Ricochet is the best place on the internet to discuss the issues of the day, either through commenting on posts or writing your own for our active and dynamic community in a fully moderated environment. In addition, the Ricochet Audio Network offers over 50 original podcasts with new episodes released every day.
Why was this the Breaking Point?
I want to find a way to express the question I’m about to ask in the spirit I mean it, which is a spirit of genuine and humble puzzlement. I’m not just trying to say, “I told you so.” I’m honestly confused, and it makes me feel — of all things — lonely, as if maybe I’ve been away from home for so long that I don’t really understand my own country anymore.
What I don’t understand is why so many people seem to be genuinely surprised by the emergence of a tape of Donald Trump making vulgar remarks. As everyone here knows, I’ve misunderstood everything about this campaign from the very beginning, which necessarily means that there’s a lot about my own country that I don’t understand. At first, I just didn’t take his campaign seriously. Yes, he was getting lots of media attention, and let’s be honest, I gave him a lot of attention on Ricochet, too: Like the rest of the media, I fell for it and gave him free attention. I thought it was because his campaign was good for a laugh. It never even occurred to me at first that a significant number of Americans would really vote for him. I assumed that within a few days or weeks he’d go the way of other fleeting media sensations.
But to my astonishment, his polling numbers held up — and then he won state after state in the primaries. You all know how I felt about that. Among other things, I was stunned, absolutely floored, that so many Americans, so many people who I thought I knew and understood, thought Donald Trump should be the president. It seemed so absurd to me that I almost couldn’t bring myself to argue that he shouldn’t be: It seemed self-evident. I’ve been unable to shake the feeling throughout that this has all been a madcap practical joke that somehow got out of hand. And as this has progressed I’ve felt, increasingly, lonely — as if everyone but me is on a joke that I don’t get. And frightened, too.
But I’ve believed many of the things that people who support Trump say about why they support him. One thing that many people say, and some have said on Ricochet, is that Trump’s vulgar comments (whichever ones we’re discussing, because every day seems to bring new ones) are a feature, not a bug. I’ve seen quite a few people on Ricochet saying things like, “We’re sick to death of political correctness. We’re sick of hyper-sensitivity and being told there are things we can’t say. Trump says whatever he feels like and he never apologizes for it. We need someone like that to open the Overton Window and take a sledgehammer to Washington. A normal politician won’t be able to shake things up.” I think that’s a fair paraphrase of the sentiments of many Trump supporters, don’t you? I don’t agree with the argument, at all, but I think I understand it.
So why is that tape — which to me just sounds like Trump being Trump — the straw that broke the camel’s back? Or the one that seems to be, anyway. So many people seem honestly surprised that he said those things. Is the surprise a pose? If so, why this, why now? It’s a very offensive tape, but to me it’s not more offensive than so many of the other things he’s said, the things that at first made me think his candidacy was a joke, and later made me think I was in a nightmare from which I couldn’t wake up. This is the candidate who said, “I could stand in the middle of 5th Avenue and shoot somebody and I wouldn’t lose voters” — and I’d begun to believe he was right, that he was popular because he said outrageous and offensive things and refused ever to back down.
Why is this different? Why would it change anyone’s mind about Trump? If, like me, you see this as “just more of the same,” why do you think other people are reacting to it as if it’s different? Is it because his comments were about sex? Is that the ultimate American taboo?
I’m asking in good faith, I promise. I’m truly not trying to say, “I told you so.” I genuinely don’t understand, and not understanding makes me feel lonely and stupid and out-of-it. I was taught long ago that it’s better to admit that I don’t understand, raise my hand, and ask my question — however dumb –than to pretend everything makes sense because I don’t want to reveal how much I don’t know. So that’s my question: Why is this worse than all the other things he’s said?
Published in General
Well we have some of those speeches now, and what? They show her to be an inconsistent politician. Big deal. Are you just mad that she got so well paid?
I hadn’t thought of it in this context, but you may well have a point.
I don’t know what i am supposed to be surprised or shocked by either. The whole to do that tv/movie/rock stars are surrounded by groupies, and that high status men live in an entirely different universe than I do, is pretty well known. Everybody from King Solomon to Pink Floyd to half of the rap genre talk about how one lives in a nihilist sexual landscape: The utter meaninglessness of infinite and free sex.
If it weren’t vulgar it would be banal.
I think its just a continuation of the sour grapes by people who already didn’t like trump and its just another bad faith and ridiculous cudgel by the willfully stupid and dishonest.
Agree with this and similar points made above. I’d also ask if we think Trump is studying or practicing right now or is he drafting his next series of Tweets for the week? Candidates represent and advocate for their supporters values and beliefs (always imperfectly, some barely, some worse and more articulately than others). I don’t think he ever came to respect us enough to do the minimal work: reading, learning that which he obviously is clueless about.
He was tolerated/supported as long as he seemed viable, looked like he could be “a Winner”. That’s clearly past so, like one of his properties, businesses or wives its time to declare bankruptcy, take the loss and move-on.
What possesses you to think he spends any time working on his tweets?
Point taken. I meant it more in the 140 character lit / fruit fly attention span angle.
I have been somewhat surprised by the reaction to this, but not entirely. It is the kind of thing I expected Trump had said, and I am not surprised by the tape. We’d said months ago that this is what we’re getting with Trump.
The reason I think it’s getting the reaction it is, is because that one word is so particularly crude. It’s one of the ones in a category that’s way out beyond other crude words. I can only think of two examples of it being used in a movie, for instance: “True Lies” and “Pecker.” In both cases, it was shocking.
There’s the implication he’s talking about actually carrying it out. I won’t listen to the tape, so I don’t know exactly what his context was.
I’ve already scolded one of my left-wing friends who supported Bill Clinton but is all over Trump for this. I told him I’m glad that the Left has finally decided, after years of excusing and covering up for Bill Clinton (through harassment, affairs, sexual assaults, and even rape), that powerful men shouldn’t feel entitled to treat women this way and should be kept away from the White House. (He didn’t respond.) It’s blatant hypocrisy, but we knew that at the time.
The only defense I can see from our side is 1) Trump’s just talk; 2) he’s bad, but Hillary’s still unacceptably worse.
I didn’t have to be convinced of Trump’s utter unfitness for the Presidency. What I’m surprised about is that, like Bill Clinton, I would want to have my daughters be chaperoned if they were ever in a situation where they were meeting him. Some of the reports that I was previously able to look at with a modicum of skepticism about Trump’s sexcapades and various assault allegations now begin to appear more credible.
I guess, in short, we’ve transitioned from Trump merely being a crude boor, into Trump being nearly the same as one of the Bills – Clinton or Cosby.
The same people who are repulsed by either of those louts simply can’t hypocritically ignore the self-admitted revelation of Trump’s similar infractions.
I have done my best to ignore this election, given the choices, so I have no great attachment to events, this included. That said, he is crass and such a poor communicator as to seem lacking in intelligence. She, while perhaps competent, is power-crazed and spells the end of the republic as we have known it. I can’t help but notice that the epicenter of the response comes from the same group of people who, when it came to Bill Clinton’s actions, said “It’s only about sex.” These are now scandalized, scandalized by words about sex.
All media responses are, and have been for a long time, posture and theater, a ‘gotcha’ game, full of sound and fury…
It was the breaking point because the playwright(s) responsible for this farce decided it was.
I can’t escape the feeling that we’re all living in a supersized “Truman Show” conjured up by some Hollywood scriptwriters. This entire electoral process, from the primaries ’til now, has had a surreal and shallow quality. The characters are cartoonish, the coincidences are too pat, and the puppet wires just are too obvious.
I imagine a team of writers around a table, writing furiously, struggling to control the beast they have created:
“We’ve done too well with our Trump character. He’s stronger than we had anticipated he would be by this point. We have his rallies packed while Herself speaks to paid staffers and their extended relatives.”
“Nah, it will make Trump’s third act downfall all the more dramatic.”
“And I’m not sure we can control the WikiLeaks plotline. This bit about needing ‘a public and a private position’… hits too close to home.”
“Our snap polls indicate that has traction. We need a distraction.”
“How about deploying Trump video #113B? I know we were saving that for the October 21st crisis point, but…”
“OK. I’ll write the media response and you handle the GOPe meltdown. You’re very good at making them seem sincere.”
“With pleasure! But, isn’t all this a little transparent? Won’t savvier viewers notice?”
“Doesn’t matter as long as they keep watching. What difference, at this point, does it make?”
nicely put
Their was very much my initial reaction, Claire.
The death thrashing of the alt-right is a sight to behold. In your own words, Mike: “Deal with it.”
Unfortunately, it isn’t.
I don’t think very many people are saying, “OMG, I can’t believe Trump said those things!! Who knew he thinks about women that way??”
I think quite a few people are saying, “There he goes again. What a boor and a lout, and someone who objectifies women and takes advantage of his power when it comes to them. No surprise there”
Many people are saying, “Well. This was private, so who cares?” (In a TV studio? With the cameras running and the mic hot? What was he thinking? What he always does, I guess.) I suppose it’s as private as the tapes of twenty-odd years of his yukking it up with Howard Stern about having sex with menstruating women, enjoying three-ways (“haven’t we all”), and how voluptuous his own daughter is.
Face it. It’s not just a matter of what the meaning of “am” is, as in “This does not reflect who I am.”
Yes, Donald, it does. Remember, “Look at that face?” That was last year.
In the general population, though, I don’t think this will make much difference, other than to repel enough people who were wobbly, and who were looking for a reason to vote for Trump, into not doing so. And I suspect that was one intent of releasing the tape, now, when it’s really too late to do anything about it, and now that people are starting to vote. Look for more. And worse.
As for why politicians are deserting the sinking ship, it’s my impression, although I haven’t really researched this, that congressmen and senators running for reelection who have not totally embraced Trump, are generally running much better in their states than he is. As in Marco Rubio, Rob Portman, John McCain, Kelly Ayotte and Pat Toomey (not much of a split, but he’s running better than Trump). This has, I think, fostered the perception that too close an entanglement with Trump is bad for ones’ own political prospects, and they think they do better on their own. And when entanglement with Trump is sure to mean thousands of campaign ads touting Trump’s verbal infelicities, followed by “YOUR CANDIDATE SUPPORT[S]ED DONALD TRUMP, WHO DISRESPECTS WOMEN,” in both this and the next election cycles, they are fleeing in droves. I can’t blame them. After all, what profits a man to win the presidency and lose the House and Senate (Especially if it’s your own job that’s at stake . . . .)
I have never been a Trump fan, nor was there any point where I thought that he was anything but what he has demonstrated he is over and over again. I do think that this particular taped session demonstrates his particularly adolescent crudity and egocentrism in a way that cannot be excused as some of his other comments could. Many probably weren’t particularly affected by his imitation of the disabled reporter or the obviously racist comment about the judge. However, we are all aware of the nature of adolescent boys as they become aware of their sexuality and begin to differentiate themselves from young girls. It is a completely normal behavior for an adolescent. When a middle aged man with adult female children of his own expresses those thoughts in a peculiarly adolescent fashion it becomes a thing no one with any degree of maturity or taste can ignore. Much of human interaction is affect. What we affect ultimately becomes ingrained. To a large extent that is what growing up really amounts to. Trump’s wealth insulated him from the consequences of his immaturity and behavior, so he never really bothered to affect an adult outlook. Seeing someone of his age acting in this manner is embarrassing to mature adults who long ago learned to curb their loutishness and wished to be perceived as civilized, mature adults.
“We have a path for citizenship. It’s called coming legally into this country.” – Marco Rubio, 2010. Back when he was part of the alt-right movement, apparently.
@claire – of all the things you said – this incongruent thought is the one that breaks my brain. Are you really suggesting that this conversation recorded from 11 years ago is evidence in the present of someone unable to learn?
For present learning on Trump’s part, I point to his brilliant trolling of the leftist media in both unveiling his new hotel, securing military endorsements while ostensibly everyone was there for him to become an unbirther. (Something which I don’t think Hillary or Sid Blumenthal have done yet – and they started it.)
For present learning on Trump’s part, I point to his meeting with the Mexican President (whom I am saddened to learn didn’t contribute enough to the Clinton Foundation to secure a meeting with her.)
As to Trump’s 5th avenue comment, I seem to remember no one in the Democrat party making that much of a stink when a prominent Democrat Gubernatorial candidate quipped “The only way I can lose this election is if I’m caught in bed with either a dead girl or a live boy.” (hint, Louisiana 1983).
Although, upon reflection and given the fact of Ted Kennedy – not even a dead girl seems to matter to Democrats. Grabbing people by the ‘short hairs’ is what Democrats seem to do – but when they do it it is called ‘just sex’.
I read @claire’s question as a personal one, and @mattyvan very neatly beat me to writing my own sentiments during this “annus horribilis.” From Trump throwing his hat into the ring, I was very closely aligned with “nevertrump” since I’ve known the scoundrel for decades.
However, I dearly wish that “Hillary must be stopped” which I still dearly desire, but “the devil we know” can’t keep his horns from showing. I’d also add that Pence’s debate performance was precisely what I’ve been looking for, a hybrid Cruz’s sharp mind, Rubio’s crisp presentation channeled confidently and calmly through Johnny Quest’s Race Bannon. Trump, true to form shattered this momentum, all by his lonesome, as I would have predicted had I kept a clear head through all of this noise.
I have no doubt that there is countless more compromising tapes that will continue to grab our national discourse by the throat and drag our nation’s morality into the pit of despair that Bill Clinton (yes, following his hero, Kennedy) opened up for us. That “they all do it” is more proof of the decline.
I remember that Clinton’s infidelities mattered as they could compromise our country by foreign agents looking for exploits of a weak man. Ironic, no?
To be fair, when these horns were let public (11 years ago) Trump was still a Democrat – and of course they were going to record it as blackmail in case he ever left the reservation.
As for his horns today?
Man, if only Hillary’s lies from 11 years ago or her infelicitous comments from 2 decades ago really mattered to Democrats… Alas, all we have is Trump.
<scratches head> Um, yea, that’s why I’m not a Democrat and find their party repulsive, not something to copy or use as a bar for conduct.
Actually that is not how Clinton gets compromised. All she is looking for is a good, honest bribe to the “Bill, Hillary & Chelsea Clinton Foundation”.
Blackmail cannot work when the Executive, Legislative, Judicial, Media and almost 1/2 of the electorate work together to absolve her from responsibility. When blackmail doesn’t work, and one has shown themselves open to good, old-fashioned cash – the bribery is the way to go.
Concur. Unfortunately, too many of our fellow Republican voters set the bar too low. Today – that isn’t my problem.
Today I am much more concerned with the country as a whole. Hillary has shown she can be bought. Worse, she has shown herself to be the epitome of the sarcastic use of “Honest politician” – in that when she is bought, she remains so.
That is the cheap way for Russia to win the new Cold War.
“Rand Paul Scrubs Anti-Israel Student Reading List from Website: Books laden with anti-Semitic imagery included on senator’s ‘student reading list.'”
Rand Paul is up for reelection. The libertarian types here can prove they are opposing Trump on principle by telling Paul to drop out.
Very early on (even as early as 2014 when he first hinted at running but claimed he didn’t want the pay cut), most experts predicted two things about Trump as a candidate: (1) his ceiling was sub-majority; and (2) he would either quit or embarrass himself sufficiently to cause his campaign to collapse. These predictions were wrong but only in degree. They simply didn’t expect his apogee to get as high as it did, nor did they anticipate the staying power of the campaign (helped along by some key endorsements and media attention). These are the real surprises, and I’m quite sure Trump himself is as surprised as nearly everyone else.
In any case, he has accomplished with spectacular success what was probably his goal, which was to block any and all viable GOP threats to the weakest non-incumbent Democratic Party candidate since Dukakis, while simultaneously creating a serious rift within the GOP.
This is the only explanation that makes sense. If there is any consolation, it’s that we have a better idea of who are among the most opportunistic and gullible among those who claimed to be conservatives.
Of course. And if she was running against Pence, or Scott Walker, or Rubio, or even Ted Cruz (whom no one seems to warm to) that’s what we’d be talking about. Oh, and about Bill’s issues, too.
Because, given a choice between discussing/opining about sex and discussing/opining about complicated and devious pay-for-play deals, human beings will choose sex every time.
I’d love to think that, but what are actually the signs of it? The Libertarian candidate has said statist things for crying out loud. I think we are in the middle of a growing big government movement.
This has been my theory-in-use since 2015.
Doesn’t mean I am not going to vote for him.
An accurate and insightful observation. I agree with you.
On my “Silver Linings” post a week or so ago, I wrote:
At the moment, the liberal MSM is so freaked out at the idea of a Trump presidency, they are actively suppressing their dislike of (and information about) Hillary. Indeed, they are basically working for the Clinton campaign. But Hillary, estrogenically historic though she may be, is not charming. Her family life is soiled and grubby, Bill is a slowly deflating creep and Chelsea has already pulled up a piggy-chair at the Clinton Foundation’s slops trough. Once the election is over, the press will be harder on Hillary. The public—who already distrusts her—will be hard on her as well.
Now it strikes me that, given my thought about human beings and our preference for discussing sex over just about any other subject, when the greedy media spotlight turns, inevitably, on Clinton, will we have to discuss (endlessly) Bill’s old sins, will he commit new ones, or will the blessed (relative) calm of a geriatric presidency finally force us to talk about, you know, Syria or something?