next President– that Trump said one thing in Mexico, and then a completely different thing in his big immigration speech to an adoring crowd. The substance isn’t that interesting, and it was expected. After a solid week of people saying he had to “soften” his immigration approach, there is no way Trump wasn’t going to double down. That’s his personality: a dimwitted sociopathic 4th-grader. We know this.
No, what is much more interesting, and telling, is how he came out and said that the topic of who was going to pay for his big and beautiful wall didn’t come up when he met with Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto. I actually believed this, because I figured both men tacitly admitted that was an insane idea, only believable by the goons in his Leni Riefenstahl stag parties.
It turns out, of course, that it apparently did come up, first thing, in the form of Peña Nieto declaring that there is no way Mexico is going to pay for his wall. So who is lying? If you have to ask, you haven’t listened to a single word Trump has ever said. He lies as a matter of course, and habit, because the sell, and the con, are the only thing that matters.
Think of his Mexican presser as him going to talk to one group of suckers who want to invest in, say, the third casino he is building on one stretch of road in Atlantic City. He just met with some experts, and is ready to deliver the news: everything is fine. “Well”, say the nervous investors, “wouldn’t all three just suck revenue from one another and lead to a collapse?” Trump would say
“Well”, say the nervous investors, “wouldn’t all three just suck revenue from one another and lead to a collapse? Did they say anything about that?” Trump would say “You know what? It didn’t come up. Everyone says it is a great idea, and it’s going to make so much money.” Trump lies because that’s how he sells things to gullible investors, including banks. He just makes up whatever he has to do to please an audience, to get them to buy his pitch. It’s different than what normal politicians
It’s different than what normal politicians do, because he has absolutely zero substance. The lie, the con, the sell, is the entirety of his approach. There’s nothing behind it. It’s why he lies with such ease and without hesitation. Behaving in this way is integral to his– and I use this word in the loosest possible sense– character.
Remember, even if he used to, Trump doesn’t build anything anymore. He doesn’t manage or run things in a real sense. He sells his name to people to use as some kind of stamp of authenticity. And that’s how he’s run his campaign. There is no actual policy, no substance. The campaign is just a way to keep the campaign going, to keep selling. It’s alie created in order to tell more lies. It’s just another reason why, while his winning would be a disaster, the fact that it is working at all has exposed a Trump-shaped rot in the American character.