Your Tuesday Trump Dump

At the San Diego Comic Fest, I got into a brief (thankfully, brief) political discussion with an old friend of mine.  I can remember when, not that long ago, this fellow thought that the tales of Bill Clinton philandering were (a) all unquestionably true and (b) solid proof that the man was unfit to hold public office.  He still thinks that but he's fine with Donald Trump.  The tales of him abusing women, despite his recorded bragging about it, are unproven and surely way exaggerated and should not be mentioned, lest they tar a good Man of God who's going to do great things for this country.

That's one of the things that's so maddening about what's going on.  It's not even a matter of Party over Principle.  It's the realization that with some people, there's no Principle at all apart from "our side winning."  Here are some links…

  • Trump is sure having a hard time sounding convincing when he says Anti-Semitism is a bad thing.  It's like he's thinking, "How can I officially come out against it without losing the support of people who hate Jews?"
  • Our reality-show prez has been promising to bring back jobs for coal miners.  I respect the grand and dedicated tradition of that profession but I think it's a lot like being a Betamax repairman these days. The best thing that could be done for the miners might be some kind of retraining and placement program.  Here's Brad Plumer on what Trump can and cannot do for them…and the "can" does not include bringing back that industry the way they want.
  • Joe Conason on why that Russian Dossier on Trump can't be ignored.  Something in there really smells and it isn't the part about the alleged Moscow hookers.
  • Daniel Larison writes about "American Exceptionalism" and the flawed premise that you must not think America is a very great thing if you're against us getting into a lot of wars.  What's scary is that a lot of people who believe that are the people Trump is playing to.

I do these on the similarly-flawed premise that if I do all my reading and writing about Trump in the morning, I can pay little or no attention to him the rest of the day.  It hasn't worked yet but still, in the immortal words of Elmer Fudd, "I twy and I twy…"