By Erick Erickson | June 4, 2016, 01:07pm
“The leaders of the party, confronted by Todd Akin, abandoned ship for his stupid statements on rape and abortion. But the Party of Lincoln intends to circle the wagons around a racist. Damn them for that.”
I am a talk radio host. I am a political commentator. I am a writer. I was once a lawyer and once an elected official. I have always voted Republican. I have tried my best at times to justify those things I thought I could justify or ignore those things that should be ignored in the spirit of helping my team and my side. But I have met the proverbial bridge too far with Donald Trump and I am ashamed and horrified at friends of mine and party leaders who will look the other way to justify Donald Trump.But not only that, we are now seeing an American political press joining in as well to avoid calling racism, racism. The American political press has not been slow to call things racist and whip up racist sentiment. The American political press whipped people into a frenzy over Ferguson and Baltimore and Trayvon Martin. We saw press outlets altering or distorting 911 audio to make it sound like words were said that were not said. We had the national press play up aspects of Ferguson to shape opinion while ignoring other aspects. We saw the same with Baltimore.
The press loves to create racists from whole cloth. But now confronted by what is absolutely racist, the press and the Party of Lincoln will not make eye contact with it.
No, I am not talking about Donald Trump and his African American. I am talking about Donald Trump trying to get a federal judge to recuse himself from a legal case by attacking his Mexican heritage.
CBS News called it “another startling and racially charged missive from Trump”.
MSNBC declared it “racially charged.”
The Washington Post described it as“racially tinged attacks on a federal judge overseeing a pair of lawsuits against him.”
Even the New York Times wrote, “Mr. Trump again steered his pirate ship into uncharted waters, firing off personal and racially tinged attacks against a federal judge”
These were not racially tinged or racially charged attacks.
This was racism plain and simple.
The partisan press has long muddied what is and is not racist in this country and now confronted by actual racism cannot bring itself to use the word lest it be judging Trump.
The attacks are racist. To claim that someone is unable to objectively and professional perform his job because of his race is racism.
And damn the GOP for its unwillingness to speak up on this. The leaders of the party, confronted by Todd Akin, abandoned ship for his stupid statements on rape and abortion. But the Party of Lincoln intends to circle the wagons around a racist. Damn them for that.
Damn Them For That
By Erick Erickson | June 4, 2016, 01:07pm
“The leaders of the party, confronted by Todd Akin, abandoned ship for his stupid statements on rape and abortion. But the Party of Lincoln intends to circle the wagons around a racist. Damn them for that.”I am a talk radio host. I am a political commentator. I am a writer. I was once a lawyer and once an elected official. I have always voted Republican. I have tried my best at times to justify those things I thought I could justify or ignore those things that should be ignored in the spirit of helping my team and my side. But I have met the proverbial bridge too far with Donald Trump and I am ashamed and horrified at friends of mine and party leaders who will look the other way to justify Donald Trump.
But not only that, we are now seeing an American political press joining in as well to avoid calling racism, racism. The American political press has not been slow to call things racist and whip up racist sentiment. The American political press whipped people into a frenzy over Ferguson and Baltimore and Trayvon Martin. We saw press outlets altering or distorting 911 audio to make it sound like words were said that were not said. We had the national press play up aspects of Ferguson to shape opinion while ignoring other aspects. We saw the same with Baltimore.
The press loves to create racists from whole cloth. But now confronted by what is absolutely racist, the press and the Party of Lincoln will not make eye contact with it.
No, I am not talking about Donald Trump and his African American. I am talking about Donald Trump trying to get a federal judge to recuse himself from a legal case by attacking his Mexican heritage.
CBS News called it “another startling and racially charged missive from Trump”.
MSNBC declared it “racially charged.”
The Washington Post described it as“racially tinged attacks on a federal judge overseeing a pair of lawsuits against him.”
Even the New York Times wrote, “Mr. Trump again steered his pirate ship into uncharted waters, firing off personal and racially tinged attacks against a federal judge”
These were not racially tinged or racially charged attacks.
This was racism plain and simple.
The partisan press has long muddied what is and is not racist in this country and now confronted by actual racism cannot bring itself to use the word lest it be judging Trump.
The attacks are racist. To claim that someone is unable to objectively and professional perform his job because of his race is racism.
And damn the GOP for its unwillingness to speak up on this. The leaders of the party, confronted by Todd Akin, abandoned ship for his stupid statements on rape and abortion. But the Party of Lincoln intends to circle the wagons around a racist. Damn them for that.
Nice to see a Repub who can actually be objective for a change...
Yes, there a select few Republicans that have shown honesty and integrity throughout this. Erickson is one, up to this point. They won't reflexively support, or vote R like sheep are supposed to, when the R represents a threat to our National Security. Wish there were a whole lot more in both parties that did this. Hopefully there will be enough for a 3rd party to be meaningful this cycle.
from the Washington Post (even Trump staffers[speaking on condition of anonymity, natch] have said his latest racist rants are bad, and Gingrich, who has been doing everything short of tonguing Frump's balls in a bid to get the VP "nod," has said he disagrees completely with Frump. That's it, Donny Boy, wedge that foot nice and tightly into your mouth, lol.
The media have reached a turning point in covering Donald Trump. He may not survive it.
The news media have come in for a lot of criticism in the way they’ve reported this election, which makes it exactly like every other election. But something may have changed just in the last few days. I have no idea how meaningful it will turn out to be or how long it will last.
But it’s possible that when we look back over the sweep of this most unusual campaign, we’ll mark this week as a significant turning point: the time when journalists finally figured out how to cover Donald Trump.
They didn’t do it by coming up with some new model of coverage, or putting aside what they were taught in journalism school. They’re doing it by rediscovering the fundamental values and norms that are supposed to guide their profession. (And for the record, even though I’m part of “the media” I’m speaking in the third person here because I’m an opinion writer, and this is about the reporters whose job it is to objectively relay the events of the day).
If this evolution in coverage takes hold, we can trace it to the combined effect of a few events and developments happening in a short amount of time. The first was Trump’s press conference on Tuesday, the ostensible purpose of which was to answer questions about a fundraiser he held in January to raise money for veterans’ groups. In the course of the press conference, Trump was at his petulant, abusive worst, attacking reporters in general and those in the room. “The political press is among the most dishonest people that I’ve ever met,” he said, saying to one journalist who had asked a perfectly reasonable question, “You’re a sleaze.” These kinds of criticisms are not new — anyone who has reported a Trump rally can tell you how Trump always tosses some insults at the press, at which point his supporters turn around and hurl their own abuse at those covering the event — but Trump seemed particularly angry and unsettled.
To see how the press looked at that revealing event, it’s critical to understand what led to it. It happened because the Post’s David Fahrenthold and some other reporters did what journalists are supposed to do. They raised questions about Trump’s fundraiser, and when they didn’t get adequate answers, they investigated, gathered facts, and asked more questions.
Meet the ‘nasty’ reporter who got Trump to donate $1 million
Play Video2:08
Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump said he raised $6 million for veterans groups at a January fundraiser. The Washington Post's accounting, based on interviews with charities, only found $3.1 million in donations to veterans groups. In addition, almost four months after promising $1 million of his own money to veterans' causes, Trump moved to fulfill that pledge. (McKenna Ewen/The Washington Post)
It was excellent work — time-consuming, difficult, and ultimately paying dividends in public understanding. And Trump’s attack on them for doing their jobs the way those jobs are supposed to be done couldn’t have been better designed to get every other journalist to want to do the same. They’re no different than anyone else: When you make a direct attack on their professionalism, they’re likely to react by reaching back to their profession’s core values to demonstrate that they can live up to them. Trump may have wanted to intimidate them, but it’s likely to have the opposite effect.
The same day as the press conference, a trove of documents from Trump University was released as part of a class-action lawsuit accusing Trump of fraud. The documents revealed allegations as to just what a scam that enterprise was: high-pressure sales tactics, nothing resembling knowledge being imparted to the “students,” people in financial trouble preyed upon and told to max out their credit cards to pay for more seminars and courses. Some of Trump’s other schemes may have been comical, but as far as we know nobody was victimized too terribly by buying a Trump Steak or a bottle of Trump Vodka. Trump University is something entirely different, and it’s not over yet; questions are now being raised about an investigation the Texas Attorney General’s office undertook of Trump University, which concluded that it was cheating Texans out of large sums of money; the investigation was dropped by then-AG Greg Abbott, who later got $35,000 in contributions from Trump and is now the state’s governor.
Watch Jake Tapper ask Trump 23 follow-up questions about whether Trump is being racist about a judge
Play Video2:44
CNN reporter Jake Tapper asked Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump if his judge attack was racist, then followed up 23 times. (Thomas Johnson/The Washington Post)
Plenty of presidential candidates have had shady doings in their pasts, but can you think of anything that compares to Trump University? A party’s nominee allegedly running a con not just on unsuspecting victims, but on victims specifically chosen for their vulnerability and desperation? It’s no wonder that you can’t find any Republicans who’ll defend it, in a time when ordinarily you can get a partisan hack to justify almost anything their party’s leader is doing or has done.
Then you had Trump’s continued attacks on the judge presiding over that fraud case. It’s unusual enough for a presidential candidate to be publicly attacking a judge in a case he’s involved in, but what’s most appalling is the blatant bigotry at the basis of Trump’s criticisms. First Trump would simply say that in addition to being biased against him the judge is “Mexican” (which is false — the judge was born in Indiana). Now Trump says that because the judge is “of Mexican heritage” he should be removed from the case. “I’m building a wall. It’s an inherent conflict of interest,” he says. Given all the other demographic groups Trump has insulted and offended, the natural conclusion would seem to be that only white male judges are fit to preside over Trump’s many, many lawsuits.
Put together this series of developments coming one after another, and I suspect that many journalists are deciding that the way to cover Trump is just to do it as honestly and assiduously as possible, which would itself be something almost revolutionary. If the tone of his coverage up until now has been “Wow, is this election crazy or what!” it could become much more serious — as is completely appropriate given that we’re choosing someone to hold the most powerful position on earth.
The change may be seen in ways both large and small. Yesterday, in a story about some of Trump’s remarks, CNN ran a chyron reading “Trump: I never said Japan should have nukes (he did)”. That kind of on-the-fly fact-checking is unusual, but Trump necessitates it because he tells such a spectacularly large number of lies. He also enables it because those lies are often repeated and obvious. So we’re beginning to see those corrections appear right in the body of stories: the reporter relays what Trump said, and notes immediately that it’s false.
Trump himself probably finds such treatment grossly unfair, since to him “unfair” coverage is anything that doesn’t portray him in the most glowing terms. But it is perhaps ironic that after all this time of wondering how to cover this most unusual candidate, Trump has shown the press that the best way to do it is to cover him like every candidate should be covered. That means not just planting a camera at his rallies and marveling at how nuts it all is, but doing the work to fully vet his background, correcting his lies as swiftly and surely as they can, exploring what a Trump presidency would actually mean, and generally doing their jobs without letting him intimidate them.
If they can keep doing that, they’ll bring honor to their profession — and I doubt Trump’s candidacy could survive it.
The media have reached a turning point in covering Donald Trump. He may not survive it.
The news media have come in for a lot of criticism in the way they’ve reported this election, which makes it exactly like every other election. But something may have changed just in the last few days. I have no idea how meaningful it will turn out to be or how long it will last.
But it’s possible that when we look back over the sweep of this most unusual campaign, we’ll mark this week as a significant turning point: the time when journalists finally figured out how to cover Donald Trump.
They didn’t do it by coming up with some new model of coverage, or putting aside what they were taught in journalism school. They’re doing it by rediscovering the fundamental values and norms that are supposed to guide their profession. (And for the record, even though I’m part of “the media” I’m speaking in the third person here because I’m an opinion writer, and this is about the reporters whose job it is to objectively relay the events of the day).
If this evolution in coverage takes hold, we can trace it to the combined effect of a few events and developments happening in a short amount of time. The first was Trump’s press conference on Tuesday, the ostensible purpose of which was to answer questions about a fundraiser he held in January to raise money for veterans’ groups. In the course of the press conference, Trump was at his petulant, abusive worst, attacking reporters in general and those in the room. “The political press is among the most dishonest people that I’ve ever met,” he said, saying to one journalist who had asked a perfectly reasonable question, “You’re a sleaze.” These kinds of criticisms are not new — anyone who has reported a Trump rally can tell you how Trump always tosses some insults at the press, at which point his supporters turn around and hurl their own abuse at those covering the event — but Trump seemed particularly angry and unsettled.
To see how the press looked at that revealing event, it’s critical to understand what led to it. It happened because the Post’s David Fahrenthold and some other reporters did what journalists are supposed to do. They raised questions about Trump’s fundraiser, and when they didn’t get adequate answers, they investigated, gathered facts, and asked more questions.
Meet the ‘nasty’ reporter who got Trump to donate $1 million
Play Video2:08
Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump said he raised $6 million for veterans groups at a January fundraiser. The Washington Post's accounting, based on interviews with charities, only found $3.1 million in donations to veterans groups. In addition, almost four months after promising $1 million of his own money to veterans' causes, Trump moved to fulfill that pledge. (McKenna Ewen/The Washington Post)
It was excellent work — time-consuming, difficult, and ultimately paying dividends in public understanding. And Trump’s attack on them for doing their jobs the way those jobs are supposed to be done couldn’t have been better designed to get every other journalist to want to do the same. They’re no different than anyone else: When you make a direct attack on their professionalism, they’re likely to react by reaching back to their profession’s core values to demonstrate that they can live up to them. Trump may have wanted to intimidate them, but it’s likely to have the opposite effect.
The same day as the press conference, a trove of documents from Trump University was released as part of a class-action lawsuit accusing Trump of fraud. The documents revealed allegations as to just what a scam that enterprise was: high-pressure sales tactics, nothing resembling knowledge being imparted to the “students,” people in financial trouble preyed upon and told to max out their credit cards to pay for more seminars and courses. Some of Trump’s other schemes may have been comical, but as far as we know nobody was victimized too terribly by buying a Trump Steak or a bottle of Trump Vodka. Trump University is something entirely different, and it’s not over yet; questions are now being raised about an investigation the Texas Attorney General’s office undertook of Trump University, which concluded that it was cheating Texans out of large sums of money; the investigation was dropped by then-AG Greg Abbott, who later got $35,000 in contributions from Trump and is now the state’s governor.
Watch Jake Tapper ask Trump 23 follow-up questions about whether Trump is being racist about a judge
Play Video2:44
CNN reporter Jake Tapper asked Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump if his judge attack was racist, then followed up 23 times. (Thomas Johnson/The Washington Post)
Plenty of presidential candidates have had shady doings in their pasts, but can you think of anything that compares to Trump University? A party’s nominee allegedly running a con not just on unsuspecting victims, but on victims specifically chosen for their vulnerability and desperation? It’s no wonder that you can’t find any Republicans who’ll defend it, in a time when ordinarily you can get a partisan hack to justify almost anything their party’s leader is doing or has done.
Then you had Trump’s continued attacks on the judge presiding over that fraud case. It’s unusual enough for a presidential candidate to be publicly attacking a judge in a case he’s involved in, but what’s most appalling is the blatant bigotry at the basis of Trump’s criticisms. First Trump would simply say that in addition to being biased against him the judge is “Mexican” (which is false — the judge was born in Indiana). Now Trump says that because the judge is “of Mexican heritage” he should be removed from the case. “I’m building a wall. It’s an inherent conflict of interest,” he says. Given all the other demographic groups Trump has insulted and offended, the natural conclusion would seem to be that only white male judges are fit to preside over Trump’s many, many lawsuits.
Put together this series of developments coming one after another, and I suspect that many journalists are deciding that the way to cover Trump is just to do it as honestly and assiduously as possible, which would itself be something almost revolutionary. If the tone of his coverage up until now has been “Wow, is this election crazy or what!” it could become much more serious — as is completely appropriate given that we’re choosing someone to hold the most powerful position on earth.
The change may be seen in ways both large and small. Yesterday, in a story about some of Trump’s remarks, CNN ran a chyron reading “Trump: I never said Japan should have nukes (he did)”. That kind of on-the-fly fact-checking is unusual, but Trump necessitates it because he tells such a spectacularly large number of lies. He also enables it because those lies are often repeated and obvious. So we’re beginning to see those corrections appear right in the body of stories: the reporter relays what Trump said, and notes immediately that it’s false.
Trump himself probably finds such treatment grossly unfair, since to him “unfair” coverage is anything that doesn’t portray him in the most glowing terms. But it is perhaps ironic that after all this time of wondering how to cover this most unusual candidate, Trump has shown the press that the best way to do it is to cover him like every candidate should be covered. That means not just planting a camera at his rallies and marveling at how nuts it all is, but doing the work to fully vet his background, correcting his lies as swiftly and surely as they can, exploring what a Trump presidency would actually mean, and generally doing their jobs without letting him intimidate them.
If they can keep doing that, they’ll bring honor to their profession — and I doubt Trump’s candidacy could survive it.
Finchy, I wish this was true, but the Media is so far up Drumpf's ass, I don't think ANYTHING can be a turning point. He boots reporters from press conferences, nada. His thugs rough up a FEMALE reporter, nada. I think he could jail, even have a reporter killed, like his idol Putin does, and his sick cult clapping seals, and the media will still be up his ass, and give him a pass. Like the late, great Bob Grant used to say, "It's sick out there and getting sicker"
REPORT: TRUMP UNIVERSITY LAWSUIT JUDGE APPEARS TO HAVE TIES TO LA RAZA
JUNE 2, 2016| BY DONN MARTEN
http://downtrend.com/donn-marten/re...lawsuit-judge-appears-to-have-ties-to-la-raza
JUNE 2, 2016| BY DONN MARTEN
http://downtrend.com/donn-marten/re...lawsuit-judge-appears-to-have-ties-to-la-raza
What you're too fucking stupid to realize is that it's one thing to run against a party of morons-how'd you like Ryan taking a month to tepidly endorse Frump, then promptly-and rightly-rip him for his latest stupid ass comments? It's quite another to run in a general election even against somebody as flawed as Hillary. There are several states that have voted with the Dems in 6 straight general elections, amounting to about 245 Electoral Votes, so it's not that hard to get to 270. If you think those states are changing their well established pattern for scum like Frump, you're even dumber than I thought you were, which is saying something.
Give me a break. Granny Cankles can’t put away an old socialist Jew who is as bland as Al Gore.
And she’s sickly, can’t stop coughing, she’s facing indictment and has no record to run on.
It one thing to give speeches to her base, it’s a hole other ball game to debate Trump. She started out with a huge lead and now that’s evaporated. Even Podesta is voicing concerns.
This ain’t 08 and 12. The magic negro ain’t running.
Trump has a shot to flip several big States. All bets are off.
