I don't think Trump cares if he wins or not - he is planning to steal the presidency in any case and he needs his supporters angry and crazy more than he needs more votes. I am very scared that he declares himself the winner - maybe even before the polls close - on election day and then we are in a constitutional crises. There is a high risk that is the start of the civil war.
The bit I don't get is why it's Democrats being told to "tone down the rhetoric." When Harris said yes, she believes Trump is a fascist, in answer to a direct question, she told the truth based on the evidence she has seen including what his former chief of staff said. She got blasted for it. Trump calls Harris a "communist Marxist fascist" every other day and it's just ignored as "Trump being Trump." Yeah, we know he's an idiot who couldn't define Marxist if you gave him a text to copy and a Sharpie, but that is NOT AN EXCUSE.
(Search for Ana Navarro's impassioned take down for how Latinos are taking it.)
Tony is funny. But, what works at a comedy club and what works at a political rally are very different.
Context matters. If you are roasting, in good faith, a room full of Puerto Ricans and they feel in on the joke that's a significantly different context than in a predominantly white room full of angry white folk who clap everytime Trump says we need to expel the Jews from Germa... err... Mexican Americans from the USA.
“Heading into the rally, we were called Nazis. Do voters really care about a comic telling a joke that offended people who weren’t going to vote for us? No,” a third campaign adviser said.
First, calling it joke doesn't make it so. There is nothing funny about it. We don't lack a sense of humor. A sense of humor does not include those sorts of outright insults. Pundits are still calling it a joke. The need to stop. They need to stop letting the right determine the framing of discussions.
Second, there is nothing "anti-PC" about it. Claiming anti-PC as Vance did, does not make it so. The comment offends everything decent parents of every political stripe teach their children about the simple courtesy of relating to each other.
Third, Evangelical supporters criticized the appalling comments, but most hideously, they will still vote for Trump because, as one Trump supporter put it to me, Trump will being prayer back into the schools.
If you are from a blue state or cannot go to a battleground state, your volunteer work is needed to do ballot-curing through VoPro Pros and the Harris/Walz campaign. Info on ballot-curing is in this article on the Substack newsletter The Grassroots Connector:
“Early voting has started in all swing states, so ballot curing is already underway. It will continue after Election Day, with different deadlines for ballot counting in different states. Several groups are seeking volunteers for various “voter protection activities.” These include: VoPro Pros, an all volunteer organization, various state Democratic parties, and the Harris-Walz campaign. You can sign up to be trained and deployed by VoPro Pros here. You can sign up to volunteer with a variety of state Democratic parties here.
“Most ballot-curing is done by phone, so a volunteer can be anywhere and help make votes count. One of the great things about ballot curing is that volunteers know they are making a direct contribution to increasing Democratic vote totals in battleground states, districts, and local elections. Together they will help us win the White House, the Senate, and all down ballot races, too.”
Convincing people that Trump is on an inevitable path to victory is part and parcel of the larger strategy of repeating over and over again that he did win even if he didn’t, as was done in 2020 and ever since. The repetition in and of itself is enough to constitute a compelling narrative for many (naive) people.
One pitfall of this strategy is that not everyone on his team is in on the con. Some fools like this comedian will celebrate prematurely by saying the quiet parts out loud, much the same way the Heritage Foundation felt confident enough about a Trump victory to release Project 2025 in all its glory when Biden was still the candidate, only to be forced to renounce their own work and attempt to introduce some (implausible amount of) distance from the Trump campaign’s specific ambitions.
Trump Christians don’t get that Christ preaches against people just like them, who feel they are superior by sole virtue of their “skin color”.. These white “so-called Christians” who are so “un-Christ-like” and so “unAmerican”, they don’t deserve to be called either. They want to tear everything down to get “us”.
They were the mostly hidden underbelly of America, or as Trump would say “the enemy within’ who tore things down behind the scenes at every level of society, for their own aggrandizement, for greed, because they never got ahead, to make a fortune, to thwart progress, to make others smaller than themselves. Trump is one of them and has burnished them in their own eyes so they feel better than everyone else and want to tear down everyone who isn’t like them.
Forget, they will be swept up in the undertow of his new onerous policies, they will “get”the rest of us. I imagine it might be like hell, they don’t want to be there, but as long as they bring us down, they’ll be happy with the new order of things.
I think the Trump Christians feel like they are superior to others because they are Christians too. It is a complex combination of white supremacist and Christian supremacist beliefs. Christians can understand the references to the fight between good and evil, Trump and crew saying that Kamala is the devil (or whatever they said), Democrats are "demonic." I personally think ALL religions are cults, but Trump just made them more extreme and gave them a permission structure to say their crazy stuff, (that they formally kept in church), out loud.
It's been written on the socials (including Luke Winkie's Slate.com column) -- but they get mad when the criticism is aimed at them, but insist they are equal opportunity in their offense. But, they never attack the orange idiot who is an ginormous source of inspiration for even the slacker level comics. They never bite the hand that feeds them.
Unvetted? I've seen reports the campaign reviewed every speech before it went on the teleprompter and even cut one remark as being too unacceptably vulgar and obscene even for MAGA.
It would be amazing if Trump got into politics on a joke ( Obama Correspondent Dinner) and was kicked out on a joke in the end too.
I don't think Trump cares if he wins or not - he is planning to steal the presidency in any case and he needs his supporters angry and crazy more than he needs more votes. I am very scared that he declares himself the winner - maybe even before the polls close - on election day and then we are in a constitutional crises. There is a high risk that is the start of the civil war.
The bit I don't get is why it's Democrats being told to "tone down the rhetoric." When Harris said yes, she believes Trump is a fascist, in answer to a direct question, she told the truth based on the evidence she has seen including what his former chief of staff said. She got blasted for it. Trump calls Harris a "communist Marxist fascist" every other day and it's just ignored as "Trump being Trump." Yeah, we know he's an idiot who couldn't define Marxist if you gave him a text to copy and a Sharpie, but that is NOT AN EXCUSE.
(Search for Ana Navarro's impassioned take down for how Latinos are taking it.)
I didn’t find him funny at all. Js.
But he wasn’t the only one by far who was saying the most offensive race-baiting and misogynistic crap in existence.
Tony is funny. But, what works at a comedy club and what works at a political rally are very different.
Context matters. If you are roasting, in good faith, a room full of Puerto Ricans and they feel in on the joke that's a significantly different context than in a predominantly white room full of angry white folk who clap everytime Trump says we need to expel the Jews from Germa... err... Mexican Americans from the USA.
“Heading into the rally, we were called Nazis. Do voters really care about a comic telling a joke that offended people who weren’t going to vote for us? No,” a third campaign adviser said.
First, calling it joke doesn't make it so. There is nothing funny about it. We don't lack a sense of humor. A sense of humor does not include those sorts of outright insults. Pundits are still calling it a joke. The need to stop. They need to stop letting the right determine the framing of discussions.
Second, there is nothing "anti-PC" about it. Claiming anti-PC as Vance did, does not make it so. The comment offends everything decent parents of every political stripe teach their children about the simple courtesy of relating to each other.
Third, Evangelical supporters criticized the appalling comments, but most hideously, they will still vote for Trump because, as one Trump supporter put it to me, Trump will being prayer back into the schools.
If you are from a blue state or cannot go to a battleground state, your volunteer work is needed to do ballot-curing through VoPro Pros and the Harris/Walz campaign. Info on ballot-curing is in this article on the Substack newsletter The Grassroots Connector:
https://grassrootsconnector.substack.com/p/voter-protection-wins-elections?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=1529725&post_id=150709203&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=7pik8&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email
“It’s Easy to Volunteer to Cure Ballots
“Early voting has started in all swing states, so ballot curing is already underway. It will continue after Election Day, with different deadlines for ballot counting in different states. Several groups are seeking volunteers for various “voter protection activities.” These include: VoPro Pros, an all volunteer organization, various state Democratic parties, and the Harris-Walz campaign. You can sign up to be trained and deployed by VoPro Pros here. You can sign up to volunteer with a variety of state Democratic parties here.
“Most ballot-curing is done by phone, so a volunteer can be anywhere and help make votes count. One of the great things about ballot curing is that volunteers know they are making a direct contribution to increasing Democratic vote totals in battleground states, districts, and local elections. Together they will help us win the White House, the Senate, and all down ballot races, too.”
“Kamala Harris is a c***” and Puerto Rico is a big pile of garbage” aren’t jokes and someone needs to tell these assholes that.
"This rhetoric does not reflect GOP values,” Salazar, a Republican of Cuban descent"
Sure it does. Otherwise everyone would have been aghast. How many people laughed?
I do appreciate you calling it what it is vs. a joke:
"the art of effective or persuasive speaking or writing, especially the use of figures of speech"
Please tell us what you think of the term s-hole countries.
Is that rhetoric, or a joke?
Convincing people that Trump is on an inevitable path to victory is part and parcel of the larger strategy of repeating over and over again that he did win even if he didn’t, as was done in 2020 and ever since. The repetition in and of itself is enough to constitute a compelling narrative for many (naive) people.
One pitfall of this strategy is that not everyone on his team is in on the con. Some fools like this comedian will celebrate prematurely by saying the quiet parts out loud, much the same way the Heritage Foundation felt confident enough about a Trump victory to release Project 2025 in all its glory when Biden was still the candidate, only to be forced to renounce their own work and attempt to introduce some (implausible amount of) distance from the Trump campaign’s specific ambitions.
Oh, I feel a tirade coming on!
Trump Christians don’t get that Christ preaches against people just like them, who feel they are superior by sole virtue of their “skin color”.. These white “so-called Christians” who are so “un-Christ-like” and so “unAmerican”, they don’t deserve to be called either. They want to tear everything down to get “us”.
They were the mostly hidden underbelly of America, or as Trump would say “the enemy within’ who tore things down behind the scenes at every level of society, for their own aggrandizement, for greed, because they never got ahead, to make a fortune, to thwart progress, to make others smaller than themselves. Trump is one of them and has burnished them in their own eyes so they feel better than everyone else and want to tear down everyone who isn’t like them.
Forget, they will be swept up in the undertow of his new onerous policies, they will “get”the rest of us. I imagine it might be like hell, they don’t want to be there, but as long as they bring us down, they’ll be happy with the new order of things.
I think the Trump Christians feel like they are superior to others because they are Christians too. It is a complex combination of white supremacist and Christian supremacist beliefs. Christians can understand the references to the fight between good and evil, Trump and crew saying that Kamala is the devil (or whatever they said), Democrats are "demonic." I personally think ALL religions are cults, but Trump just made them more extreme and gave them a permission structure to say their crazy stuff, (that they formally kept in church), out loud.
It's been written on the socials (including Luke Winkie's Slate.com column) -- but they get mad when the criticism is aimed at them, but insist they are equal opportunity in their offense. But, they never attack the orange idiot who is an ginormous source of inspiration for even the slacker level comics. They never bite the hand that feeds them.
Wow, Latino and Black men, Still gonna vote for Orange Kool-aid Man?
We should be more sympathetic to TH. Being a comedian at a Nazi rally is one hard gig.
Glad Hinchcliffe told us he was a comedian. Otherwise, I wouldn't have known.
You would think that post Clint Eastwood, no presidential campaign would take a chance on unvetted comments.
Needless to say, Clint was charming & funny compared to this repulsive crowd.
Unvetted? I've seen reports the campaign reviewed every speech before it went on the teleprompter and even cut one remark as being too unacceptably vulgar and obscene even for MAGA.
Good point....now that it has backfired, the campaign will say this guy was winging it even though they gave him every opportunity.
They already called it ad lib.