We respond…
Just go read the editorial page of the “Gray Lady“, overnight.
Mr. Trump seems to think his own recorded voice has damaged his reputation less than the repeated transcriptions of it — in every media outlet on the planet. But he threatens only one with a lawsuit. What a useless buffoon.
Ridiculous.
He loses — in every way possible. In the courts, and more importantly — at the ballot box.
Just watch it all — this crystallizes the entire race — she is the stuff, man:
This is significant. It has no precedent. Never in the history of the GOP [or the Democratic Party, for that matter!] has the sitting Speaker of the US House (i.e., the nominal head of the GOP, in the Congress) refused to support or defend his party’s nominee for President.
We all know Mr. Trump will lose — and about half of Mr. Ryan’s calculus simply involves not wanting to go down with the ship — sailed by Trumpanzees.
But it does matter. Mr. Trump — good luck retaliating against essentially your entire party’s leadership, when you are once again just a moderately rich old white racist misogynist, in the private sector.
I guess that reasonably accurately describes about 80 per cent of the GOP’s current donor base, though.
Hilarious.
That pull quote bears repeating. My Arizona buddie BMaz, over at emptywheel.net — may have just coined the defining turn of phrase for this weekend’s debate (which I will miss, while traveling):
“…The modern Republican party has long championed racism, bigotry and misogyny; Donald Trump is just the point of their spear….”
This, in response to the GOP elite’s proffered outrage, over the Billy Bush video feed, caught on a live mic on Trump — from 2005.
Do go read all of BMaz. he is absolutely spot on.
As I just wrote over at PowerLine — I (there) appeared solely (and finally!) to thank John Hinderaker.
Last cycle (at this point in 2012) — though the Nate Silver numbers were quite similar — he was still drinking the Romney “the polls are wrong” Kool-Aid. So, thanks John — but you knew going in that Mr. Trump was a waiting behavioural disaster. And you did support his birther nonsense from 2012 forward. So each of you at PL bear the weight of this very likely drubbing. The Senate is likely to be in Democratic hands; we will have to wait to see about the US House.
Here is the electoral college (mathematical) way to look at it — per the ever cogent Nate Silver at FiveThirtyEight. [See derivative image at right.]
Better luck in 2020 folks. No matter what Trump does in the last two debates — the “possible votes to grab” gap is now too wide, in far too many battle-ground states. He has already lost.
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UPDATED: 11 AM EDT — I should note that despite Mr. Trump’s Sunday morning bluster (essentially saying he is going to sue The New York Times, as early as Monday) — Mr. Trump would stand almost no chance in court. His main chance for a recovery of damages would be to prove that the 1995 leaked pages are fabricated. Given that his own recently retired accountant authenticated the pages, that would be a tall order. In addition, the main way to prove a claim of libel or slander, here — would be to RELEASE his actual returns. Rock — meet hard place.
I do understand that, yes — in theory, Mr. Hinderaker — releasing someone’s actual 1040 without their consent is a federal crime. However, Mr. Trump is a decidedly public figure — he is running for President. The Times article is squarely the kind of political reporting our founders cherished — under our First Amendment. He will lose on that one too. I’ll go out on a limb and say no judge will send any reporter to jail over this disclosure. Ample US Supreme Court precedent backs this view. But it is not free from doubt.
End, updated portion.
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Based on the documents thus far leaked to The New York Times, which are really just a few pages of his 1995 returns, we may safely assume that at least part of why he will not release all his returns is this: he has been using “paper” net operating loss carry-forwards (not even a small portion of which would be actual cash flow losses) to completely shelter his income from federal taxes — from at least 1992 to 2013. At least. That is, while the nation was outraged in 2012 that Mr. Romney paid less than a 10 per cent rate on his millions of income in many years, Mr. Trump has likely paid zero federal income taxes since at least 1995.
And that particular probability would nicely explain why he stopped putting any of his own money into his “charitable” foundation, after 2007. He would cut off his own donations precisely because his accountants and lawyers likely told him that he would get no tax benefit from those donations. He has (as of 2007 and after) this yuuuuge N.O.L.C. that will expire worthless if he doesn’t “absorb” it fully (with other income from TV shows, and branding deals).
You see, it would stand to reason that his “on paper” $916 million 1995 net operating loss had not been fully used by 2007. A portion of any loss of that size may be taken for only 18 subsequent tax years, from 1995, forward (and under then applicable law — three years backwards, too — thus the aggregated 21 years, in my headline). By most estimates, he personally wasn’t making (net of all expenses) anything close to $50 million a year, from 1995 to 2013.
It is unlikely that he made enough other income in those 18 years to absorb the full $916 million paper loss. So, putting his own real cash money into any charitable donation — whether to veterans directly — or to his foundation, would have simply meant that more of his precious $916 million net operating loss carry-forward (a “N.O.L.C.”) would expire worthless in 2013.
So — and to be clear — this is simply my experienced conjecture, here: Mr. Trump did as he always does — he took care of No. 1 first. He stopped donating, but did not stop telling people (falsely, it would seem) about how charitable he still was/is. And he got caught by clever investigative journalists at the Washington Post, this past Spring.
So far as we can tell — all of his actions appear lawful; they are just… deeply unsavory.
I’ll just post the imagery below, centered, from Nate Silver’s excellent analysis site — great Friday news, and a small “Where’s Waldo” — as she picks up both Florida and Nevada:
नमस्ते
On the morning after losing the debate — and losing it, badly — Mr. Trump is now exhibiting the same hubris and thin-skinned petulance we saw after the Democratic Convention this Summer. He cannot — even for a brief moment — accept that he is and was in the wrong. Horribly wrong.
Mr. Trump has taken to Fox, and other media outlets, this morning, to whine about how unfair the debate was.
Y A W N. Almost no news value in that — that is his consistent excuse-making M.O.
This part, though, I will mention — along with the graphic at right, for which I am hopeful I will be accepted as only deploying in a “fair use” fashion. It is needed to show what a colossal anus Mr. Trump really is. Here are his remarks regarding Alicia Machado, the woman he has called Miss Piggy. Mr. Trump is a pig.
Per the New York Times — at the noon-hour on September 27, 2016:
…A defensive Donald J. Trump lashed out at the debate moderator, complained about his microphone and threatened to make Bill Clinton’s marital infidelity a campaign issue in a television appearance on Tuesday just hours after his first presidential debate with Hillary Clinton.
And defying conventions of civility and political common sense, Mr. Trump leveled cutting personal criticism at a Miss Universe pageant winner, held up by Mrs. Clinton in Monday night’s debate as an example of her opponent’s disrespect for women.
Mr. Trump insisted in the Fox News appearance that he had been right to disparage the beauty queen, Alicia Machado, for her physique.
“She was the winner and she gained a massive amount of weight, and it was a real problem,” said Mr. Trump, who was the pageant’s executive producer at the time. “Not only that — her attitude. And we had a real problem with her.”
Mrs. Clinton mentioned Ms. Machado by name, quoting insults that Ms. Machado has attributed to Mr. Trump and noting that the pageant winner had become a citizen to vote in the 2016 election. During the debate, he showed disbelief at the charge that he had ridiculed Ms. Machado, asking Mrs. Clinton repeatedly, “Where did you find this?”
I’ll simply quote Scott Johnson here — for the “inadvertent truths” he’s offered the faithful but empty-headed PowerLine lemmings, on last night’s actual debate (as seen by most Americans NOT wearing the Coke-bottle bottom lenses, dutifully handed out at the PL door, by Mr. Hinderaker):
“…Secretary Clinton seemed to me poised, self-disciplined and prepared…..
Trump turned in the worst debate performance by a presidential candidate since the modern era of these televised events in 1960, and Trump’s was the worst by a long shot. What to compare it to? In my mind it harked back to President Ford’s “liberation” of Poland in his 1976 debate against Jimmy Carter, but Trump’s disaster was far worse. Ford was an incumbent president and a transparently decent man. He had nothing to prove in that regard or in his ability to discharge the duties of the office.
Not so the case with Trump. He had something to prove and he botched it. Repeatedly.
On the defensive, Trump responded at length with monologues that confirmed and amplified the charges against him. He hasn’t released his tax returns? He doesn’t pay taxes because he’s smart.
His properties have discriminated in renting to blacks? The company was just one defendant in a multiparty suit that was settled without an “admission of guilt.”
His advocacy of the birther cause demeaned our first black president? He did Obama a favor by compelling him to release his birth certificate.
He didn’t oppose the Iraq war at the time? Here he did not confirm or amplify the charge but rather defend himself at bizarre length, citing Howard Stern and Sean Hannity along the way.
As the wreck continued at what felt to me like excruciating length, I reflected that, in Trump’s case, character is destiny. His vanity drew him into misjudgments and missed opportunities at virtually every turn. He could not let it go. He had to vindicate himself, even if he lacked the perspective to see that his attempts at self-vindication worked out more like self-incrimination….”
And I must say (no surprise, here!) in contrast, HRC looked… perfectly Presidential. She repeatedly stuck him solidly with his own words — his racist positions, and his morally deplorable views on women. All women; including a winner of one of his beauty contests he called “Miss Piggy”.
And so, I expect to see a widening of HRC’s lead in the coming weeks, in the polls. Mr. Trump simply alienated the vast majority of any college educated undecideds last night — to the extent that any college educated person in America remains undecided. He needed to reach out to — and win — some new demographic last night. He utterly failed.
Even if the nationwide numbers do not move much, it will come down to Colorado — Colorado will be the last six of the 270 HRC needs. Trump has almost no chance of flipping that state, and without it he cannot win (even with wins in each of Ohio, Florida and Iowa). Absent a pure miracle, he simply has no electoral college path left to 270. That’s the math.
Now you know.
We will take a moment on this quiet, gray Sunday morning to note that Mr. Trump ought to be treated by the media as Senator Joe McCarthy was — in the 1950s.
The duty of a free press — when faced with a confabulating demagogue — and a nearly national socialist one, looking to demonize one of the world’s great religions — is to call a lie, a lie.
It is the duty of the press to offer a perspective — not just let his lunacy rattle forward, unchecked. Hopefully, we will see many real journalists discharge that duty, on Monday night and Tuesday morning — and thereafter.
It is not in any way “unfair” coverage to call a liar… a liar. That is a fact.
And if Mr. Trump is nothing else — he is a pathological liar. Here’s a bit from the NYT’s editorial pages — on “How to Cover a Charlatan” and I think it is spot on:
“…[P]laying it straight does not preclude adding value with journalistic judgment — such as, in extreme cases, calling out a lie when we see it. And I believe that debate moderators can press Trump when he lies or evades.
Our job is to share with our audiences what we know. And we all know that Trump will not build a wall that Mexico will pay for (estimates are that it would cost $25 billion). If we know this, we shouldn’t keep it to ourselves….
What I suggest isn’t the sharp departure from journalistic custom that some accuse me of. In the early 1950s, journalists were also faced with how to cover a manipulative demagogue — Senator Joe McCarthy — and traditional even-handedness wasn’t serving the public interest. We honor Edward R. Murrow for breaking with journalistic convention and standing up to McCarthy, saying: “This is no time for men who oppose Senator McCarthy’s methods to keep silent.”
Likewise, in the civil rights struggles of the 1960s, it was not enough to quote from news conferences by each side. Great journalists like Claude Sitton and Karl Fleming took enormous risks to reveal the brutality of the Jim Crow South.
Our job is not stenography, but truth-telling. As we move to the debates, let’s remember that to expose charlatans is not partisanship, but simply good journalism….”
This last bit is the critical point: accurately reporting what I liar says is largely worthless, if one does not clearly label the lie — as a lie. That is a service to America — pointing out clearly when someone who wants to be our next President is lying, or worse.
नमस्ते
