The Washington Post reports that there is a divide between the Republican foreign policy experts and the Trump base regarding Trump’s admiration for Putin.
The Trump base admires a tough leader who cracks heads and gets things done. They are tired of the prattle about civil liberties for groups they detest. They hate political correctness. They reject the tolerance for protests and dissidents. Putin doesn’t put ups it hit. Neither would Trump.
Last night, Chris Hayes on MSNBC did a long segment about Trump’s insistence that Obama was not born in America. Trump claimed he sent investigators to Hawaii, “and you wouldn’t believe what they are finding.” One of Trump’s advisors said the issue projected Trump onto the national stage. Trump’s avid engagement in the birther movement sent a signal to his white nationalist fans that he is one of them. He can safely drop that issue now because it served its purpose in solidifying his base.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Then the Trump base must love all the nuclear activity in No. Korea. They should all volunteer for the military, equal service for the genders, and show their bravery on the battle fields that Trump will create. May the ghost of Phyllis Schlafly join them.
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We really must bring back the draft. It puts a whole different perspective on things when families have skin in the game. What Jim Hightower has called “yellow bellied arm chair patriots”.
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Well, they support a faux Mussolini, so that shouldn’t surprise. Driving along the Pennsylvania Turnpike yesterday I saw a privately sponsored billboard with a picture of the White House next to a message, “Congress is corrupt” and underneath was “Vote Trump.” It’s hard to refute logic like that!
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I’ve known this for years from talking to my white working class students. They see Putin as the anti-Obama: he’s white, he’s pugnacious, he’s Christian and he hates gays and Muslims. They see him as the true leader of their tribe. By their definition of “American”, he is more American than our president and the liberal elites that hold so much power in this country. Trump is shrewdly playing to this pre-existing love affair.
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The fact that right-wing talk radio has been allowed to define “American” in this sick way is an indictment of our schools. E.D. Hirsch said it perfectly in his latest book, “The Making of Americans”. If schools don’t carefully construct Americanness, others will do it for us.
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Just curious, why should schools, or their teachers, then be able to “carefully construct Americanness”? Is not then that the same thing? Please, also keep in mind that I am a NYC public school teacher…
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Another jacked up pickup aggressively road raging with a “don’t tread on me” bumper sticker right next to the “my kid can beat up your honor role kid” one and an incredible lack of impulse control knowing a loaded CCW means they are right. I know it well.
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Comrade Trump’s warm embrace of the journalist-murdering Putin would never have been tolerated by Reagan, Buckley, or even McCarthy(!). It shows how far into insanity the Republicans have let their party slip. I suspect Putin would play chess while a President Trump would be playing chutes-n-ladders on the world stage. Trump would soon be out maneuvered. But Republicans have no one to blame but themselves.
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I fear for the press should Trump become president. Trump won’t order any killings, but his friends will know what to do.
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I fear for many – press, teachers, LGBT, Muslims. I honestly do not see the military refusing illegal orders from Trump – the chain of command is too ingrained and it would take a brave active duty general to risk it all to preserve the Constitution under a Trump. It sounds far fetched that is even mentioned. But Trump seems more unstable every day as does a core group of supporters.
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Where has it ever been stated as a quote from Trump that he will use nuclear warheads?
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Does not the press today totally and fully support the Dem candidate, Hillary Clinton? Why then would they change colors?
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Only in the minds of conservative press and alt right meetings at Denny’s.
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Just curious, using your logic, would FDR, Truman, Kennedy, et al. then also approve of the present POTUS’ previous tour where he said America was to blame for all the world’s woes?
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Stan…Trump has be repeatedly shown and heard on TV making the statement that “we have nuclear weapons, so they are meant to be used” or words to that end.
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typo…been heard…not be heard.
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Stan I am no Obama fan. I loathe Hillary but will vote for her, please show me/ us the quote where Obama ever said ” America was to blame for all the world’s woes?” Show me where he ever blamed America . A few facts tossed in with the delusions would be nice.
O just went to Japan talked about the horrors of nuclear war. But never apologized for anything.
I will say we are to blame for plenty, but then I am not the President nor an elected official.
The press does not support Hillary they have gone after her hard and she deserves every bit of it.
Trump on the other hand should be totally disqualified for any number of statements he has made. For the constant lies he has told. For the constant flip flops he has made. His surrogates should be banned from the air and he should not be covered because of his treatment of various reporters.
Yes they criticize him, but the give him constant coverage and allow reality to be skewed with this garbage of fair and balanced. Reality is not what either candidate or their surrogates claim. It is what real investigative journalists uncover and bring forward. The 24hr TV news cycle is rotting the American public’s mind in what can best be described as reality TV news. News meant to generate ratings.
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Deflecting will not elect Trump. Neither will hyperbole. Trump exhibits behavior that is concerning. He seems to completely lack self control and says whatever crosses his mind. He has no real policy other than insults and name calling. His background and business dealings are questionable and hidden. Using YOUR logic, we should ignore his bizarre behavior? I also am not a fan of Obama nor Hillary. But Trump is not qualified, has the wrong temperament, and very likely has a personality disorder that would affect his ability to govern. Sorry, no comparisons, no matter how hard you and Trump supporters try to obscure, misdirect, and dodge the reality.
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Stan, using your logic, would FDR, Truman, Kennedy, et al. then also approve of Donald Trump’s admiration for the “strong leadership” of Putin?
Maybe you’ll recall all those US Presidents complimenting Adolf Hitler during their campaigns, who no doubt is just as admired for his “strong leadership” by Trump as Putin is. After all, he sure didn’t do any nasty “apology tour” like Obama. No doubt you find Hitler’s “I will never apologize” attitude to be just as strong and admirable as many of Donald Trump’s supporters do.
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Guess who said: ““Anyone who has visited these places can imagine how in a few years, Hitler will emerge from the hate that now surrounds him and come to be regarded as one of the most significant figures ever to have lived.” He adds: “There was something mysterious about the way he lived and died which will outlive him and continue to flourish. He was made of the stuff of legends…”
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Rudy,
I can’t guess. He was wrong.
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Jfk wrote that in his diary. His father, Joe, was also a strong supporter of the Nazi regime. Which is why FDR fired him…
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Rudy,
What was the date?
JFK’s father, Joseph Kennedy, was a known Nazi sympathizer.
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It goes to show that American politicians, no matter what their party affiliation is, are not free from making bad choices and admiring wrong examples.
Quite a few Americans actually admired the Nazi regime. Lindbergh was another famous person in that particular “fan club.”
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Rudy,
You can’t excuse Trump’s Putin-love by saying that someone admired Hitler 90 years ago. Most f those admirers did not know that he would turn out to be a homicidal genocidal maniac. Same for admirers of Stalin. His many prominent admirers in this country did not know he was deporting and murdering millions of people.
Trump admires a KGB agent who murders journalist and political opponents. No excuses for his obstinate worship of this thug.
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Who is excusing him????? I’m just making clear that American politicians on both sides have sometimes picked less than admirable people.
But is seems like democrats seem to forget that. Remember the Presidents formal role model, Reverend Wright???
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Rudy,
You are getting nowhere with this line of argument. Regardless of who is Trump’s role model, he is an astonishingly ignorant, crude, vulgarian. When I hear him boast about how smart he is and how rich he is, I laugh out loud. People who are smart never say so.
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I do, too. Being an immigrant I fully understand, maybe better than many others on this site.
And please, don’t give me the “but we’re all immigrants…” because that’s not even close.
Senator grassley wax asked to assist, and all we got was, “sorry, nothing I can do. Come visit me when you make it to Washington…”
So when trump made his statement on immigrants, I took him to task. More than that, I wrote all gop chairs in the state, the chairman of the state gop, the RNC and all 50 state chairs that the GOO was making a terrible mistake.
I happen to think that the DNC made just as bad a mistake in privately pushing Clinton as opposed to Sanders. Of course, I still would not have shifted my party affiliation…
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Rudy,
I understand that Joe Kennedy and Lindbergh admired Hitler for his “strength”, just like Donald Trump admires Putin for his “strength”.
That’s why I would have been appalled and terrified if Lindbergh or Joe P. Kennedy had run against FDR and claimed that FDR was weak compared to the man Hitler they both admired for their “strength”. Do you think the US would have been better off it one of those Hitler admirers had defeated the “weak” FDR?
If you think that the US would have been better if we had a Hitler-loving President during WW II, then you should definitely vote for Donald Trump. He adores people like you.
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Please baby Bush hence to be refereed to as Shrub “Looked into Putin’s eyes and saw someone he could trust . ” Besides on the scale of leaders this country has and is having cordial relations with, Putin is admirable character. We have supported and honored brutal dictators on a global scale from the Shah of Iran to Pinochet , to Saddam when it suited our needs and today the 9/11 Saudi murders who behead more than ISIS are on the hit parade. The list is far more extensive.
No Diane I am not giving Trump a pass. He is the logical extension of Reagan. Who Bill Maher described to a tee. It is hilarious
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A few months back a friend emailed me a short series of questions that were deigned to test a persons susceptibility to authoritarian rulers it was designed by a group of Political scientists at Vanderbilt University . So as to disguise the motive they were child rearing questions. A good read.
http://news.vanderbilt.edu/2016/04/trump-appeals-to-the-authoritarian-within-vanderbilt-researcher/
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I I guess I wouldn’t be a good person to take this survey because I would always be picking “it depends.”
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Like!
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THREE individuals are quoted. Hardly “mainstream.” Every Republican I know disagrees. Many Democrats I know agree with Trumps stand on immigration and what to do with illegal immigrants. Many democrats moved their affiliation at caucus night in Iowa.
Generalization is never good.
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Sorry to digress but slightly off topic, the NY Times is at it again in terms of Hillary Clinton. Once again with misleading headlines so that the gist of the reporting becomes as negative as possible.
“Clinton Calls Many Trump Backers ‘Deplorables’”
NY Times wants to make sure readers understand she said most of Donald Trump’s supporters were deplorable, because that’s so much nastier than the truth.
Just like their headlines regarding the e-mail were never “FBI clears Clinton” but instead “Questions raised!” “Confidential e-mails revealed” “More top secret e-mails found”.
If the NY Times was writing an accurate headline to this story without the intent to drum up more anti-Hillary sentiment, what they could have written is
“Clinton says non-racist Trump supporters need empathy”.
This headline is exactly like when the NY Times wrote a front page article with the huge headline: “Obama says most Pennsylvania voters are bitter”. Remember that? Probably not because the NY Times didn’t try to present everything Obama said in the most negative terms and that headline did not appear. They only reserve those nasty headlines for the Clintons.
Here is what Hillary Clinton said:
“You know, to just be grossly generalistic, you could put half of Trump’s supporters into what I call the basket of deplorables. Right? The racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamaphobic — you name it. And unfortunately there are people like that. And he has lifted them up. He has given voice to their websites that used to only have 11,000 people — now have 11 million. He tweets and retweets their offensive hateful mean-spirited rhetoric.
Now, some of those folks — they are irredeemable, but thankfully they are not America. But the other basket — and I know this because I see friends from all over America here — I see friends from Florida and Georgia and South Carolina and Texas — as well as, you know, New York and California — but that other basket of people are people who feel that the government has let them down, the economy has let them down, nobody cares about them, nobody worries about what happens to their lives and their futures, and they’re just desperate for change. It doesn’t really even matter where it comes from.
They don’t buy everything he says, but he seems to hold out some hope that their lives will be different. They won’t wake up and see their jobs disappear, lose a kid to heroin, feel like they’re in a dead-end. Those are people we have to understand and empathize with as well.
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My students and I construct Americanism together. My experience of America is dramatically different than theirs. It is not my role as an educator to impose my view, but rather to assist them in voicing their perspectives.
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Like!
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And Clinton called Trump supporters a “basket of deplorables”. Again, Democrats just do not get it. They really are trying to lose this thing. First, that isn’t true. Many Trump supporters don’t necessarily like Trump. Many could be turned if someone listened in the Democratic party. If someone stood up and fought for working families, college students, teachers, pensions, Social Security, jobs going overseas or to H1bs. And not as a cold, intellectual exercise, but with real fire and passion. Clinton’s comment 1) made sure she now will not get any more leaning towards Trump, 2) sounds elitist and out of touch. Granted, everyone is human and makes mistakes (Kaine?), but let that be the last one.
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Trump makes mistakes, gaffs, jaw droppers, lulus almost every day. He says outrageous off the wall stuff that embarrasses most people. No problem, he just keeps rambling forward, backward, forward, sideways, etc, ad nauseam. The man initiated his campaign by insulting a whole ethnic group and he wins the GOP clown race. This is really scary.
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Absolutely no argument from me there is a glaring double standard in this election. It isn’t fair, but Clinton doesn’t have the luxury of a rapid, solid base like Trump. She should know a gaffe damages her but Trump is immune. I think she slipped and learned.
Clinton has more electoral paths to win than Trump, but those are not as clear as after the convention. She is now tied in Ohio. She needs at least one major swing state.
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Vale Math, you are sadly mistaken.
Read the CONTINUATION of her speech: “…..but that other basket of people are people who feel that the government has let them down, the economy has let them down, nobody cares about them, nobody worries about what happens to their lives and their futures, and they’re just desperate for change. It doesn’t really even matter where it comes from.
They don’t buy everything he says, but he seems to hold out some hope that their lives will be different. They won’t wake up and see their jobs disappear, lose a kid to heroin, feel like they’re in a dead-end. Those are people we have to understand and empathize with as well.”
Maybe it is you who has been played for a fool by the the media dutifully following Trump’s lead without any critical reasoning. Hillary said exactly what you claim she should have said. And yet you are still claiming “she just doesn’t get it”.
If you are generally a smart person, Vale Math, and you fell for this — and most likely fell for the Hillary lied about committing treason with e-mails and selling out US policy for donations — then you were never going to vote for Hillary. It takes some ability to think for yourself and not simply accept the media’s version of Hillary.
I don’t have a problem with disagreeing with Hillary about policy. But your reply is typical of people who are too lazy to do more than read a headline or listen to a talking head on Fox. I agree with some of your points, but I am disheartened that someone like you is being played for a fool by the right wing noise machine. And no matter what Hillary says or does, that noise machine will convince anyone who believes them.
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If you remember all the horrible things that Trump has said about Mexicans, women, and Muslims, I don’t think she was wrong.
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Good point. I did go back and read the rest. You are correct. Hillary went on with a distinction. If I am guilty of jumping to conclusions, I will accept my anger and sense of frustration with the Democrats got in the way.
I am encouraged Clinton is at least mouthing the right words. But my position holds. Trump resonates with many people who have lost jobs overseas or to H1bs, lost dignity, hope.. Trump is a movement, and a passionate one here in fly over country. It took Sanders to nudge Clinton into a more populist position. Now maybe Trump is moving her to look hard at the rust belt. Can she listen without outside influence forcing her to? Usually, these politicians show up here every four years, then we only read about them in the news.
The worst Democrats can do is to condemn and judge those independents and middle America voters as you judged me or questioned my “ability to think”. Elitism will not win this for Clinton. Reaching out to Trump supporters on the fence may. Clinton’s team and the DNC started down that path of distain and condemnation with Bennie supporters and nearly lost control of the convention. Clinton needs to do more than deliver one speech. She needs to sincerely take up the cause of working Americans and the middle class. She needs to make clear promises and show no ambiguity supporting teachers, pensions, unions, retirees, families, social security, college students. She needs to be authentic.
I have witnessed what hubris and complacency did to the Democratic party in Ohio. Trump’s twisted campaign has energy and passion. Democrats need to stop thinking this is just another election and fight for those they represent. Please listen to what I am saying. I do not want what happened in Ohio to happen in DC.
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Vale Math, thank you for reading the entire quote and acknowledging your error.
In fact, you didn’t think when you immediately accepted the media’s headline crafted by Trump’s people and jumped to conclusions based on the narrative of Hillary Clinton that Trump’s people want you to believe. Saying I “judged you” is ridiculous. I pointed out that you were not just wrong, but hadn’t even bothered to check out what you had “heard” to see if it was true. It fit the narrative that the right wing wants Americans to believe, so you accepted it.
Imagine if someone like you is so easily fooled, what happens to those people in Ohio who don’t have half the interest in looking beyond what they “hear” or “know” about Hillary. And that is the problem. It doesn’t matter what Hillary says or does — as you just proved. She can’t get beyond the narrative that the media insists on portraying her as. Some voters will go beyond it. For the record I am (happily) shocked at a number of my Republican friends in the midwest who are posting pro-Hillary links on Facebook. These are people who love Kasich and Cruz but see Donald Trump for exactly who he is. And while they don’t agree with many of Hillary’s policies, they haven’t fallen for the media’s portrayal of her as a corrupt money-hungry dangerous woman who will happily sell out US interests to foreign powers if someone pays her enough. At least not yet.
If Hillary’s success is based on convincing voters who refuse to think, who just accept the media narrative, then nothing Hillary Clinton does will get her a vote in Ohio. The media narrative is set in their mind. It doesn’t matter whether it makes sense or not. Hillary Clinton actually said she understood those people and DISTINGUISHED them from the haters who are a good portion of Trump’s voters. And the media narrative became “Hillary calls all Trump voters racist homophobes.”
Can you imagine the very same headline saying “Hillary says Trump Supporters are NOT racists but want change”. It would be just as truthful as the one the NY Times printed that will go around the world just as fast as their headline implying the FBI had found she was a criminal but chose not to indict her despite all her crimes. Hillary thinks all Trump supporters are racists and homophobes. You fell for it. Do you really think the people you are talking about in Ohio will ever look beyond those headlines? And no matter what Hillary says, the headlines will continue to pick out whatever nasty innuendo that supports those voters perceptions. Hillary is a crook, sold out US foreign policy for money, and claims everyone who votes for Trump is deplorable. Does it matter whether it is actually true?
If Trump resonates with people who have lost jobs — a candidate who happily ships in cheap oversees labor to work at his own companies — then they aren’t thinking. They are far less likely to go beyond the headline than you were. And if you really think that Bernie Sanders would not have been tried and tarred by the same media brush until he became a caricature of whatever out of touch narrative demonized him, then you are very naive. Although perhaps the press does just particularly hate Hillary. You didn’t get nearly the same drumbeat about Tony Rezko and Jeremiah Wright and Obama’s “bitter people who love their guns” remark. They were 2 day stories and disappeared. There was no misleading NY Times headline saying “Obama says Pennsylvanians are “bitter” people” that became a national story for weeks.
Clinton derangement syndrome. I was so impressed during the Democratic primary because she and Bernie discussed the issues and Bernie never allowed the media to use their favorite characterizations of Hillary. Yea Bernie. But boo to the media and the people fooled into believing their narrative which was allowed free reign once there was no Bernie telling them to shut up and instead they had Trump and company cheering them on.
If Hillary loses, it will be Michael Dukakis and Al Gore all over again. People voting against their own best interests not because the other candidate’s policies were better, but because they believed one candidate was “flawed” just as the media told them. Unfortunately, the flaws they attributed to the candidate were actually far more in evidence — significantly more so! — in the other candidate and any even cursory comparison using facts would make that clear immediately. Unfortunately, facts were NOT what the media wanted to give.
When the NY Times runs headlines that imply that Hillary Clinton is a treasonous crook and called Trump supporters “despicable” and then headlines an article about Trump’s many bribes of attorney generals as “Donald Trump’s Donation Is His Latest Brush With Campaign Fund Rules” then you know that something has gone terribly wrong.
Hillary following the protocol that Colin Powell advised is criminal. Trump bribing attorney generals with money from a charitable foundation is “a brush with rules”. With that kind of bias in the NY Times, what chance will Hillary ever have to convince those Ohio voters that she is on their side and Trump isn’t. The truth is obviously not enough.
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I don’t think she was wrong either, Diane, but the NYT was wrong for using a headline that implies that she said that of all Trump supporters. Thank you for posting the full content, NYC public school parent.
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I hold out the hope a large number of Trump supporters could be “saved” and vote Democrat if given a reason. I know a few. Voter turnout will be key for Dems and many GOP states have enacted barriers since Obama. But voter turnout takes enthusiasm and Clinton is not inspiring. Kasich was elected with about 25% of eligible voters. C’mon Democrats, get fired up!
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Maybe the voters could get fired up against the NY Times!
Amy Chozick is writing nearly all the stories that have placed Hillary in the worst possible light. I don’t know who is responsible for the headline — perhaps she is too. She buried the entire quote and made the Republican’s ire the focus as if it was justified by Hillary’s terrible remark. She also had by lines on some of the worst e-mail stories. Sadly, if Donald Trump wins, Amy Chozick and her incredibly irresponsible reporting will get most of the credit. She will try to blame Hillary and say “there was nothing I could do but make sure I kept implying that Hillary telling the truth over and over was her being dishonest” but that’s about as true as her need to write today’s story about Hillary’s speech that buries exactly what Hillary said and went out of its way to capture the Republican’s characterization of Hillary’s remarks. Once may be a mistake but twice seems intentional. If Trump wins, he should give a personal shout out to Amy for her oh so helpful slant on every article she wrote.
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Trump’s supporters for a DT dictatorship is what the Founding Fathers didn’t like about a total democracy and why they divided up the power between the Executive Branch, Congress and the courts to make sure there was a way to stop a mob like the one that wants a bully, racist, narcissist, psycho like Donald Trump as president.
That’s also why the states have so much power and are not totally dominated by the federal government but have state sovereignty over even adding amendments to the U.S. Constitution.
A true democracy is a form of govenrment ruled by the majority of the people.
A true democracy is mob rule. A true democracy is the tyranny of the majority.
But as much as we call the U.S. a democracy, it isn’t. It’s a Constitutional republic and the majority of people do not have the final say in anything, because the representatives they elect are the ones that really rule the country.
That’s why Citizens Untied is Unconstitutional because it hands power to a very small mob made up of a few dozen billionaire autocratic s and conspirators. Citizens United is an end run around the U.S. Constitution. A Donald Trump election would be an end run around that end run because DT would attempt to not only cut out the Congress, the courts , he would cut out the other oligarchs if he became president.
The mob that elected DT would support him to strip power from the U.S. Constitution. It wouldn’t be Seig Heil his mob would shout if he was elected. It would be Gesamtseig. The neoconservaties and neoliberals have already given us social upheaval. With Trump as president, the U.S. would be the next Nazi Germany.
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Nice summary, I like it. Gives a nutshell focus on the Cit-Unit decision & how it is undermining the voice of voters.
You threw my beginner’s German for a minute, ‘seig’ should be ‘sieg’. From ‘hail victory’ to ‘total victory’.
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“Putin doesn’t put ups it hit”
Did you mean to write “Putin doesn’t put up with shit”?
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