Why Is Presumptive GOP Nominee Donald Trump Still Acting Like A Dick?

Once Donald Trump became the presumptive presidential nominee for the Republican Party,  I simply assumed he would pivot toward the General Election and not act like as much an asshole anymore. 

Man, was I wrong on that.  Trump is as big of a dick as he ever was.  So what happened to the pivot he was supposed to make?  Well, it turns out that he has money issues:

Donald Trump's campaign has alerted Senate Republicans that he won't have much money to spend fending off attacks from Hillary Clinton over the next couple months.

The notice came when Paul Manafort, Trump's senior advisor, met with a group of Senate Republican chiefs of staff for lunch last week, sources familiar with the meeting told the Washington Examiner. The admission suggests that Trump will be far more dependent on the GOP brass for money than he has led voters to believe.

*** "They know that they're not going to have enough money to be on TV in June and probably most of July, until they actually accept the nomination and get RNC funds, so they plan to just use earned media to compete on the airwaves," one GOP source familiar with Manafort's comments told the Examiner.

Kos provides the translation: "The way Trump earns free media is to say stupid shit -- it’s impressively effective, if your job is to serially alienate most segments of the voting public."

So the bottom line here is we still have to wait a couple more months for Trump to start behaving himself, and Donald can say a lot of "stupid shit" during that time. The best thing the Democrats can do right now is to attack Trump constantly.  He'll then be forced to respond by trying to earn "free media."

Yes, He Really Did Say That

"Everybody talks about [Oklahoma's] $1.3 billion deficit. If we take care of the morality, God will take care of the economy."

-- Oklahoma state Rep. David Brumbaugh (R-Of Course), explaining why his state's GOP-run government is aggressively pushing the criminalization of abortion, the limitation of student access to public restrooms, and the impeachment of Barack Obama instead of addressing the state's huge budget shortfall (h/t Steve Benen).

But I think it was Sophocles who once wrote: "No good e'er comes of leisure purposeless; And heaven ne’er helps the men who will not act." 

Fucking-A, Sophocles.  Fuck -- king -- A.

As Brother Benen notes, we can now add Oklahoma to the list of failed GOP states.  It joins Louisiana and Kansas as examples of where the GOP has enacted the full Republican agenda and have run their economies into the ground by doing so.

UPDATE:  Speaking of running things into the ground, check this out:

Bookings at Trump Hotels have plummeted by more than half since The Donald launched his controversial presidential campaign. While Trump's own popularity among his voters did not waver as he strode towards the Republican nomination, the hotel arm of his empire has taken a hit, according to data from travel firm Hipmunk. Reservations at his hotel collection have fallen by 59 per cent year-on-year as their market share has crumbled.

[h/t JB]

Trump Attacks Prominent Latina Governor Susana Martinez

After reading the headline of this post, one might think that Trump attacking an Hispanic is not particularly newsworthy, given how much he hates Mexicans and such.  But I left something out in the headline, namely, Susana Martinez is a Republican governor who, as a conservative, has twice won in New Mexico, a blue state with a large Hispanic population.

As this article notes, Martinez also "chairs the Republican Governors Association and is often mentioned as a vice presidential possibility by Republicans aiming to improve the party’s standing among Hispanic voters and women."  Why did Trump attack her, you ask?  Because she has not yet endorsed him for President:

It isn’t like Trump has never criticized a member of his own party. After all, he has been propelled to this point by a positive response to his rants against politicians and politics as usual. But his decision to go after Martinez, a figure who could help expand his support in the general election, not only threatens party unity, but also signals consequences for Republicans reluctant to board his train--and for candidates hoping to distance themselves from him.

“Trump was sending a message to her and to other Republican elected officials around America that this is what you come in for if you part ways,” says Joe Monahan, who writes a popular political blog in Albuquerque.

Needless to say, the GOP Establishment (whatever the fuck that is these days) is none too happy with Trump over this.  As one GOP strategist stated in response: "If you're going to attack, the only names you use are Hillary Clinton, Bill Clinton, and Barack Obama.”

Anyway, fun times ahead.

Bonus Quote of the Week

"What we are about to witness is a popular two-term incumbent president campaigning strongly for his party’s current nominee. Political scientists and pollsters are limited in their predictive capabilities about what that means because it hasn’t happened in American politics in a very long time."

-- Nancy Letourneau at Washington Monthly, commenting on Barack Obama 51% approval rating.

She makes a good point.  The last two-term president we had was George W. Bush, and he was such a catastrophe that he wasn't allowed anywhere near the last two GOP Conventions and won't be present at the one coming up in July.  Before Bush, the last two-term president was Bill Clinton, and although he was popular, Al Gore was afraid to use him in his 2000 campaign because of the PenisGate Scandal.

Ronald Reagan left office with a favorable approval rating, but I don't remember Reagan "campaigning strongly" for George H. W. Bush.  Reagan had also been somewhat hobbled by the Iran-Contra Scandal near the end of his second term.  [In contrast, Obama's presidency has been remarkably scandal-free, so much so that the GOP has been forced to push fake scandals that were never able to get any traction.]  Nixon did not finish his second term.

I predict that the big moment in the Democratic Convention in July will be the long, boisterous standing ovation Obama will receive before he speaks.  It's definitely been a long time since we have seen something like that in American politics.

Quote of the Week

"Trump economics is a recipe for lower wages, fewer jobs, more debt. He could bankrupt America like he's bankrupted his companies. I mean, ask yourself, how can anybody lose money running a casino? Really."

-- Hillary Clinton.

This is how you get under Trump's skin -- you mock him.

And by the way, here is a great piece by Steve Benen on how Media types really have their heads up their asses when they say that dysfunction in Washington DC is all Obama's fault because he doesn't schmooze enough (CBS's Norah O'Donnell is the latest purveyor of this particular line of bullshit).  I've blogged on this issue so frequently that I'm tired of bringing it up.

Oh, and by the way again, here is a great idea:  Sue a women's health clinic because they failed to make it even harder for women to get health care.

How To Handle Trump In The Post-Truth Era

Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan once stated that "everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not his own facts."

How quaint.  Of course, in the post-truth era, not only is everyone entitled to his own facts, but you don't even need facts to back up your positions.  Just consider the GOP's stance on climate change if you don't believe me.

Donald Trump's birtherism is another good example of this.  He had absolutely no facts to back up his assertion that Obama is an illegal alien, but that didn't stop him from making such a pronouncement at every opportunity.

So now that The Donald is the presumptive GOP nominee, how do Democrats deal with Trump in the post-truth era?  I think the answer to that question is fairly straight-forward:  The Democrats shouldn't outright lie about Trump -- that's too Republican for my tastes -- but they shouldn't merely stick to the whole truth either. 

Let me give you an example.  This week, the head of a white nationalist political party "was briefly slated to cast a ballot for Donald Trump this summer at the Republican National Convention after the campaign approved his application to serve as a California delegate." The Trump campaign claims that this resulted from a "database error," but even if that is true, who cares?  All the Democrats should ever say about this during the run-up to the General Election is as follows:

Last winter, Donald Trump refused to reject white supremacist David Duke's endorsement of his candidacy.  Trump continued to show his support for racism when he went out of his way to approve William Johnson, the head of the white nationalist political party, as one of his delegates at the Republican Convention.

Not entirely true you say? Who gives a shit. This is the post-truth era, Motherfuckers!  If the Trump campaign responds by saying it was all an accident, the Democrats should simply ignore such a response and reply that Trump intentionally approved a white supremacist as one of his delegates because he didn't want to alienate the racists that make up over half of the Republican Party.

Let me give you another example of how to deal with Trump post-truth.  The Donald is certain to mention Bill Clinton's sexual indiscretions in the coming months.  Indeed, he brought up the topic just a few days ago, accusing Hillary of being a "total enabler" of Bill's alleged affairs.  How should the Democrats respond to this?  Well, that's easy -- they should simply say:

It takes a lot of nerve for Donald Trump to speak out on such things when Trump himself admitted that he wants to fuck his own daughter.

Not true you say?  Well, it's true enough for modern political discourse.  

Post-truth era politics: It's FAN-tastic.

UPDATE:  It turns out that Trump cannot remove the white nationalist from his delegate list.  How inconvenient for him.