Trump’s first ad shows us how he perceives himself

The Donald Trump campaign released its first-ever television ad yesterday, and its content suggests that Trump considers features what many of us regarded as bugs. He’s doubled down on two of his most risible ideas: a ban on Muslims entering the United States “until we can figure out what’s going on,” and a wall at the Mexican border. When fact-checkers pointed out that footage of immigrants storming a wall during the “wall at our southern border” part of the ad actually showed Moroccans trying to get into Spain, Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowski responded, “No shit it’s not the Mexican border, but that’s what our country is going to look like if we don’t do anything.” So the tradition of decorum continues.

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Trump releases typo-ridden, superficially inaccurate proof of health

The future "healthiest individual ever to be elected to the presidency," per his doctor

The future “healthiest individual ever to be elected to the presidency”

We all love Donald Trump, but what if he dies before he can make America great again? That would be the only way ISIS, China and Mexico could win, unless you count Hillary Clinton. Fortunately, Trump has released an open letter from his physician, Dr. Harold N. Bornstein of the beautiful Lenox Hill Hospital, testifying that health-wise, the candidate is great. “If elected,” Bornstein writes, “Mr. Trump, I can state unequivocally, will be the healthiest individual ever elected to the presidency.”

First of all, Abraham Lincoln wrestled professionally, so let’s be careful what we unequivocally state. Second, there are reasons to doubt the absolute credibility of this letter. For one, Trump attributed it to “the highly respected Dr. Jacob Bornstein of Lenox Hill Hospital,” which the astute reader will note is not Harold Bornstein’s name. The letter also begins, “To Whom My Concern,” suggesting that Trump dictated it himself and the stenographer misheard his rhetorical question, “For whom am I concerned?”

Finally, Dr. Bornstein writes that a recent medical examination of the candidate “showed only positive results.” Positive for strep, positive for Van Patten’s Syndrome—a disease that causes hair loss everywhere but the hair line—positive for cocaine: we don’t know, because the letter mentions no specific tests or their outcomes. As the Times puts it, the letter strikes a tone “oddly similar to how Mr. Trump talks about himself.”

It’s awesome, in other words, and I thank Trump for taking a moment away from running intervals to give it to us. Please don’t die. Please don’t become president, either; run as an independent and usher in the division of the Republican Party that scripture has long foretold. You’re our charismatic, goat-legged leader. We need you to rise up before you keel over.

Friday links! Dream of history edition

Ronald Reagan gets the last word at the brokered GOP convention of 1976.

Ronald Reagan gets the last word at the brokered GOP convention of 1976.

Remember adolescence, when you read 1984, studied the Great Depression and rise of Hitler, and lamented, in your childish way, that history basically stopped after your parents were adolescents? Remember wishing history would happen right now? Here you go, asshole. The middle class is evacuating, an ineffective political class serves the rich at the expense of its own popularity, and a charismatic maniac is rising to power on a platform of militant ethnic nationalism. Today is Friday, and events are starting to eerily resemble those dark days before the Republican National Convention of 1976. Won’t you thank goodness there’s no other parallel with me?

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Fuck it, Trump figures, how many of them can there be?

nbc-fires-donald-trump-after-he-calls-mexicans-rapists-and-drug-runners

Donald J. Trump appeals to the better angels of our nature.

Character in a journalism student’s fantasy Donald Trump made headlines yesterday, because he said the United States should close its borders to Muslims. At press time, he keeps saying it. Finally, someone has the guts to tell it like it is. America has gone without a strong, loud, stupid leader for too long, and it’s also been too long since we made laws about kinds of people. Every time we made a law about a kind of people in this country—Indian removal, Jim Crow, Japanese internment—was a time Trump voters consider better than now. Yes, even Japanese internment. “What I’m doing is no different from FDR,” Trump told Good Morning America, referring to the worst thing FDR ever did. I know we recently said Trump had gone full racist, but now that he’s accused a domestic religious minority of conspiring with foreign enemies to obstruct his plan to make America great again, he has technically gone full Hitler. Unless, of course, he doesn’t really mean it.

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New Quinnipiac poll has Trump ahead of Rubio by ten points

"I will validate your petty resentments or, if you prefer, your despair."

“I will validate your petty resentments or, if you prefer, your despair.”

Oh boy: a new Quinnipiac poll released today has Donald Trump leading the Republican field with support from 27% of respondents nationwide—10 points ahead of Marco Rubio and 11 points ahead of both Ben Carson and Ted Cruz. All other candidates polled at 5% or less. Three out of four Republican front-runers are insane, you guys. These are exciting times to have access to national polls which, we should remember, are poor predictors of actual outcomes this far in advance. Still, in preparation for taking up the mantle of leadership, Trump told Fox & Friends he would kill terrorists’ families:

“I would knock the hell out of ISIS… [and] when you get these terrorists, you have to take out their families. I say ISIS is our number one threat, we have a president who doesn’t know what he is doing and all he’s worried about is climate change, he thinks climate change is something that’s going to go kill us.”

Only an idiot would concern himself with climate change, when world events offer so many better opportunities for violent revenge fantasies.

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