Unpacking that Skittles analogy

By Dan Brooks in 2016 Election, Close Reading 2 Comments
Donald Trump, Jr. upholds the family brand.

Donald Trump, Jr. attends a costume party as his dad.

Is there any more odious concept than Donald Trump, Jr.? His father already embodies the danger of inherited wealth: a 70 year-old brat whose claim to the presidency is that he’s been rich his whole life. Must we push the joke by giving him a child of his own? And must that child look like an extra in American Psycho? The less said about Trump, Jr. the better, lest we repeat the mistake we made with his dad. Unfortunately, he deployed a robust analogy yesterday, when he posted this image on Twitter:

cswrrhow8aeo4xy

It really makes you think. It also makes you dumb, by directing how you think away from basic facts about how refugees work. Letting them into the country is like eating Skittles, but their number is not like a bowl, a terrorist is not like a Skittle that kills you, and malnourished kids with big eyes and scared parents are not like candy. Otherwise, it’s a great analogy.

Continue reading

Steve Bannon named runner-up for Campaign Manager of the Year

By Dan Brooks in 2016 Election 0 Comment
Trump campaign CEO Stephen Bannon

Trump campaign CEO Stephen Bannon

Congratulations to Stephen Bannon, who has clinched the runner-up position in this year’s Combat! blog award for Best Campaign Manager by registering to vote at a house where he never lived. The Guardian found him registered at a Miami home he once rented for his ex-wife, now vacant and scheduled for demolition. Bannon is a former editor at Breitbart news, which has made a pet issue of voter fraud in recent years, so I know what you’re thinking: Is this his only ex-wife? Nah—the newly minted CEO of Donald Trump For President also divorced Mary Louise Piccard, whom he impregnated in 1994 and then married just as soon as amniocentesis could prove the fetus was healthy. Per the New York Post:

Bannon had allegedly also earlier told Picccard, who was then his girlfriend and the expectant mother of their twin girls, that he would only agree to marry her if the kids were “normal.” He married her on April 14, 1995, three days before the twins were born.

“Bannon made it clear that he would not marry me just because I was pregnant. I was scheduled for an amniocentesis and was told by the respondent that if the babies were normal we would get married,” Piccard claimed in a document. “After the test showed that the babies were normal the respondent sent over a prenuptial agreement for me to review.”

That’s amore! In Bannon’s defense, though, it is much easier to abandon the mother of your disabled children if you aren’t married. It’s too bad these two didn’t work out, but at least she’ll always have her memory of the moment when he got down on one knee and sent over that prenuptial agreement. And Bannon will always have his Combat! Blog Campaign Manager of the Year: Second Place 2016 trophy. Congratulations to this year’s first-place winner, Robby Mook, who continues to win by not fucking up.

Over half Clinton’s non-government meetings were with foundation donors

By Dan Brooks in 2016 Election 1 Comment
Hillary Clinton hears the beat to "Dirt Off Your Shoulder" for the first time.

Hillary Clinton hears the beat to “Dirt Off Your Shoulder” for the first time.

More than half the people outside of government whom Hillary Clinton met in her capacity as Secretary of State were donors to the Clinton foundation, the Associated Press reported yesterday. Beware autoplay video with sound at the other end of this link. According to the AP’s review of State Department calendars:

At least 85 of 154 people from private interests who met or had phone conversations scheduled with Clinton while she led the State Department donated to her family charity or pledged commitments to its international programs.

Does that mean Secretary Clinton sold access to State in exchange for donations to her foundation? No. But if she had, she only would have needed to update about 45 percent of her calendar. Since this is an election year, we don’t have to worry about whether what she did was ethical. We only need to know what it means for the horse race.

Continue reading

Trump suggests people shoot his opponent or vote against her—hard to tell

By Dan Brooks in 2016 Election 2 Comments

GOP 2016 Debate

Yesterday, after telling a crowd of his supporters in Wilmington, North Carolina that Hillary Clinton wanted to “abolish” the Second Amendment, Donald Trump warned that gun owners would face disaster if she won the presidency and got to appoint justices to the Supreme Court. Then he seemed to allude to the possibility of assassinating her. Here’s video:

If you can’t watch it because your work doesn’t allow videos that threaten candidates for president or the Secret Service is monitoring you or something, Trump said, “If she gets to pick her judges, nothing you can do, folks. Although the Second Amendment people—maybe there is. I don’t know.”

That’s by no means an explicit call for violence against his opponent. It does, however, allude to something “Second Amendment people” can do after the general election, when democratic avenues to prevent President Hillary Clinton from appointing judges have failed. These “Second Amendment people” are presumably gun owners, but that, too, is ambiguous. Maybe these unspecified people could do some unspecified thing to prevent a duly elected president from appointing judges to the Supreme Court—Trump doesn’t know. He’s just running for president, saying these things.

Continue reading

Clinton seeks endorsements from Kissinger, Rice, Vader, Shkreli, gingivitis

By Dan Brooks in 2016 Election 1 Comment
Ain't I a dickens?

Ain’t I a dickens?

According to an anonymous source close to her campaign, Hillary Clinton has sought endorsements from prominent Republicans Henry Kissinger, George Schultz, Condoleezza Rice and James Baker. All four have yet to endorse Trump, and at least half of them are famous for leading the United States into disastrous and unpopular foreign wars. That’s what Politico reports—the first part, anyway, although it also warns readers that none of what it just said may be true:

A person close to Clinton said her team has sent out feelers to the GOP elders, although it wasn’t clear if those efforts were preliminary or more formal requests for endorsement, or if they were undertaken through intermediaries. Clinton campaign aides did not respond when asked if they had solicited endorsements or tried to persuade the elders to speak out against Trump.

If Clinton is indeed seeking the Kissinger endorsement, it’s troubling. Although the architect of Richard Nixon’s Vietnam War policy is somehow in the pantheon of foreign policy experts and not the Hague, his name is still synonymous with evil among the Baby Boomers who form the core of her constituency. Meanwhile, Rice and, to a lesser extent, Schultz and Baker can only remind voters of her support for the invasion of Iraq. Seeking their endorsements suggests that Clinton is both tone deaf and tacking even further to the right.

I would object to her doing that on economic issues, but at least it might be politically sensible. Why hitch your wagon to Republicans on the issue of foreign wars? The last 15 years of unsuccessful military intervention in the Middle East is a stain on the Republican brand, and it makes no sense for Hillary to try to co-opt it. Ordinary voters are tired of war. Left-leaning voters, meanwhile, will be chagrined to learn that they have two choices: a center-right party and a far-right party. There appears to be no candidate for president who opposes further adventure in the Middle East. Now shut up and vote for the one who isn’t also openly racist.