Tuesday, July 25, 2017

Trump's Collapsing Presidency

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Señor Trumpanzee's very shady modeling agency, Trump Model Management, is under investigation again. One guy Trumpanzee can't fire is New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman-- but I bet he wishes he could. One of his investigations, coordinated under both the Financial Crimes Bureau and the Organized Crime Task Force, involves the beleaguered modeling agency as part of a possible future Enterprise Corruption indictment.

There is some speculation that Preet Bharara's office was investigating the Trump Organization under federal RICO statutes and that after Trump fired him without cause, Schneiderman took over the investigation with a state-level version of RICO: Enterprise Corruption.

Trump himself-- and his rapidly expanding legal defense team-- are more focused on the Putin-Gate scandal than the "petty" crime that has marked Trump's entire sleazy career. This tweet is just pathetic: his whiny attempt tp guilt congressional Republicans into coming to his aid even more overtly than many of them already have.



"Carried over the line on my back?" The man is delusional. Most Republican incumbents did better-- many much better-- than Trump, who, after all, did lose to Clinton by nearly 3 million votes-- 65,853,516 to 62,984,825. In most constituencies Trump wasn't carrying anyone on his back. He was an anchor. He certainly helped defeat Republican Senate incumbents Mark Kirk (IL) and Kelly Ayotte (NH), each of whom outpolled him, Kirk 2,184,692 to 2,146,015 and Ayotte 353,632 to 345,790. In fact, in New Hampshire, he also dragged incumbent Tea Party congressman Frank Guinta to a career-ending debacle. Nor was Guinta the only Republican who lost his seat because of Trump. The voters in Mark Kirk's old House district in Illinois also threw out Bob Dold while they were defeating Trump and Kirk. Florida voters ousted GOP incumbents John Mica and David Jolly and in Nevada, where Trump lost to Hillary, he dragged down the Republicans' Senate candidate, Joe Heck, and two House candidates, incumbent Cresent Hardy and challenger Danny Tarkanian.

Not even an utterly fact-free imbecile like Trump is likely to claim he carried Utah Senator Mike Lee over the finish like on his back. Lee took 760,241 votes to Trump's very sad 515,231. Trump has been bitching a lot about Kansas Senator Jerry Moran not supporting his proposals or defending him from attack. But if anyone carried anyone on their back, it was Moran, who got 732,376 votes, carrying Trump, who only won 671,018 votes, to a win in Kansas. Trump may grouse that Chuck Grassely's efforts to protect him aren't enough but Grassley is doing way too much already and certainly won way more votes that Trump did in Iowa-- 926,007 to Trump's relatively weak 800,983. Other Republican Senate incumbents who outpolled Trump last year include McCain (AZ), Rubio (FL), Rob Portman (OH), Johnny Isakson (GA), Mike Crapo (ID), Richard Burr (NC) and Ron Johnson (WI).

And in the House, the Republicans who came closest to losing their seats were all dragged down by Trump. A good example was in CA-49, the San Diego/Orange County district where Hillary beat Trump 50.7% to 43.2% dragging Darrell Issa to his worst result ever and nearly costing him his seat. In the end Issa eked out a miserable 155,888 (50.3%) to 154,267 (49.7%) win over newcomer Doug Applegate, even though Issa outspent Applegate $6,275,754 to $2,041,091. Or take TX-07, the Houston district represented by John Culberson. Hillary won 48.5% to 47.1% and Culberson, despite running against a Democrat with virtually no support suffered his worst election result ever and, like Issa, is likely it be defeated in 2018.



Meanwhile, Trump is still tweeted veiled threats to Republicans in Congress growing increasingly sick of him and his childish, vindictive behavior. Is this one a threat? The real repercussions will be to the 20 to 30 million Americans who lose their healthcare if TrumpCare in ever enacted. And if that isn't enough of a repercussion for the self-absorbed, Adderall-fueled Trump, how about the fact that voters have consistently said-- by huge margins-- that they will be much less likely to vote for their own members of Congress if they back TrumpCare?



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6 Comments:

At 10:47 AM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

It's not collapsing. It's a mental dwarf playing president in the sandbox with his patronizing older sibs playing "hail to the chief" on kazoos so he won't throw a tantrum and break stuff.

The evil is the R party trying desperately to erase the name Obama from history books, even the stuff that the corporations love, and give the kochs (and other big R donors) a trillion dollars of the wealth that the lowest 50 million americans have and will have.
The enablers, the democraps, made all this inevitable by never undoing R evil, overreach and hate when they had the chance. They were much too busy making corporations richer, the rich richer and prosecuting the same wars the Rs started but expanding them.

When a party chooses its succession by birth/marriage instead of by merit, this is what happens. Bernie would have been the merit choice. But $hillbillary was the legacy (husband corrupted the party with the DLC and was the first really neoliberal D unitary) and they cheated until $he won. Bernie took it like a whipped puppy, which is very disgusting.

 
At 12:54 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

"Bernie took it like a whipped puppy, which is very disgusting."

NO, Bernie took it like a grownup, just like me and millions like me who knew then, know now, and will know next week that Hillary at her worst (which is pretty G-ddamn bad) is still vastly preferable to Trump at his best (if such a thing even exists). The republic would survive 4. maybe even 8 more Clinton years, albeit in a weakened state. We will be lucky to survive Trump / Pence as a democracy any more functional than Erdoğan's Turkey.

 
At 1:09 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

12:54, we'll ever disagree about this. I know that $hillbillary would, in the long run, end up worse than this shit. This shit has a chance to catalyze americans into pulling their heads out of their sphincters, finally, and finding a better way. 4/8 more years of neoliberalism, neoconism, elitism and inequality but with pandering/platitudes would only make WTD (worse than drumpfsterfire) inevitable.

You said it yourself: "... albeit in a weakened state". This is what lesser-evilism is. You get swindled into believing that less evil is good. It isn't. It's still more evil than the last one. Walking down stairs isn't going up. It's going down. Just not all at once. No step goes up. They all go down.

 
At 6:18 PM, Blogger Bill Michtom said...

A small request much less important than the destruction of the country or the world, but could you all at DWT take the lead in eliminating the always stupid and pointless "-gate" suffix for the scandal of the week?

Watergate, for instance, had NOTHING to do with water. Why throw 'gate' on the ass end of everything since then?

Thanks.

 
At 6:37 PM, Blogger Bill Michtom said...

Also, as to the " self-absorbed, Adderall-fueled Trump," if Trump WERE Adderall-fueled, he would be much less of an out-of-control asshole.

Just saying.

 
At 7:26 PM, Blogger mainstreeter said...

I doubt it's collapsing anytime soon. The very ugly senate and house is getting everything they want right now. Even Bombs Away McCain gave a mysterious speech on the floor of the senate today leaving one to wonder if he was brain dead years ago in which he and others will continue to kiss the Donald's ass for the foreseeable future while claiming "maverick" status in the senate.

 

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