Tag Archives: Trump’s base

national news

How does POTUS cling to his political base?

I don’t hang out exclusively with Anti-Trumpers. Really. I don’t.

Many of my friends and family members stand staunchly with the president of the United States. They’re all good folks. They are straitlaced and God-fearing — and I mean that in a good way, not in the prudish, stuck-up version of the words.

I haven’t asked many of them personally a question that continues to nag at me, so I’ll pose it here. Perhaps some of them will respond to me personally. Hey, they might even join the occasional social media frenzy that usually accompanies any discussion involving Donald Trump.

The question? How do these folks justify standing behind a president who embodies almost every possible personal trait that they would find detestable in any other politician?

I do not get it. Not at all.

It simply baffles me that a man who said he has never sought “forgiveness” retains such high standing among those who understand that forgiveness and grace are essential to their Christian faith. It also strains credulity to understand how this politician scarfs up the support of evangelicals even after he admits to grabbing women by their pu***. Think of how they would respond if any other politician would make such a hideous admission.

I am speaking as well not just to my pro-Trump family members and my actual friends, but also to the social media “friends” who are kind enough to read my blog and offer comment on my musings from time to time. I won’t presume to know them as well as I know those with whom I am close, but surely they must harbor some misgivings about how they feel toward this fellow … don’t they?

I have said from the very beginning of his political career — which began with that celebrated/infamous escalator ride in Trump Tower in June 2015 — that Donald Trump is fundamentally unfit to hold the office he now occupies. His unfitness spans the gambit: professionally, politically and personally.

And yet this individual continues to cling to that base of support, to whom he speaks exclusively whenever he pops off on Twitter or speaks to us through the media he continues to call “fake news” and the “enemy of the people.”

It blows my mind! All of it.

national news

Trump wasn’t kidding, apparently, about strength of his support

Many of us rolled our eyes in disbelief when Republican presidential candidate Donald J. Trump said he could “shoot someone on Fifth Avenue” and not lose any votes.

Sure, some Americans applauded. They laughed. They cheered. Others of us were, um, appalled.

Then the candidate got elected. Now the boast doesn’t seem quite so farfetched, given the strength of the president’s firewall in Congress against the amazing array of examples of his utter lack of character, his lack of decency, his disregard for the law, his ignorance of the U.S. Constitution.

Trump’s political base remains wedded to him at some level approaching 40 percent. They give him a pass as he tells Congress to stick where the sun doesn’t shine in search of answers to serious questions about whether the president obstructed justice. They stand and cheer this clown as he hurls juvenile insults at his foes.

They have shrugged as he called the late John McCain a “war hero only because he was captured” by the enemy during the Vietnam War; they laughed as he mocked a New York Times reporter’s physical disability; they didn’t care that he acknowledged groping women; the base didn’t flinch while he denigrated U.S. intelligence analysts’ view that Russians interfered in our 2016 election; they didn’t mind when he attached moral equivalence between Klansmen and Nazis to those who protested against them.

I could go on. You get my drift.

What was seen and heard as a preposterous assertion on the campaign trail no longer can be dismissed. Donald Trump rode that solid base of support to a victory no one saw coming. He is relying on that base now as he campaigns for re-election.

He has endorsed a hideous Twitter message that slanders House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, suggesting she is a drunk.

The base doesn’t care!

One of the many Democrats running for president this time, Pete Buttigieg, recently lamented how Republicans used to care about “character.” They no longer care about that.

They stand foursquare behind a president who lacks character at every level one can imagine.

Utterly amazing.

national security

Trump trashes Biden . . . over this?

Yep. It’s true. Donald Trump probably could “shoot someone on Fifth Avenue and not lose any votes.”

That has to explain how this president, facing the accusations that have been leveled at him by at least a dozen women, could poke fun at a potential 2020 opponent because he’s a bit too touchy-feely.

Trump took dead aim at former Vice President Joe Biden, who’s been accused by four women of getting a bit too close to them. He made them feel “uncomfortable” because he touched them and kissed them on the back of their heads.

Trump? Oh, he’s been accused of sexual molestation, outright sexual assault, sexual harassment — and he’s actually admitted to “grabbing them by their pu***” because he’s a celebrity.

So now he’s poking fun at Joe Biden.

Sheesh! His base loves it. They cheer him on. They think this guy’s the greatest.

Disgusting.

national news

‘Ridiculous bulls***’ is exactly that

Donald Trump speaks to his base. The 38 to 40 percent of Americans who still stand with the president love hearing the way he talks. He “tells it like it,” they contend.

I get that the president’s coarse public language isn’t everyone’s adult beverage. He was at it again this week, referring at a political rally in Grand Rapids, Mich., to the effort to find collusion between his presidential campaign and Russian operatives as “ridiculous bulls***.”

He drew laughs, cheers, applause, shouts of affirmation.

Do you remember what Candidate Trump said in 2016 about his voters’ loyalty? He said he “could shoot someone in the middle of Fifth Avenue” and he “wouldn’t lose any votes.”

Many of us saw that as a hideous metaphor when he blurted it out. These days I’m not so sanguine about that hideous boast. It is beginning to look to me that he actually meant it.

The “ridiculous bulls***” declaration is the kind of thing many of us would say in private. You don’t say it in public, in front of total strangers. But that’s OK in the eyes of those who cheer this guy on.

I mention this because Donald Trump has insisted on occasion that he would be “more presidential.” He hasn’t yet delivered on that pledge. I’m still waiting. And waiting . . . and waiting.

media news

Divide-and-conquer POTUS is at it again

Leave it to the president of the United States to show us once again how little he cares about civility, collegiality and comity in our public discourse.

Yep, Donald Trump applauded a Montana congressman for — get a load of this — body-slamming a reporter in 2017.

Rep. Greg Gianforte, the state’s lone member of the House, is Trump’s kinda guy. That’s what Trump said at a rally in support of his fellow Republican, who this past year body-slammed reporter Ben Jacobs, who had the temerity to ask him a tough question. I mean, the nerve … you know?

Gianforte pleaded guilty to assaulting Jones and performed community service as part of his sentence.

Back to my point … which is that Trump clearly doesn’t give a rat’s rear end about all Americans, no matter what he says. He is talking exclusively to his base of supporters who share his perverted view of the media being “the enemy of the American people.”

Why do you think he got such a holler yesterday in Montana when he declared how Gianforte is his guy? “Any guy that can do a body-slam is my guy,” Trump said. Implied in his low-level praise of Gianforte is that he is especially proud of him for assaulting a reporter.

Trump is seeking to divide the nation and conquer the part of it that agrees with him and his wide range of idiotic notions. The rest of us, those who didn’t vote for him in 2016, those who gave Hillary Clinton that nearly 3 million-ballot cushion in the popular vote?

I believe the president of the United States is telling us to go straight to hell. 

Yep, that’s our president.