Damn, you know its getting bad when Fox lighting dear leader on fire like this...
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/trump-starting-to-sound-desperate
TRUMP STARING TO SOUND DESPERATE
One of the motorcyclists in South Dakota for the super spreader jamboree in Sturgis got thrashed by a mother bison.
The woman’s injuries were deemed not serious by local authorities, but, as the video shows, she took a beating so bad that it shook her right out of her Levi’s.
The bruised biker’s offense was simple: Getting too close to the bison’s nursing calf.
And the woman was just one of many bikers who were trying to mingle with the wild animal herd. We’ll let you draw your own conclusions about the kind of intellects who would both attend a massive rally with people from every corner of the country during a pandemic and get in the personal space of a nursing mother who weighs a half ton and can be as tall as five feet at the withers.
But before you think yourself too superior, it’s easy to see how the desire to have something so amazing – contact with a baby animal that looks like a “Star Wars” creature but one that is a great American symbol – might cloud anyone’s thinking, at least for a moment.
Which, of course, brings us to the 2020 election.
One of the most effective postures of candidate Donald Trump in 2016 was that he ran like he had nothing to lose – a wealthy man, erstwhile playboy and liver of the good life. As was the case with Ross Perot and other rich-dude candidates, it was appealing to think of a person who didn’t really need the gig.
American voters, like mother bison, tend to react very poorly to too much eagerness when it comes to power.
One of the least appealing parts of the Clinton almost-dynasty was the naked need for power – the say anything, do anything, ends-justify-the-means approach to politics was queasy making.
Both presidents Bush and Barack Obama were certainly eager to obtain and maintain power but worked hard to avoid the appearance. In the case of the first Bush, probably a little too hard. But they all understood the contradictory electoral demands. Voters expect candidates to work tirelessly to earn their support while simultaneously seeming nonchalant about the whole thing.
It’s like asking someone to carry a refrigerator up a flight of stairs while whistling “Sunny Side of the Street.”
Trump seemed genuinely not to understand why Americans recoiled from his barely veiled threat last year against the Ukrainian prime minister in an effort to scrounge up some dirt on the son of Joe Biden. As his defenders during the subsequent impeachment argued, the president can do anything he thinks is in the best interest of the nation, and Trump thinks his holding on to power is what’s needed.
It was revealing. While previous presidents, notably Richard Nixon, Lyndon Johnson and John Kennedy certainly abused their authority in pursuit of maintaining power, we had never seen a president do so openly. But as they say, Trump says the quiet part out loud.
We’re back in that same tall grass again this week as Trump toys publicly with a threat to sabotage mail-in voting unless House Democrats agree to his demands on a coronavirus stimulus. As Trump said today, unless Nancy Pelosi agrees to cut out spending that would benefit big cities, he will refuse any measure to provide the Postal Service the money it needs for the election.
As with his Ukrainian power play, Trump seems not to understand how this position might look to voters coming from the president who directs through his appointees the Postal Service: Give him what he wants, or he will precipitate election disaster that he believes would be in his benefit.
Even if it is an empty negotiating tactic, as his Ukrainian threat turned out to be, it is not a good look for someone in power.
That goes also for his efforts to squeeze damaging findings about Biden out of the Justice Department in time for the election. On Thursday, Trump warned Attorney General Bill Barr to hurry up with an investigation of misconduct in the probe of the Trump campaign for ties to the Kremlin. Trump said he knew Biden was guilty and was growing impatient for results.
Today, the Justice Department probe got its first scalp in its probe, a staff lawyer at the FBI who pleaded guilty to doctoring an email from the CIA in order to make it easier to maintain a wiretap on a member of Trump’s campaign.
We have no reason to believe that U.S. Attorney John Durham was capitulating to Trump’s pressure. These kinds of pleas are often weeks or months in the making. But Trump’s fulminations badly detract from the image of a politically impartial Justice Department Durham is tasked with pursuing. Instead, it might look to an uninformed observer like Trump demanded action and they hauled this guy into court.
When Trump says Attorney General Bill Barr had better come across on the Biden business or be cast aside as “just another guy” it leaves Barr to tell reporters that he and his team will “use our prudent judgment to decide what’s appropriate before the election and what should wait until after the election.”
After all of Trump’s pressuring and wheedling of the Justice Department, just imagine how “prudent” it would appear for the federal prosecutors to do anything to criminally implicate the opposition candidate. It would be steroidal Comeyism.
Or how about Ron Johnson, the Wisconsin Republican who is chairman of the Senate Homeland Security Committee? He’s been on a media blitz this week trying to reassure Trump supporters that he is doing everything he can to use his position to get the hits in on Biden in time to sway the election.
“The more that we expose of the corruption of the transition process between Obama and Trump, the more we expose of the corruption within those agencies,” Johnson said on a talk radio show. “I would think it would certainly help Donald Trump win reelection and certainly be pretty good, I would say, evidence about not voting for Vice President Biden.”
Talk about getting too close to the bison, senator! That one makes Kevin McCarthy’s Benghazi boner look like smooth statesmanship.
The president’s supporters may be glad that he is doing what he accused his predecessor of: Trying to use government authority to try to maintain power. He and they may believe that such conduct would be justifiable and even morally right given their view that the Obama administration did it first.
But what they cannot say is that it is politically wise to be seen doing so.
Voters do not like desperation for power. What they like even less is desperation to maintain it. As Trump fumes and rages and threatens he does not much seem like a man with the light touch on the reins that voters prefer.
Biden, who has devoted himself for decades to the goal of acquiring the ultimate political power in our system, manages to seem almost apologetic about it. His posture of reluctant aspirant may not gibe with his real record, but he knows it is one that voters want to see. Biden may be carrying it too far for the sake of avoiding typically terrible live interactions with reporters, but he certainly seems convincing as a reluctant candidate.
The more desperate Trump seems to maintain power, the more likely he is to end up with a bison horn where he won’t like it.
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/trump-starting-to-sound-desperate
TRUMP STARING TO SOUND DESPERATE
One of the motorcyclists in South Dakota for the super spreader jamboree in Sturgis got thrashed by a mother bison.
The woman’s injuries were deemed not serious by local authorities, but, as the video shows, she took a beating so bad that it shook her right out of her Levi’s.
The bruised biker’s offense was simple: Getting too close to the bison’s nursing calf.
And the woman was just one of many bikers who were trying to mingle with the wild animal herd. We’ll let you draw your own conclusions about the kind of intellects who would both attend a massive rally with people from every corner of the country during a pandemic and get in the personal space of a nursing mother who weighs a half ton and can be as tall as five feet at the withers.
But before you think yourself too superior, it’s easy to see how the desire to have something so amazing – contact with a baby animal that looks like a “Star Wars” creature but one that is a great American symbol – might cloud anyone’s thinking, at least for a moment.
Which, of course, brings us to the 2020 election.
One of the most effective postures of candidate Donald Trump in 2016 was that he ran like he had nothing to lose – a wealthy man, erstwhile playboy and liver of the good life. As was the case with Ross Perot and other rich-dude candidates, it was appealing to think of a person who didn’t really need the gig.
American voters, like mother bison, tend to react very poorly to too much eagerness when it comes to power.
One of the least appealing parts of the Clinton almost-dynasty was the naked need for power – the say anything, do anything, ends-justify-the-means approach to politics was queasy making.
Both presidents Bush and Barack Obama were certainly eager to obtain and maintain power but worked hard to avoid the appearance. In the case of the first Bush, probably a little too hard. But they all understood the contradictory electoral demands. Voters expect candidates to work tirelessly to earn their support while simultaneously seeming nonchalant about the whole thing.
It’s like asking someone to carry a refrigerator up a flight of stairs while whistling “Sunny Side of the Street.”
Trump seemed genuinely not to understand why Americans recoiled from his barely veiled threat last year against the Ukrainian prime minister in an effort to scrounge up some dirt on the son of Joe Biden. As his defenders during the subsequent impeachment argued, the president can do anything he thinks is in the best interest of the nation, and Trump thinks his holding on to power is what’s needed.
It was revealing. While previous presidents, notably Richard Nixon, Lyndon Johnson and John Kennedy certainly abused their authority in pursuit of maintaining power, we had never seen a president do so openly. But as they say, Trump says the quiet part out loud.
We’re back in that same tall grass again this week as Trump toys publicly with a threat to sabotage mail-in voting unless House Democrats agree to his demands on a coronavirus stimulus. As Trump said today, unless Nancy Pelosi agrees to cut out spending that would benefit big cities, he will refuse any measure to provide the Postal Service the money it needs for the election.
As with his Ukrainian power play, Trump seems not to understand how this position might look to voters coming from the president who directs through his appointees the Postal Service: Give him what he wants, or he will precipitate election disaster that he believes would be in his benefit.
Even if it is an empty negotiating tactic, as his Ukrainian threat turned out to be, it is not a good look for someone in power.
That goes also for his efforts to squeeze damaging findings about Biden out of the Justice Department in time for the election. On Thursday, Trump warned Attorney General Bill Barr to hurry up with an investigation of misconduct in the probe of the Trump campaign for ties to the Kremlin. Trump said he knew Biden was guilty and was growing impatient for results.
Today, the Justice Department probe got its first scalp in its probe, a staff lawyer at the FBI who pleaded guilty to doctoring an email from the CIA in order to make it easier to maintain a wiretap on a member of Trump’s campaign.
We have no reason to believe that U.S. Attorney John Durham was capitulating to Trump’s pressure. These kinds of pleas are often weeks or months in the making. But Trump’s fulminations badly detract from the image of a politically impartial Justice Department Durham is tasked with pursuing. Instead, it might look to an uninformed observer like Trump demanded action and they hauled this guy into court.
When Trump says Attorney General Bill Barr had better come across on the Biden business or be cast aside as “just another guy” it leaves Barr to tell reporters that he and his team will “use our prudent judgment to decide what’s appropriate before the election and what should wait until after the election.”
After all of Trump’s pressuring and wheedling of the Justice Department, just imagine how “prudent” it would appear for the federal prosecutors to do anything to criminally implicate the opposition candidate. It would be steroidal Comeyism.
Or how about Ron Johnson, the Wisconsin Republican who is chairman of the Senate Homeland Security Committee? He’s been on a media blitz this week trying to reassure Trump supporters that he is doing everything he can to use his position to get the hits in on Biden in time to sway the election.
“The more that we expose of the corruption of the transition process between Obama and Trump, the more we expose of the corruption within those agencies,” Johnson said on a talk radio show. “I would think it would certainly help Donald Trump win reelection and certainly be pretty good, I would say, evidence about not voting for Vice President Biden.”
Talk about getting too close to the bison, senator! That one makes Kevin McCarthy’s Benghazi boner look like smooth statesmanship.
The president’s supporters may be glad that he is doing what he accused his predecessor of: Trying to use government authority to try to maintain power. He and they may believe that such conduct would be justifiable and even morally right given their view that the Obama administration did it first.
But what they cannot say is that it is politically wise to be seen doing so.
Voters do not like desperation for power. What they like even less is desperation to maintain it. As Trump fumes and rages and threatens he does not much seem like a man with the light touch on the reins that voters prefer.
Biden, who has devoted himself for decades to the goal of acquiring the ultimate political power in our system, manages to seem almost apologetic about it. His posture of reluctant aspirant may not gibe with his real record, but he knows it is one that voters want to see. Biden may be carrying it too far for the sake of avoiding typically terrible live interactions with reporters, but he certainly seems convincing as a reluctant candidate.
The more desperate Trump seems to maintain power, the more likely he is to end up with a bison horn where he won’t like it.
