The judge, who happens to be, we believe, Mexican
Like a lot of people, I don’t even know how to express my disgust and fear and shame-as-an-American that Donald Trump could be elected president of the US. How is this possible. How can so many people embrace such a loathsome sexist racist self-aggrandizing know-nothing fascist-leaning bully?
I don’t know the answer to that. I have no illusions about influencing anything, but I’ll probably point out some of his egregious awfulness now while I can. If he is elected we might not be able to.
The Republican Party’s presumptive presidential nominee gave a fiery speech in San Diego and sought to leverage the power of his pulpit to shame one of this city’s federal judges, Gonzalo Curiel, who is hearing a class-action lawsuit against Trump University.
Trump delivered a lengthy monologue about the years-old case involving students who claim they were defrauded by Trump’s real estate “university.” He delved so deeply into details of the case — at one point, he talked about the origin of the name of the law firm representing him — that he seemed to lose the attention of his crowd.
Trump leveled a series of blows against Curiel. He called him “a hater of Donald Trump” and “very hostile” person who had “railroaded” him. He then taunted the judge, who has scheduled a trial for late November, after the election.
“I’ll be seeing you in November, either as president…” Trump said, trailing off. “I think Judge Curiel should be ashamed of himself. I think it’s a disgrace that he’s doing this.” Trump brought up Curiel’s ethnicity: “The judge, who happens to be, we believe, Mexican…I think the Mexicans are going to end up loving Donald Trump.”
It used to be so easy to ignore Donald Trump. I never saw The Apprentice. Trump was just the name of a joke-person. Good times.
Trump has been totally washed up so many times, how does he always keep coming back?
what a total shit he is. I watched a clip of the San Diego police in riot gear breaking a “demonstration” of Trump supporters. . . the Trump team acted and sounded like nazis.
sickening.
iknklast,
“how does he always keep coming back?” The answer is ‘money’.
Any country that is infested with billionaires is not a democracy, it’s a plutocracy. Even the so-called ‘social democratic’ parties are corrupted these days, and it’s a widespread condition in the liberal democracies.
I doubt that Trump’s ascendency is simply an artefact of the US electoral process, other countries have their domestic versions of Donald Trump.
It’s not just money though. People actually like him. Money is necessary but not sufficient.
The fact that people actually like him makes me despair.
Ophelia,
Let’s hope that more people hate him, he’s certainly made many enemies. To this outside observer, Trump’s success seems to be an indication of the poor quality of his opposition, on both sides of US politics.
I usually don’t make any comments about internal US politics, however Trump is an exception, he really is scary.
Well lots of people do hate him, that’s a fact, very much including Republicans. I don’t think he’s very likely to win…but I don’t find that level of conviction reassuring, either. I think he might.
And yeah. Why can’t the Dems field better candidates? Argh.
“field better candidates” Say what? Clinton is the strongest candidate to run for the office since just about FDR. She has a long and consistent record of working for women’s rights, civil rights, social programs, education, the list is long, going all the way back to her time in Arkansas.
Jill Abrahamson who, for 20 years as an executive editor at the NYTimes, tried to find issues with the Clintons (it was her job, not personal), came to the conclusion after all that investigation that “Hillary Clinton is fundamentally honest and trustworthy.”
There has never (really: never) been an example anyone can find where she changed votes or policies based on her contributors.
Against that are nearly 30 years of Republican-initiated accusations and innuendos that never, not once, have panned out. The Left really shouldn’t be helping them, but for some reason has started participating.
People, seriously, enough already. Don’t retail false Republican talking points. She is neither mediocre nor venal nor crazy. She is, in fact, an outstanding candidate with a proven track record of standing up for the weakest in society. And the world, for that matter.
Honestly. Look at the *facts*. Not the Republican talking points that have taken on a life of their own. You’re all smart enough here to be immune to that.
I think, speaking as an outsider, Trump is symptomatic of a rejection of mainstream politics. People – in Europe as well as the US – are fed up with the professional political class and are looking for something different. Rightly or wrongly (usually wrongly) Trump (or Farage or any of the plethora of scary far right politicians and single issue parties that are springing up in Europe) position themselves in opposition to “traditional politics” even while they take part in the process.
Add to that a perception that Times Are Hard and the usual swing to the right that you see under those circumstances and you have a recipe for idiots like Trump and the rest. It’s just that, as usual, the US is doing this Bigger, Louder and More Flamboyantly than the rest of the world.
The whole lurch to the right is deeply disturbing.
I think, speaking as an outsider, Trump is symptomatic of a rejection of mainstream politics. People – in Europe as well as the US –
Why? Why has that happened?
Bigotry? Xenophobia? Or is it something much, much deeper.
When you look at Europe, why is it that all of the former East Block countries are so loathe to listen to Brussels?
Could it be they’ve an advantage over the rest of the EU because they’ve known what it’s like to live under diktats. Perhaps they see Brussels as nothing more than an emerging politburo and the continent’s mainstream press as another Pravada?
They know what authoritarianism looks like and sounds like and so do they view the overbearing numpties in Brussels as somewhat USSResque?
Could be
Whether people hate or like Trump is its own question. WHY THEY DON’T VOTE is the real question.
In essence, every presidential election in the last few decades has been decided by vote suppression. I’m having to listen to morons who swear they can’t tell the difference between Donald and Clinton… The erosion of thought and judgment this represents is pitiful.