Without even getting into the antic, hateful content of his demented speech, why is he even having this rally? He has accomplished nothing but chaos, and alternates between golfing and having ever-shrinking crowds cheer him.
Today is the first day of classes. I’m thinking I shouldn’t bother presenting a coherent lecture on the basic chemistry of organic molecules, but should just go around the classroom and demand the students tell me how much they love me. And then I’ll go play video games for the rest of the day.
Narcissistic supply.
All Trump can do is campaign. As lobg as 90 percent of Republicans support him, there is no way to remove him, unless the case Mueller builds is so bad that GOP senators can’t affotd to acquit him.
He simply propaganda machine required to continually spout his lies and disparage the media who report his words as liars themselves, attempting to sway the unthinking masses that only truth could be said so many times so he must be the person to be followed blindly
These aren’t campaign rallies. Authoritarian leaders conduct other kinds of rallies.
In case anyone has forgotten, this is more or less what a candidate sounds like in a presidential campaign. It’s hard to compare that to any tweet or to anything Trump has ever said or done in any context, but that’s how things used to be. Somehow at the time it was a pretty close call for some people.
To be fair, if you told the rest of us outside America that campaigning for your elections normally began three and a half years in advance then we’d believe you. We already think that the year and a half it actually takes up is flatly ridiculous.
Former British ambassador to the US: “Shades of 1933 Germany…”
Simple answer: He needs his ego constantly stroked.
.
I hope that the “rallies” have less and less supporters and more protesters each time 45 goes out until eventually, there are only a handful on his side.
.
It is a fleeting hope though. Here is a comment from a news story titled “Trump revisits his Charlottesville comments in angry speech” on WRAL.com (Raleigh, NC) this morning:
http://www.wral.com/share/page/1896337/?id=16898988
Ignorant people like this will never see the problem.
This is the interview with James Clapper that Westmacott was responding to in #6 above.
He loves campaigning, those rallies are the time of his life. I’m sure he wishes that Election Day had never come and he could be on the campaign trail forever.
In a sane universe, I’d opine he would have an increasingly difficult time running for reelection, due to him re-promising over and over again the things that he’s proving on a daily basis that he CANNOT deliver, under any circumstances.
But, we live in this universe. And some day, our Spock will decide to sport a goatee.
Morning Joe on MSNBC had an interesting segment, since taken down so no link, about the Trump base. Basically, it seems that the base is fanatically loyal because Trump airs the grievances of the base, which they are more interested in somebody voicing said grievances than actually implementing any policy. They will stick as long as those grievances see the light of day from Trump’s rhetorical farts.
@11 “the base is fanatically loyal because Trump airs the grievances of the base, which they are more interested in somebody voicing said grievances than actually implementing any policy.”
Some people just LIVE to complain about things. We all probably know some of them, they are the ones with the “…and the portions are so small!” complaints.
Sometimes I think it’s best to ignore them, sometimes I think it’s best to give them something to really complain about
@12 Snark, child of Loki
Unfortunately there is no contemporary GOP plank that will just harm Trump voters. Gutting what little healthcare your country provides is going to just kill disabled folks in droves. As much as I want Trump’s base to eat their ridiculous words, there will be too many caught in the crossfire for me to derive any satisfaction from it.
Did a little digging, and found that the producers of Morning Joe combined videos. The grievance part starts about 7:20 in.
Be grateful he’s incompetent at leadership, otherwise more of his horrible policies might be becoming law.
What else can he do? I mean that seriously, and not “what can ‘a president’ do?”, but what else is Donald Trump capable of doing?
What, no angry incoherent rants posted very early in the morning whilst stroking the
nuclearzebrafish launch codes?The worst part is he’ll win in 2020 too if he decides to run.
# 5 cartomancer
#7 johnson catman
I was under the impression that US campaigning started roughly 15 minutes after the previous election results came in. Three and half years seems reasonable in US terms.
We had a 70(?) day election campaign here for our last federal election and it was pure hell.
While the rally functions as campaigning, I don’t think that is Trump’s main purpose. I am more in agreement with JCatman. Trump needs constant praise and reassurance to bolster his deep sense of inferiority.
Saad @16
“The worst part is he’ll win in 2020 too if he decides to run.”
He’s already decided and has filed the paperwork. That’s why these can be run as campaign rallies.
he is a pitchman and a promoter he always hands off his “deals” to someone else to close. It is his closest like his family or some other trusted people who actually do the work, sometimes it is some other hustlers who are just paying him to be the front-man and promoter. The rallies are just him doing the pitch. It is the appearance of success that is important. He is not really going to do stuff somebody else is and if he or we can manage to get rid of his most troublesome advisers and staff we might get by OK until he is gone.
that is the most positive way I can look at it it is just to revolting to think he might actually do any of that crap he harps about all the f’n time.
uncle frogy
Today is the first day of classes.
Bloody hell, it’s still August! Don’t faculty at UMM get any time off?
I just googled the local university’s academic calendar for 2107–2018. The Fall term begins on September 1; Fall classes begin on September 11. Winter Term classes end on April 6 and Winter Term ends on April 30, that is, the end of formal scheduled exams.
I think I begin to understand why some US academics at Canadian universities are not always eager to return to US academia.
The answer to your question is obvious: he is a feckless “president” who hasn’t the first clue on how to govern a country and is completely in over his head.
That said, he does have talent at whipping up the masses with platitudinous and hateful rhetoric. He feels like a rock star in front of his base so will always return to his comfort zone.
Recall that he registered as a presidential candidate for the next election the very day that he was sworn in.
Bah, didn’t mean to hit post yet:
EVERY rally he has held has been a campaign rally.
Hitler wasn’t holding re-election rallies either, but that never made him cancel a rally.
In addition to just fulminating and fomenting his “base” (instincts), I think he wanted to put pressure on Sen. Flake and Sen. McCain. Flake has been openly critical of Dumpster, and McCain broke ranks on the healthcare bill. Flake is up for reelection in 2018, so he’s not starting too early. McCain is getting pressure from his opponent last year, Kelli Ward, to retire given his health. Ward is a Trump supporter and might expect to get a seat. If not McCain’s seat, then she could go after Flake.
jkrideau@19 the official campaign may only have been 70 days, but we’ve been seeing an increasingly amount of continuous campaigning in Canadian politics in recent years. I made a blog post in June of 2012 about an anti-NDP attack ad by the Conservatives, which was three years before the 2015 campaign. Here in Saskatchewan the Saskatchewan Party won a majority in April of 2016, but I recently heard a Sask Party ad attacking the NDP>
I wish the few remaining sane rethugs would get their act together and push the loonies out of their party.
@#10, davidnangle
We already had this with W, back in 2004. Whether you want to ascribe it to Americans loving failure, or to the Democrats constantly running status quo “I promise to be just like the Republicans but smarter” candidates who don’t bring anything to the table which would actively attract voters, or to apathy, or to the apparent (but ultimately false) disconnect between the quotidian life of the average person and the issues of policy which are usually discussed, Americans won’t get rid of a dangerous failure.
Then again, we should have know that from Congress years ago.
@#19, jrkrideau
This has a bit of a different character, though.
First off, although the campaigning starts immediately after the election — and, oh boy, the fundraising never actually stops these days, I got a faux “survey” from the DNC right after the election, incidentally trying to make me say I was more concerned about Russia than anything else but mainly hoping I would give them some money for selecting a candidate I absolutely could not stand, running a campaign which mostly ignored or ridiculed my values, and then losing anyway — the “campaigning” after the election is usually not explicitly campaigning. It’s people trying to jockey for good press, or putting down the opposition. It’s generally pretty transparent, but not outright.
More importantly, though, usually candidates aren’t campaigning for a job they already hold. The advantages of incumbency, combined with the fact that a sitting office-holder gets their name in the press of their constituency fairly easily, means that they don’t need to campaign for reelection until the more explicit campaign season begins.
Trump, on the other hand, is explicitly running for the Presidency, which he already holds. Having rallies is weird.
This is basically off topic but I’m reading NK Jemisin’s “The Stone Sky” and I thought this line was good and generally topical:
“Conquerors live in dread of the day when they are shown to be, not superior, but simply lucky.”
Name one.