Political Theatre category archive

Ben Cohen looks at some poll numbers and argues that Donald Trump voters are suffering “buyers’ remorse.”

The numbers reflect an obvious truth that many of Trump’s own supporters are experiencing serious buyers remorse and have realized that their man wasn’t in fact a better alternative to Hillary Clinton, but an unmitigated disaster. The fact that the full scope of this unfolding disaster is now beginning to seep into the minds of voters who wanted to give him Trump a chance is significant because it means the president’s lies and distortions are not resonating as strongly as they once were. . . . Far from being a closer and a winner, he has choked when it most mattered and failed to follow through on everything he claimed would happen in his first few days in office.

Meanwhile, Dick Polman views CNN’s recent interview (linked in his article) of six die-hard Trumplers and draws a different conclusion.

Those of us who rightly view Trump’s first 70 days as an unmitigated disaster would prefer not to ridicule our bedazzled fellow citizens. Surely we’d like to believe that they have rational, empirical reasons for defending a guy who’s dismissed, by prominent conservative commentator Michael Gerson, as “empty, easily distracted, vindictive, shallow, impatient, incompetent and morally small.”

Alas, the six Trump voters who met with CNN the other day are implacable. Trump is “governing” for his base — the 35 percent — and there’s no way he’s going down unless a sizeable chunk of the base abandons him. And if these six people typify his base, it ain’t happening any time soon. We might as well parse their thinking, even if it’s inexplicable. I’ll start with a few appetizers before I serve the main course.

I’m inclined to agree with Polman. There is a baseline of bigots who are steeped in Fox News fiction and are committed to Trump, and I do not see the Republican Party, which currently controls Congress and has embraced racism as one of its primary political strategies since Richard Nixon’s odious Southern Strategy, as either inclined or willing to stand up to the Trumplers.

Follow the links to read the full pieces.

Shaun Mullen throws a spitball. Here’s the windup.

On Monday, Trump will become the first president since 1910 to not throw out the ceremonial first pitch on the opening day of Major League baseball season lest the inevitable boos thundering down on him from the sellout crowd at Nationals Park a few blocks from the White House assail his tender ears and bruise his immense ego. Yet despite his fear of going out on the hustings as Barack Obama and their presidential predecessors regularly have done, he and his family are costing taxpayers a small fortune despite their enormous wealth.

This is because of their lavish lifestyles, penchant for vacation weekends and brazenly mingling family business with the nation’s business in far-flung places. Typical is a February trip when Trump’s sons Eric and Donald Jr., with a Secret Service detail in tow, decamped nearly 8,000 miles from Washington to attend the grand opening of a Trump-branded golf resort in the United Arab Emirates in but one of many egregious examples of the Trump and his family using the presidency as a profit center.

Follow the link for the pitch.

On a somewhat related topic, Stephen B. Young of the Caux Round Table has some interesting observations about Donald Trump’s dismal failure to understand how stuff works.

Robert Redford has seen it all before.

When President Donald Trump speaks of being in a “running war” with the media, calls them “among the most dishonest human beings on Earth” and tweets that they’re the “enemy of the American people,” his language takes the Nixon administration’s false accusations of ”shoddy” and “shabby” journalism to new and dangerous heights.

Follow the link for the rest.

American ex-pats in France warn French not to make the same mistake once.

Via C&L.

Via C&L.

Afterthought:

I believe that it is safe to assume that the pitcher is a Rightie.

The Des Moines Register’s Rekha Basu wonders why Donald Trump is surrounding himself with his progeny. A snippet:

But the more logical explanation is that Donald Trump doesn’t trust anyone, except possibly his immediate family members, and just wants to surround himself with “yes” men and women. Who better than your daughter and son-in-law over whom, regardless of their accomplishments, you will always have some parental authority? By contrast, Barack Obama surrounded himself with people with different views from his own, who would challenge him.