No matter how many times he is caught lying, no matter how many top-secret documents he squirreled away, no matter how lavishly he praises dictators, no matter how many porn stars he has partied with, no matter how many millions he took from foreign governments during his term, no matter how many criminal counts he faces, no matter how many times he was indicted, the base of the GOP loves him.
Trump owns the Republican Party. It used to be the party of “family values,” but that pretense has been tossed aside. Trump, a thrive-married philanderer, has never talked about family values.
Dana Milbank went to Iowa to see for himself, and he saw the devotion of the MAGA crowd.
INDIANOLA, Iowa — They lined up for hours, some of them, in the minus-38-degree wind chill to see their candidate. It was the only rally Donald Trump was giving in the state in the TV days before Monday’s caucuses, so for the MAGA faithful, this was the golden ticket.
For the lucky 500 Trump followers admitted to the event space, the Trump campaign played a video reminding voters that Trump had already come in first place in the God primary.
“And on June 14, 1946, God looked down on his planned paradise and said, ‘I need a caretaker.’ So God gave us Trump,” the narrator proclaimed.
“God said, ‘I need somebody willing to get up before dawn, fix this country, work all day, fight the Marxists, eat supper, then go to the Oval Office and stay past midnight. … So God made Trump.”
“‘I need somebody with arms strong enough to rassle the deep state and yet gentle enough to deliver his own grandchild.’ … So God gave us Trump.”
And then it came to pass, a few minutes later, that this midwife-turned-prophet took the stage in the ballroom, and he spake thus to his flock:
“We’ve got a crooked country,” run by “stupid people,” “corrupt,” “incompetent,” “the worst.”
Trump, in the gospel according to Trump, was the victim of “hoaxes,” “witch hunts,” “lies,” “fake indictments,” “fake trials,” judges who “are animals,” a “rigged election,” “rigged indictments,” and a “rigged Department of Justice where we have radical left, bad people, lunatics.”
The nation’s capital, Washington, D.C., “is a rat-infested, graffiti-infested shithole,” he said, with swastikas all over the national monuments.
His opponents, the prophet Trump continued, are “Marxists,” “communists,” “fascists,” “liars, cheaters, thugs, perverts, frauds, crooks, freaks, creeps,” “warmongers” and “globalists.”
Immigrants are like a “vicious snake,” whose “bite is poisonous,” he told them, and there is an “invasion” at the border by “terrorists,” “jailbirds” and “drug lords.”
“Our country is dying,” he informed them. And, by the way, “You’re very close to World War III.”
Have a nice day!
It was, in short, a slightly updated version of the rage, paranoia, victimhood, lies and demonization that propelled Trump’s popularity over the past eight years. Yet there was something else Trump said in his appearance here at Simpson College, south of Des Moines, that, I’m sorry to say, seems reasonably accurate.
“MAGA is taking over,” he told his chilled but enraptured supporters. “On the fake news, they say MAGA represents 44 percent of the Republicans. No, no. MAGA represents 95 percent of the Republican Party.”
His numbers might be off, but the observation is true. Iowa’s Republican presidential caucuses Monday night were an overwhelming triumph for Trump, who in early results was more than 30 points ahead of his nearest competitor and getting more votes than the rest of the field combined. The voters had shown that there essentially is no Republican other than a MAGA Republican…
Nikki Haley points out that she polls better against Biden than the others, and it’s true. Were she the nominee, Republicans would likely win the presidency in a landslide. But this Republican electorate wants something different.
They want a guy who talks about being a “dictator” on day one, echoes Hitler in his rhetoric about ethnic minorities, demands absolute immunity from legal liability and threatens “bedlam” if he’s prosecuted.
They want a guy who, after all these years, still derides “Barack Hussein Obama” and “Pocahontas” Elizabeth Warren, as he did in Indianola on Sunday. They want a guy who threatens, as president, to “direct a completely overhauled DOJ to investigate every radical, out-of-control prosecutor because of their illegal, racist … enforcement of the law.”
And they want a man who promises: “We will demolish the deep state. We will expel the warmonger … We will drive out the globalists. We will cast out the communists, Marxists and fascists. We will throw off the sick political class that truly hates our country. We will rout the fake news media. And we will evict Crooked Joe Biden from the White House.” The crowd, in their MAGA caps and Trump 47 jerseys, cheered their candidate and broke into spontaneous chants of “Trump!” and “USA!”
Let there be no more excuses made that Republican voters haven’t been given an alternative. They had a choice — and they chose Trump.
Iowa is an atypical state. It is overwhelmingly white and has a large number of evangelicals. Let’s see how other states vote.
Despite his paranoia, despite his character—or because of them— Trump swept 51% of the vote in Iowa.
However. CBS News reported that less than 15% of registered Republicans turned out in the bitter cold to cast a vote.
The proverbial frog in the pot. Dumbfounding.
Trump owns the Republican primaries but loses in the general elections. In 2016, he lost the popular vote by the biggest margin in U.S. history, for someone that only won because of the Electoral College.
There are over 700,000 registered Republican voters in Iowa, but Trump won this primary with a bit more than 50,000 votes (less than 8% of the total number of GOP voters in Iowa), or 51% of the primary votes cast. The primary votes for the other three fascists running against Trump, without running against him, added up to 49% of the total.
Almost half of the Republican voters that voted in this primary voted for Trump copycats, instead of the original.
Was that because they were not traitors yet?
Traitor Trump has already been found guilty of rape in one civil trial and guilty of fraud in another.
The traitor lost more than 60 court challenges after the election.
He also lost a court case against the New York times recently to the tune of almost $400,000.
The Democratic Party HAS To do a better job of educating the public (including the FOX fake NEWS ditto head crowd) about all of Trump’s losses. That includes the bankruptcies he said he never had during the debates with Hillary.
Only 110,000 people voted. Why is this even news? ________________________________
Trump told a crowd in Iowa, “Even if you vote, then pass away, it’s worth it.” That how Trump sees his followers as those that can be sacrificed for his blind ambition. The GOP has sold its soul to the unhinged, evil emperor.
what she said
IOWA Caucus
🤪
IQ <<< Wind Chill
Funny and true.
LOL
The Des Moine Register reported that fewer than 1 in 3 winners of the Iowa Caucus wins the presidency, and only 3 of 8 republicans have won the caucus and subsequently won the nomination.
Much ado about nothing.
Roy,
A small percentage of Iowa Republicans voted. Less than 15%.
I like what Robert Reich said in his Substack piece today. First, we must consider who are attracted to Trump and why they flock to see him. Reich says: “For over forty years, the median wage of non-supervisory workers — people paid hourly — has been stagnant or declined, even though the U.S. economy and American productivity has soared. The stock market continues to hit new records.
But people without college degrees, people who are not living in the nation’s largest cities, who are mostly white, who are older and tend to be more religious than the typical American — these people feel abandoned by the system.
And they are. The Democratic Party has written them off, preferring to go after “suburban swing” voters. The establishment Republican Party represents big corporations and Wall Street.
So where do they look? Who fills the void? He may be a sociopath and a criminal, a grifter and a fraud, a liar and a neofascist. But he’s at least theirs.
Which is so bizarre because he has never done anything for them. Steve Bannon wrote Trump’s Inaugural Address. It it he promised a massive infrastructure plan to rebuild American and put the forgotten people back to work in well-paying jobs.
DID NOT HAPPEN.
How does one get through to Trump voters to explain to them that Trump loathes people like them, that he wouldn’t let one of them through the door at Mar-a-lago, that he has never done anything that helped them?
Biden actually delivered on infrastructure, but most workers don’t feel the economic impact from it. https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases/2023/11/09/fact-sheet-biden-harris-administration-celebrates-historic-progress-in-rebuilding-america-ahead-of-two-year-anniversary-of-bipartisan-infrastructure
So a little story from the early eighties. A former coworker of mine(Harry), was an apprentice on a night shift. Trump and his entourage of perverts were standing in front of a Topless Bar near Trump Tower when Harry comes walking down the block with a large lunch order for 15 men. None of Trumptards moved an inch out of his way on the sidewalk forcing Harry to squeeze in between cars and walk in traffic to get by.
A real man of the people!
retired teacher
Large infrastructure projects take years to get going. The Rebuild of JFK was announced in 2019. It first put a few men on the project in Jan 2023.
Bob,
It’s true that Trump produced a massive tax cut for the very rich and nothing for his avid followers.
He would certainly never open the doors of mar-A-Lago to his fans.
But he has magically embraced their sense of grievance and victjmhiod. He too is a “victim.” He didn’t win in 2020, and the entire justice system is rigged against him. His desire for revenge us terrifying.
After that tax cut, he went down to Mar-a-Lago and had dinner with a bunch of his cronies and told them, “I just gave you all a nice, big Christmas present.”
I would call him a pig, but that would be unfair to pigs.
The Democrats have let the blue collar workers down, but they are foolish to believe the GOP will represent them better. Biden has at least tried to revitalize unions. Suburban voters may find their good jobs in jeopardy soon as AI starts replacing some good paying jobs.
I respectfully disagree that Trump owns anything. In the 2024 Iowa caucus, only 110,000 Republicans showed up. (NY Times) In 2020, the Democrats had nearly 180,000 caucus goers participate. (ibid) In 2016, Republicans had 190,000.(ibid) As a matter of fact, Trump got 56,000 votes on Monday; in 2016, Ted Cruz got 52,000 with a far wider field. The people who were motivated to show up this year in the crazy cold were majority crazy election fraud conspiracy theorists. The sane stayed home. Trump does not own the Party, he gropes the Barbies.
The MAGA maniacs showed up.
I think if Trump had to spend a day or a night or two in jail, he might have a stroke or a heart attack which would do him in. I’m waiting for the deus ex machina of this election.
Yeah, I know Biden’s old. But he’s not a liar, a thief, a Russian asset, a racist, a white supremacist, a misogynist, a sociopath or an insurrectionist. So I’ll knock on wood.
The choice could not be clearer.
omg christine did you say Biuden is not a racist? Please be in a home, you cannot be real. Try and research all the racist and disgusting remarks he has made in 50 plus years. He is a pedophile too, boy you are lost.
Jane,
You are projecting. Trump is a documented racist. He, his father and the Trump Organization were sued by the federal government for racial discrimination.
He’s also known for bursting into the dressing room of teen beauty pageants, to ogle the girls.
Here, a sampling of Trump racism:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Racial_views_of_Donald_Trump
Thank you, Bob, for the Wikipedia summary of Trump’s racist history.
I have not forgotten the full-page ads he placed in the major NYC newspapers calling for the execution of the “Central Park 5,” black youths who were charged and convicted with raping a white jogger in Central Park. After spending time in prison, they were exonerated when another prisoner confessed. The 5 collected millions from the city for wrongful imprisonment. One was recently elected to the City Council.
Trump wanted them dead.
He started his life as a racist pig, and he is a racist pig today. He and his father, back at the very beginning of Trump’s criminal career, used to mark “C” for “colored” on the top of rental applications from black people. They were fined a lot of money for this racist exclusion of blacks.
According to the Associated Press, 8 percent of the black vote went to Trump in 2020 and 90 PERCENT went to Biden. Ninety percent!
A little difference there. ROFL.
And I think that Jane is just our old friend manicmikey under a pseudonym. Same inimitable syntax.
DJT may own the GOPee but he does so in choreographed cooperation with pro school voucher Mega Donors like Jeff Yaas. Yass is a billionaire from Pennsylvania. He is co-founder and managing director of the Philadelphia-based investment firm Susquehanna International Group. He is also a top proponent of “school choice,” or programs that allow parents to use taxpayer dollars to subsidize private school costs.
12/23 Texas Gov. Greg Abbott received a $6 million campaign contribution which his campaign is calling the “largest single donation in Texas history.”
The check came from Jeff Yass the same national Republican mega donor whose priority issues include school vouchers. Abbott spent 2023 unsuccessfully pushing for a voucher program and is now targeting state House Republicans in the March primary who thwarted his agenda.
Abbott accepted the $6 million donation — dated Dec. 18 — in a little-used account, suggesting he was setting it aside from funds raised for his reelection campaign.
https://www.texastribune.org/2024/01/16/greg-abbott-jeff-yass-camapaign-donation/