Republican Election 2016 - Donald Trump Megathread [OFFICIAL]

[Thepersona]

Ahhh the delicious tears of the bigots who realize they were played.

this is glorious... where's genn when we need him? we need industrial amounts of popcorn now!

[Deletedaccount1]

Best if you're an entertainer... worst if you're a President. It's not his job to "Feel" shit, especially expressing his more intolerant and violent ones... it's his job to get shit done that helps everybody in the country.

I say it's his best quality in one way because of the effect it has on other politicians. Of course things would be better if politicians could speak their mind, I used to think Trump helped with that a lot. Trump of course doesn't speak his mind, he has a script as well but he is more genuine and less rehearsed than most.

[Pangean]

The problem is the voters who voted for Dump.

If the Republicans try to reform, those same mouth-breathing white-trash dolts will come back and continue to shout their rhetoric - and they will get the press, and real republicans will be drowned out in the cacophony of hate.

If the actual Republicans leave and migrate to the Libertarian party to what they want - eventually all the same mouth-brething white-trash idiots will switch sides to them and shout their rhetoric, they will get the news coverage, and will convert the Libertarians into a party of hate.

All the Sarah Palins, the Sean Hannitys, the Rush Limbaughs, and - yes - even the Donald Dumps will continue to call themselves Republicans or call themselves Libertarians or call themselves Teabaggers... whatever the major focus party is for the Conservatives - they will take it over and will just re-trash their party over and over and over again... until eventually enough of the white-trash dies out of old age and somebody new and younger and NOT hate-based comes in and leads the party from behind, and their press coverage outweighs the hate-mongers. That will not happen for several decades, but it will happen.

Well it's all speculation but its going to be more of a function who is doing the purge. I suspect if it's the trad GOP folks you might be right. If it's The Tumpanistas I think it will be quick and deadly and new right/center right party may emerge.

[mvaliz]

this is glorious... where's genn when we need him? we need industrial amounts of popcorn now!

My hope is the Clinton campaign and news outlets catch onto this and publish them... The mongrel white-trash hordes of sheep dressed up in carnival-store alpha-wolf clothes need to understand how hard they've been played at - and that their "alpha" is in fact just playing on their own bigotry and hatred to get what he wants.

[DeadmanWalking]

Because you can't bribe or threaten someone to lie?
You can't call someone gullible and blindly accept a doctors letter as absolute truth the next sentence after.

then doctors letters mean nothing, including trumps. You can't ask us to deny her letter while demanding we accept his. Either they mean something or they do not. On a side note actual doctors question a lot of the comments in Trumps letter, as doctors don't use those terms. He tested positive? That isn't a sign of good health, that term is used to say he tested positive for something unhealthy. Like he tested positive for cancer or AIDS. It also has a lot of braggadocio in it which Trump himself uses in his speech patterns.

There are actual reason me to question his letter and none to question hers.

[Breccia]

Not that I agree with Trump but I don't see how that is supposedly hypocritical.

We'll talk through that. What, specifically, do people talking about "amnesty" mean? Amnesty from what?

I think, they "amnesty" they mean, is forgiveness from the crime of being an illegal immigrant. Do you agree, or disagree?

If you agree, then the two highlit sentences are 100% hypocritical.

If you disagree, you have to find what Trump said "amnesty" means. As in, an actually useful quote on the subject, not a guess. This will be tough, since both before and after the flip-flop, he seems pretty harsh on illegal immigrants who commit other crimes.

[Pangean]

this is glorious... where's genn when we need him? we need industrial amounts of popcorn now!

To be fair to Genn if Trump was a normal candidate he could have all these things planned out but when you are agent of Chaos you fuck up everything for everyone.

[Thepersona]

To be fair to Genn if Trump was a normal candidate he could have all these things planned out but when you are agent of Chaos you fuck up everything for everyone.

lol yeah, but in any case, we need a nice amount of popcorn! i can give away the burritos

[Breccia]

My hope is the Clinton campaign and news outlets catch onto this and publish them

She won't, but she'll instead find Trump's words on both sides and put them back-to-back. Trump's softening stance is a calculated move to grab the middle. Clinton's camp will remind the middle that he has had a dramatically different stance, recently, and his change of stance should be viewed with skepticism at best. Meanwhile, showing his newer stance will remind the far right wing exactly the same damn thing.

Honestly, Clinton's camp should just be chaining exactly what Trump said, in context, and running it as ads. She doesn't need to say a thing.

[Deletedaccount1]

We'll talk through that. What, specifically, do people talking about "amnesty" mean? Amnesty from what?

I think, they "amnesty" they mean, is forgiveness from the crime of being an illegal immigrant. Do you agree, or disagree?

If you agree, then the two highlit sentences are 100% hypocritical.

If you disagree, you have to find what Trump said "amnesty" means. As in, an actually useful quote on the subject, not a guess. This will be tough, since both before and after the flip-flop, he seems pretty harsh on illegal immigrants who commit other crimes.

You didn't read my post (at least I am assuming you didn't because you aren't quoting it).

In the highlighted part, he first says he is against amnesty. The second part says he hears from people how hard it is to deport people who have been in the US for a long time. Those two things are not contradictions.

As someone else pointed out, there is a contradiction in there but is in the non-highlighted part. I didn't read the non-highlighted part because the point of highlighting something is to show you where to read and where not to.

[mvaliz]

Well it's all speculation but its going to be more of a function who is doing the purge. I suspect if it's the trad GOP folks you might be right. If it's The Tumpanistas I think it will be quick and deadly and new right/center right party may emerge.

The Dumpsters will blindly follow their idols... their Sarah Palins, their Ted Cruz's, Their Rand Pauls, their Rush Limbaughs.... and those big-named people will gladly jump ship to whichever one grows into the bigger superpower and claim themselves for it. Remember when Rand and Sarah Palin went Tea Party? Hell, even Donald Dump went Tea Party - where 's the tea party now? Destroyed...

This year the GOP set a goal to be less racist and push towards being more inclusive of minorities and sympathetic to LGBT and womens issues... a few months later they get Donald Dump wiping his ass with every single thing they tried to do. Why? because he barked the loudest and brought the ever-angry white-trash republicans to a frothing-at-the-mouth level of stupidity.

It doesn't matter... as long as the hate-mongers like Dump and Cruz are alive and breathing, they will destroy whichever party they're in. Even if by some miracle there's a split - if the Dumpsters go one route... Ted Cruz will definetly go the opposite, and he's just as much of a Hate-monger and fountain of lies as Donald Dump is... the difference is he knows how to at least say it without sounding like a brain-dead toddler. Both parties will end up being hate-mongers, because that's all the current republican leadership has ever done and said for the past 30 years....

[Pangean]

lol yeah, but in any case, we need a nice amount of popcorn! i can give away the burritos

I prefer Burritos to popcorn anyway. Sorry Genn!

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She won't, but she'll instead find Trump's words on both sides and put them back-to-back. Trump's softening stance is a calculated move to grab the middle. Clinton's camp will remind the middle that he has had a dramatically different stance, recently, and his change of stance should be viewed with skepticism at best. Meanwhile, showing his newer stance will remind the far right wing exactly the same damn thing.

Honestly, Clinton's camp should just be chaining exactly what Trump said, in context, and running it as ads. She doesn't need to say a thing.

Her ads have been so devastating so far specifically becasue she is usually just putting his own words up to compare to later versions of his changed postions or folks responding to them. Ads for this are going to be so easy.

[mvaliz]

Honestly, Clinton's camp should just be chaining exactly what Trump said, in context, and running it as ads. She doesn't need to say a thing.

This is quite possibly the truest thing she could do. you're right. :P

This reminds me perfectly of this Daily Show video showing Donald Dump's cabinet made up entirely of... himself, with all the current versions of himself contradicting himself. :P

The fun begins at :45 seconds.

[Pangean]

The Dumpsters will blindly follow their idols... their Sarah Palins, their Ted Cruz's, Their Rand Pauls, their Rush Limbaughs.... and those big-named people will gladly jump ship to whichever one grows into the bigger superpower and claim themselves for it. Remember when Rand and Sarah Palin went Tea Party? Hell, even Donald Dump went Tea Party - where 's the tea party now? Destroyed...

This year the GOP set a goal to be less racist and push towards being more inclusive of minorities and sympathetic to LGBT and womens issues... a few months later they get Donald Dump wiping his ass with every single thing they tried to do. Why? because he barked the loudest and brought the ever-angry white-trash republicans to a frothing-at-the-mouth level of stupidity.

It doesn't matter... as long as the hate-mongers like Dump and Cruz are alive and breathing, they will destroy whichever party they're in. Even if by some miracle there's a split - if the Dumpsters go one route... Ted Cruz will definetly go the opposite, and he's just as much of a Hate-monger and fountain of lies as Donald Dump is... the difference is he knows how to at least say it without sounding like a brain-dead toddler. Both parties will end up being hate-mongers, because that's all the current republican leadership has ever done and said for the past 30 years....

Some good and valid points there.

[Ayla]

then doctors letters mean nothing, including trumps. You can't ask us to deny her letter while demanding we accept his. Either they mean something or they do not. On a side note actual doctors question a lot of the comments in Trumps letter, as doctors don't use those terms.

There are actual reason me to question his letter and none to question hers.

I think the real question I have here is why people think I think Trumps letter is legitimate or factual. I haven't read either letter because I just don't care enough. I don't trust doctors in general. Some are reluctant to give out certain meds, others give them out freely. They make frequent mistakes and are pretty bad at diagnosing people.

I don't question that Hillary's letter was written by an actual doctor, I just think he was told to write she's healthy enough to serve.

People are saying Trump has dementia and I don't deny that possibility either.

Political public doctors notes: Whoopedy do Basil, what does it all mean?

[Breccia]

You didn't read my post (at least I am assuming you didn't because you aren't quoting it).

No, I missed it, my bad. Still, the highlit part does contain "we cannot allow this" and "it is a very, very hard thing". That's pretty contradictory.

Also, and i can't believe I missed this, I'm calling bullshit on the second. People coming to Trump to say "please, don't deport these illegal immigrants"? Based on his pre-Conway statements, who would do this? Are people also coming to Trump and saying "please, don't allow insane people to have machine guns" or "please, don't go to China with that laughable plan to offer them pennies on the dollar for the money we owe them"? Trump surrounds himself with yes-men, or at the minimum, people afraid to stand up to his opinion, and his speeches are in front of crowds that 100% eat up whatever he says. Nobody with an opinion that so drastically differs from his would be allowed within 100 yards of him.

EDIT: Also,

ABC News
PBS
CBS News
FOX News
and Reuters
all on Trump's change in policy.

[Deletedaccount1]

No, I missed it, my bad. Still, the highlit part does contain "we cannot allow this" and "it is a very, very hard thing". That's pretty contradictory.

He isn't addressing the same things though. First he says the media doesn't report the consequences of amnesty and illegal immigration acceptance and the second part says it is hard to deport people who have established roots in the US. Not that contradictory to me.

At least not enough to call him and everyone who likes him a "Dumpster" and then start laughing at my keyboard feeling good about myself.

Maybe I am just a little too mature and a little too much of a critical thinker for this thread. The Democratic one tends to have better discussions.

[akris15]

So, if Trump looses what is going to happen to the republican party in 2020?

First thing first the establishment is probably going to purge the die hard supporters of Trump because its probably going to be a 357 EV to 181 EV win so they lose the courts, its going to cost the Republicans most of their purple state senators (minus Portman, the Ohio Republicans did an excellent job telling Trump to screw off and circled around Portman to protect his campaign) and probably some safe senators like McCain in the West because of Latino backlash. Latinos are still a 30/70 R to D Demographic but this is going to "Goldwater" Latinos for the next few elections giving Democrats an advantage in the West so it will help them in NV, CO and possibly even AZ in the near future. I would fully expect a house cleaning for 2018 when the senate map is a bit more favorable to the republicans especially considering its an off year to knock off some Midwestern Democrat Senators (like a Sherrod Brown). 2020 is a lifetime off but most likely its going to come down to a Rubio or the most likely person Cruz. Expect the next 4 years of congress to sit on their hands and try to do little as possible. So basically more of the same (why not the strategy still works just not at a Federal level but works at a State/local one).

Either way its a losing battle and unless they purge all notion of this extremism from their ranks. When the house maps are redrawn if the GOP hasn't gotten its act together then its the end of the GOP as we know because the Demographics are clearly not on their side and they wont have the supreme court to fall back too anymore. They have two options either go back to their strong defense/Chamber of Commerce type politics or develop a more libertarian style of Platform because the current extremism isn't good long term strategy based on demographics.

[mvaliz]

Maybe I am just a little too mature and a little too much of a critical thinker for this thread..

You see Pangen? This is the kind of mental dilusion I'm talking about. How do you rationalize with this kind of closed-minded mentality? This is exactly what the current crop of moronic Republicans do... in the name of preseving their self-interest of always being right, they set themselves up on some unreal imaginary plane of existence that sits outside and beyond the scope that Facts, science and reason cannot reach - lets call it "Feelings-land" - and whenever they're confronted with their own hypocrisy and contradictions, they hop onto their unicorn panted with hopes and dreams and lots and lots of rhetoric and set sail above the rainbow into their own little nirvana of mental delusion - sip their beer and say "ahhh... it's good to always be right!".

This is why the party is crashing down around them, because they're "too mature" to see the reality around them.

[Pangean]

You see Pangen? This is the kind of mental dilusion I'm talking about. How do you rationalize with this kind of closed-minded mentality? This is exactly what the current crop of moronic Republicans do... in the name of preseving their self-interest of always being right, they set themselves up on some unreal imaginary plane of existence that sits outside and beyond the scope that Facts, science and reason cannot reach - lets call it "Feelings-land" - and whenever they're confronted with their own hypocrisy and contradictions, they hop onto their unicorn panted with hopes and dreams and lots and lots of rhetoric and set sail above the rainbow into their own little nirvana of mental delusion - sip their beer and say "ahhh... it's good to always be right!".

This is why the party is crashing down around them, because they're "too mature" to see the reality around them.

No there are some that a rational discussion is impossible given the bubble they surround themselves in and you are quite right. In this case the poster has an over-inflated view of himself and is quite frankly not interested in a real discussion. Now quite sure why he isn't in my Ignore list but will rectify that momentarily.

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Comments on the Softening.

Donald Trump Discovers That Appealing to Whites Is Trickier Than He Thought

The wise new heads surrounding Donald Trump have obviously given up on attracting more than a handful of non-white votes—which is probably a smart move, all things considered—and this means they have to reach out to ever more white voters if they hope to win. This is why, for example, Trump has been saying recently that Hillary Clinton is a terrible bigot who doesn't care about black people. This is certainly not going to attract any black votes, but "Democrats are the real bigots" has been a trope on the white right for years. It might well attract a few more white votes.

But this dynamic can play out in odd ways. Trump's signature issue is immigration, and you'd think that the way to appeal to more whites is to stay tough. But no. It turns out that white voters in the exurbs are a little put off by the whole rapists/thugs/wall schtick, and aren't that keen on an army of jackbooted immigration police rounding up Mexicans and hauling them back south. To appeal to these folks, the wise heads are apparently advising Trump to soften hisimmigration stance. So now he says "I have never liked the media term mass deportation," and then delivers this little tactical nuke on Sean Hannity's town hall:

No citizenship. Let me go a step further—they'll pay back-taxes, they have to pay taxes, there's no amnesty, as such, there's no amnesty, but we work with them. Now, everybody agrees we get the bad ones out. But when I go through and I meet thousands and thousands of people on this subject, and I've had very strong people come up to me, really great, great people come up to me, and they've said, "Mr. Trump, I love you, but to take a person who's been here for 15 or 20 years and throw them and their family out, it's so tough, Mr. Trump," I have it all the time. It's a very, very hard thing.

Later on he polled Hannity's audience on what his immigration stance should be. (Seriously.) So Trump has now basically pivoted to the same position as every other Republican: no immigration police; work with the "good" illegal immigrants on a path to legal status; get tough on border security; and this absolutely positively isn't "amnesty" no matter how much it sounds like it. This is pretty much the position that Jeb Bush, Marco Rubio, and Ted Cruz all had, and it's basically the position of the Gang of 8 a few years ago. Until today, Trump attacked this position as craven and weak. Now he's all for it. Gotta win all those exurban soccer moms, after all. The only thing left is for him to casually tell us that "build the wall" was meant kind of metaphorically all along, and most of it will end up being a "virtual wall" of drones and security cameras.

I've been wondering for months why the immigration hardliners were so sure Trump would stick to his guns on this stuff. After all, he's lied about practically everything and shown an eager willingness to change his positions any time he thinks it will benefit him. So what made them think he'd act any differently on immigration?

Beats me. But they're stuck now. They have to defend Trump because he's all they've got. Perhaps the saddest fate is reserved for Ann Coulter, who's launching her new book this week:



Yes, that hit bookstores the very week Trump bailed on immigration. But Coulter is forced to defend Trump anyway, no matter how stupid it makes her look. It couldn't happen to a nicer person.

http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-dru...ier-he-thought