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When something happens across the pond, we immediately call on the great John O’Sullivan to explain what it all means. He stops by for a complete data drop on the appointment of Boris Johnson to 10 Downing Street. Also, is Mueller time finally over? And does it kill impeachment? All answers lie within the confines of today’s Ricochet Podcast.
Music from this week’s show: A Foggy Day by Louis Armstrong and Ella Fitzgerald
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Well Obama did that as well so that doesn’t prove anything.
For all that his left-wing policies were bad, Obama the Presidential campaigner was quite effective.
Admittedly, after a certain point he became the media’s preferred candidate, so he had an easier time than any Republican would ever have.
“The Democrats shouldn’t have a special prosecutor looking for opposition research on their behalf.” You nailed it, Julia.
That the goal was to produce opposition research for the Democratic Party to use against Trump down the road explains why it was so important to whoever was staffing and running the investigation (not Mueller, evidently) that every member of the team be a partisan Democrat.
That this could have happened by chance, which Mueller seemed to be asserting at one point in his testimony, strains credulity.
By contrast, when Ken Starr investigated a Democratic President, he made sure to put together a team entirely of Democrats, to make sure the team was not prejudiced against the President.
Then Jimmy Carter was the smartest person running in 1975-‘76. And Barack Obama the smartest in 2007-2008.
We can do this all night, and throughout history — with a host of not just presidents but also senators, governors, mayors, etc.
Do you see the trap you set for yourself when you start equating victory in an election with intellect and competence?
Trump was not the first bombastic buffoon to win a big important election. And he will surely not be the last.
The difference is that both Carter and Obama were dark horses taking advantage of Republican screw ups. It wouldn’t have mattered who they were.
In a sense, Trump was a dark horse as a politician, too. A lot of us voted “for*” him in the general not knowing what we would get. We knew what he was saying then, and some of it, he had been saying for decades. But other positions seemed to shift often. What we did know was that he was not Hillary. He has followed through perfectly on not being Hillary. It’s the most kept campaign promise I’ve ever seen.
* By voting for, I really mean voting against his opponent.
“I don’t think the intelligentsia were completely hysterical … thinking there was an unbalanced demagogue that had slipped past the safeguards the Founders intended.” Quite right; what did they know about Donald Trump? After all, he had just gotten off a spaceship from Mars …
No, wait a minute. That must have been somebody else. Donald Trump has been involved in politics for FIFTY YEARS, mostly as a conservative, JFK-style Democrat (though 100 times less sleazy than JFK, I hurry to add).
Petty, you got snowed.
Now, when Barack Obama, with his bizarre background, took office, there was plenty to raise questions; but nobody asked them.
“short-circuiting due process with the Moslem Ban”: “The Supreme Court upheld President Trump’s ban on travel from several predominantly Muslim countries.”—NY Times 6/26/18. Sounds like you got snowed again.
That’s hardly a difference, my friend. In fact it’s a perfect analogue to what happened with Hillary when James Comey released his public “exoneration” of her — which was really an indictment of her (“Technically there isn’t enough evidence to convict her even though we all know she is very, very guilty”) — roughly 6 1/2 minutes before the election.
Analysts have pointed to Comey’s 11th hour broadside as well as Hillary’s unwillingness to campaign in key states as the major reasons behind a depressed Democratic turn-out that handed an electoral victory to Donald Trump.
I’d say Hillary’s email follies and failure to campaign sufficiently in key states qualify as two enormous screw ups, wouldn’t you?
Are those really the only alternatives, “smartest” or “buffoon”? (Exercise for the Reader: which notorious logical fallacy has @filmklassik just committed?)
Jimmy Carter (Annapolis, 1946) and Barack Obama (Harvard Law, 1991) may or may not have been the “smartest person running”, but I would merely assert that neither was a buffoon (if that is taken to imply low intelligence).
We have IQ scores for both candidates in 2004, so we know that George W. Bush (IQ 125) beat John Kerry (IQ 120).
In 1960, on the other hand, Richard Nixon probably had 20 points on John F. Kennedy; but the powerful mind behind that election was Joseph P. Kennedy’s.
If “Trump was not the first bombastic buffoon to win a big important election”, you should be able to give an example or two.
Well, he did study classical literature at Oxford and wrote a biography of Churchill a few years ago.
Can he get his country out of the EU and show Iran who commands the seas? That’s what matters now.
Very true. That is what matters now. (I didn’t know he wrote a biography of Churchill.)
The screw up in 2008 being letting in a candidate who switched gears from winning the Republican nomination to winning the Miss Congeniality contest, and in 2012 by nominating a stiff.
I was in the Any Republican But Trump Whose Father Wasn’t a Mailman camp until it was Trump.
I think it’s so dumb when people say we aren’t supposed to vote “against” parties or policies.
Oh my Gosh, should I really respond? Yes, because I’m a moth to the flame…..
Trump has spent 50 years squandering 85% of his daddy’s fortune on the USFL, Trump Airlines, modelling agencies and beauty pageants, casinos (very hard to lose $$$ in, but he managed) Trump water and steaks and antifreeze, etc. His history of premeditated embezzlement, short payoffs, strategic bankruptcies and all around scumdoggery has left him unbankable with reputable lenders for the last 20 years, that’s why he has had to resort to Deutsche Bank and Russian money launderers.
The man did not run for office to change or effect policy, because he has no fixed views on policy. He did not run for office due to a sense of patriotism, because he’s very open about not admiring this country, a pit of carnage, or thinking we’re better than Putin’s Russia or Erdogan’s Turkey. “Who are we to preach, we kill a lot of people too….”
He ran because it’s the best way to feed his megalomaniacal narcissism and enjoy the adoration of the Trumpkins.
Trump Supporters
Harsh but…well…
Petty Boozswha
Oh my Gosh, should I really respond? Yes, because I’m a moth to the flame…..
Trump has spent 50 years squandering 85% of his daddy’s fortune on the USFL, Trump Airlines, modelling agencies and beauty pageants, casinos (very hard to lose $$$ in, but he managed) Trump water and steaks and antifreeze, etc. His history of premeditated embezzlement, short payoffs, strategic bankruptcies and all around scumdoggery has left him unbankable with reputable lenders for the last 20 years, that’s why he has had to resort to Deutsche Bank and Russian money launderers.
The man did not run for office to change or effect policy, because he has no fixed views on policy. He did not run for office due to a sense of patriotism, because he’s very open about not admiring this country, a pit of carnage, or thinking we’re better than Putin’s Russia or Erdogan’s Turkey. “Who are we to preach, we kill a lot of people too….”
He ran because it’s the best way to feed his megalomaniacal narcissism and enjoy the adoration of the Trumpkins.
And yet… In 2020 the Democrats will almost surely again nominate someone worse.
As Franz Kafka said: “there is hope, but not for us…”
This is why you got Trump: McCain Finegold weakened the parties. The RNC doesn’t know how to run a primary when 17 guys show up. The Republican ruling class sucks. They have sucked for a long time. Cultural issues. No one fights the media. Alinsky tactics work and people are sick of it. Populism and socialism are taking off everywhere for good reason.
You can complain all you want, but you have to be realistic about this stuff.
The Death Of Stalin is such an excellent movie. lol
Thank you. It is so nice to wash away all the BS. I will vote for Trump if I must, but I don’t for one minute indulge in sentimental posturing about how “he means well”. He only means well for Trump. Fortunately some of the time that works out for the country. It will never work out if we have a Democrat president selected from the current bunch. I have been convinced to consider a vote for Trump because I cannot vote for infanticide loving leftists, but you will never convince me that Trump is a good man. He is just the lessor evil and because he is evil, he is running again.
I think I’m being misinterpreted. This is not an endorsement of what Petty said.
I think this comes under the heading of ignoratio elenchi; that is, if you can’t refute the argument, try to refute some other argument and hope the audience doesn’t notice the switch.
Here’s the preceding paragraph Petty left out, which begins by quoting him:
“I don’t think the intelligentsia were completely hysterical … thinking there was an unbalanced demagogue that had slipped past the safeguards the Founders intended.” Quite right; what did they know about Donald Trump? After all, he had just gotten off a spaceship from Mars …
This was immediately followed by the paragraph Petty does quote, in which I argue that, if Trump were an “unbalanced demagogue”, over his long public career somebody would have noticed. In fact, he has always been a centrist: which worried rational anti-Trumpers, who figured he might move to the left once in office. (Happily, we were wrong. Mostly!)
The disheartening part is, in spite of the long record of liberals and progressives smearing conservatives, how ready Never Trumpers are to believe liberal and progressive smears of Donald Trump. Some people would rather sink that low, than admit they were wrong.
As the Word Limit approaches … Forbes says Trump is worth $3.1 billion; if that’s 15% of his inheritance, then he inherited $20.6 billion. Preposterous.
Becoming President has reduced Trump’s fortune by $1 billion+. And gained him armies of enemies who want to put him and his children in prison. Why do it? Patriotism.
“Adulation”? He already had that. Now he has the hatred of hundreds of millions around the world.
Trump dabbled in politics as performance art for several years. In 2000 he appointed himself the voice of reason against nativist, racist, economic nationalist Pat Buchanan and ran to save Ross Perot’s Independence Party from anti-abortion fanaticism. Later he felt he could get more mileage from being a Birther and getting in front of the alt-right boomlet. I think the intelligentsia would disagree with your definition of centrist, I think a much more accurate definition is that he is an extremely talented demagogue who can tell which way the winds are blowing.
As the Word Limit approaches … Forbes says Trump is worth $3.1 billion; if that’s 15% of his inheritance, then he inherited $20.6 billion. Preposterous.
He was left approximately $500 million of prime NYC real estate at the bottom of New York’s bankruptcy crisis, the absolute nadir for valuation of those assets – a $20 billion valuation today on those assets is not unreasonable at all. Even a Trump University economist could figure that one out.
I stand by my view that Trump’s motivations for seeking the Presidency were not noble ones, and that we could and should do a lot better next time.
Just think, after all these misdeeds, and as brilliant men like Michael Milken and Ivan Boesky went to jail, the law couldn’t lay a finger on Trump. Moriarty, move over: we have a new Napoleon of Crime!
The progressive/Never Trump attacks on the President have some of the same problems that similar attacks on Ronald Reagan had, back in the day. The Left would alternate between presenting Reagan as a doddering, old “amiable dunce” and a diabolical mastermind (dramatized in a classic SNL skit).
This was not a problem for liberals because they didn’t care if their arguments were true, or even consistent. Remember how Mitt Romney was attacked as the guy born with a silver spoon in his mouth who couldn’t understand ordinary people — and as the guy who crammed seven people into a station wagon, with his dog in a carrier on the roof. Yep, that’s how the out-of-touch, super-rich go on vacation!
However, that self-styled anti-Trump conservatives don’t have a problem with this is disturbing.
Stop comparing Trump with Reagan. It is disgusting. Yes all Republicans are attacked. Trump has many, many reasons for those attacks that Reagan and Romney did not. He ain’t the man you think he is. Sorry but we would all be better off if Trump could be seen by both sides for what he is and what he isn’t. He’s better than anything the Democrats have come up with. That is so unfortunate but it is where we been placed. Every time he opens his mouth, he proves that your faith in him is silly. We need to go into this with our eyes open. Yes, the media, the culture is working against the country. But please stop endowing Trump with virtues he simply does not possess. Accept that he is what we have to put up with because we are in an untenable position. That’s all there is.
Don’t worry Rufus. We know you don’t like anything.
“The [NY] Times concluded that Donald Trump … had received at least $413 million (adjusted for inflation) from his father’s business empire over his lifetime.”—Wikipedia,“Wealth of Donald Trump“. [Emphasis mine.]
I think you forgot Donald Trump had to share his father’s estate with many siblings.
“an extremely talented demagogue who can tell which way the winds are blowing” — and then marches straight into them! There is a reason why he gets unprecedented vilification from the liberal media. Far more than any other Republican President, he defies liberal orthodoxy, and fights to keep his promises to the people who elected him, the working class, both native-born and legal immigrants.
There were so many times he could have bent to please the “intelligentsia”. Dump Bret Kavanaugh and nominate a woman RINO instead. Let the Democrats have DACA. Give in on the misnamed “Muslim ban”.
Julia, Trump and Reagan can be compared in some ways.
What I’m doing here, though, is compare the ways in which they were attacked by liberals.
I won’t take this under advisement.
Here is some more brutal, clear The Death Of Stalin coverage of Mueller. The beginning is equally good analysis of the Ilhan Omar scandal. What A Country!
@Taras, I suspect you missed the fact that @JuliaBlaschke was making a clouded allusion to Ring Lardner:
Shut up, he explained.