Michael Wolraich's picture

    Death by Counterpunch

    Six months ago, I wrote:

    Trump's biggest mistake during the primary was to feud with people who were not running against him...Clinton can exploit Trump's propensity to retaliate against anyone who crosses him by deploying surrogates to batter him with a fusillade of insults. If Trump were smart, he would ignore them and focus on Clinton, but his reaction to Elizabeth Warren's tweets suggests he cannot resist the urge to counterpunch, even when it doesn't serve his interests. With every over-the-top smackdown, he will distract voters from his message and deflate whatever presidential gravitas he manages to muster.

    Since then, we have seen this scenario play out repeatedly, most remarkably in the case of Trump's feud with the parents of Humayun Khan.

    Now it's happening again, and I believe that this feud with former Ms. Universe Alicia Machado will finally spell the end of his campaign.

    @realDonaldTrump

    Did Crooked Hillary help disgusting (check out sex tape and past) Alicia M become a U.S. citizen so she could use her in the debate?

    5:30 AM - 30 Sep 2016

    Even Donald Trump cannot spin his way out of this disgusting tweet. I know, I know, his demise has been predicted before (though not by me). This is different. It's a Dean-scream of a tweet, one that pithily captures every awful element of Trump's character in fewer than 140 characters.

    It's offensive to women. It's offensive to Hispanics. It's conspiracy-minded. It's hypocritical. It's petty. It's malicious. It's thin-skinned. It's unscripted. It's unhinged. It's false (there is no sex tape). And it's unredeemably unpresidential.

    When you read this tweet, a nauseating image comes to mind: Overweight Donald Trump in his skivvies, unable to sleep, unable to control himself, furious at the woman who bested him, seething at the people who criticize him, taking out all his rage and shame and bigotry on a courageous Latina who dared to call him out.

    No Republican can read this tweet without cringing. No Democrat can read it without recoiling. No undecided voter can read it and conclude that Donald Trump is presidential material.

    This campaign is effectively over. Donald Trump has counterpunched himself to death.

    www.michaelwolraich.com

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    Comments

    Idunno, America loves thin people while fat people should hit the gym, no? Nude beaches only for good looking people... Trump may have found another tell-it-like-it-is cause - no one believes in fat people, especially fat women. They're not healthy, they're disgusting, we shouldn't even be subsidizing their health care bills if they can't take care of themselves or push themselves away from the table... the best ads about welfare mothers were about *fat* welfare mothers.

    Remember the scene in Bruno where a mother of ans aspiring movie starlet would do something like wire her mouth shut for a role? "I guess so. Sure, no problem..."

    Trump channels our inner prick - he's not going away *that* easily.


    I disagree with your characterization, but it's irrelevant in any case. Trump's attempt to fat-shame Machado (who isn't fat) was yesterday's news. It's the vengeful slut-shaming (on top of the fat-shaming) that will sink him.


    Ah, but we keep getting used to Donaldisms. Give it a month and it'll feel like it's always been this way.


    Not this time


    I hope you're right. This is one of his most nauseating offensive tweets yet. But there's been a lot of these moments and they didn't seem to matter before. I'm just not sure anymore that anything is too offensive for the republican tribalists.


    Trump's hardcore supporters won't go away of course, but there are plenty of people see him as the lessor of two evils. That calculus will change.


    I think so, too.  She's not a political figure, remember.  The Khan family aren't political figures either, but they did enter the political space for a spell and so Trump had a little leeway to go on the attack, however ill-advised it might be to rip into somebody you're not even running against.

    This is different.  Machado is his former employee. She told a story about nasty comments he made years ago and now he's making disgusting comments about his former employee. It would have been so easy for anyone to have said, "You know, I'd just bought the Miss Universe pageant, I wanted to make it work, it is a superficial business, I made a superficial comment, I'm sorry I hurt her feelings years ago, that's not how I treat women in the Trump organization..." But, he can't do that and why am I giving him advice, anyway?

    He comes off looking demented and cruel (because he is). He's really damaged himself.


    Yep. And he didn't tweet about a Khan sex tape at 3am. 


    Mike... Good point ...

    Actual screen shot including the dementia add from reuters(.)com

     

    ~OGD~


    Well played, Ducky.


    BUT HE KNOWS MORE THAN THE GENERALS.............AND THE CHINESE FEAR HIS TERRIBLE WRATH......!!!!!!!!!

    CNN had this (comical) military themed headline, with a photo of an angry Trump:

    PRE-DAWN ATTACK


    Obviously, I’d love to think you’re right.  But I doubt it.

    There are plenty of folks who agree that a Miss/Ms/Mrs Anything contest is completely about how a woman looks as she parades about onstage.  Most think the talent competition is a joke and the answers given to pseudo-serious questions have proven to be – think Miss South Carolina.  Contestants are not considered with much respect, so therefore end up pieces of female flesh meant to be beautiful and nothing else.  So … his treatment of her doesn’t stand a chance of rising to the level of his outrageousness toward the Khan family.

    Women can’t stand this sort of thing, but they engage in it all the time.  And there’s no better example than beauty pageant contestants.  Yes, Trump has crossed another similar line as all the others and will receive a tongue-lashing from the media and elsewhere; it won’t matter because she doesn’t.  His campaign knows that.        


    If Donald Trump were a beauty pageant contestant tweet-trashing another beauty pageant contestant, I agree that no one would bat an eyelash.

    But he's not. He's a 70-year-old man running for President, obsessively fat-shaming and slut-shaming and spinning conspiracy theories about a much younger Latina who used to work for him.

    His campaign is probably in turmoil right about now.


    No one thinks of it as "she used to work for him".  She was a beauty contestant among many; he owned the whole shebang and others as well.

    The issues his campaign has raised are not all completely false - which means that she's not "worthy" of an honest review.  Oldest trick in the book, right?  She did drive the car that her boyfriend left in after shooting someone - she did pose for Playboy - she did act in a reality show in a sexual way.  And so on.  Painting her as someone who doesn't deserve compassion for how she was treated is easily done when even she says that she was "no saint girl" and has a past.  

    Many of us look at all of that as completely irrelevant and want to wretch our lunch at how she's being portrayed.  Just not as many as you might think.  

     


    Ah, see... but there's a deeper problem here, one that really does seem to be hurting Trump's rep -- he's running for president and he is losing after an embarrassing performance in a widely viewed debate that he was supposed to have prepped for because that was his big chance but that he lost because he failed to prep. So what is he doing now with five weeks left and two debates to go?

    He's picking on a model on Twitter.

    He's unable to pull it together for five lousy weeks and another 3 hours of television, to make a real go at the White House.  He's arguing with a model on Twitter.  He's not even arguing with her.  He's calling her names.

    Look at it this way, barefooted... imagine I was the Democratic nominee for president and I was polling 40% on my best day and you supported me but also kind of believed I was just not able to get my shit together and then you noticed, at 3 am, that I am posting some BS about Ric Flair on dagblog.  As my supporter, wouldn't you feel betrayed?

    This is all exposing Trump, finally, as unable to pull himself together to even try to win what anyone would consider the achievement of a lifetime, worth much more in prestige than making billions of dollars. And he's tweeting at some model that he used to know.


    Yes Michael yes. But first we were incredulous. Then we were flabbergasted. We just couldn't believe that anyone sane would vote for Trump. But he won the nomination and then he was close in the polls for the general. The joke became a nightmare. Now we're at the point of wondering if there's any depth he can  sink to that's too low for the republicans to support him.

    No matter how low my opinion of the American people gets they always seem to find a way to convince me I over estimated them.


    If you're compassionate and intelligent, you have trouble understanding how a girl could get raped and people will tut-tut about how much she drank and what she wore and the guy is portrayed as a normal kid with hormones and a life ahead of him. You have trouble understanding how police again and again will shoot someone and in the video nonchalantly walk around the dying person - some guilty, some innocent - for a half hour without giving first aid or anything - not one, but 3, 5 , 7 officers. You have trouble understanding why trying to offer coordinated, effective, affordable healthcare would produce such a backlash of hatred. We don't understand how bankers can slaughter the economy and people's savings and mortgages and then ask for bailouts and bonuses and turn it into a conservative us-vs-them movement. But it's there - the deplorables. Maybe a majority or near one. It exists in so many ways. Donald's the first successful candidate who didn't have to dogwhistle it - he's as subtle as a Vegas cabaret show. And in case no one noticed, Vegas is very successful - it's even transitioned to offering "family entertainment" so the kids can go on some rides while dad goes stare at tits and gambles away their college.

    1 out of 6 eligible voters are disabled. We look as much like the Paralympics contestants than the Johnny off-to-war soldier or supermodel we hold as our fat-phobic ideal. I was surprised there were even a few plump girls at Rio standing up on the dais with grey balding pudgy men, and even a few mature women. 

    This was the year we might have talked about women's advancement and equality, and instead we didn't make it past calling contestants Miss Piggy and broaching new lows like "bleeding from wherever" for mainstream candidates. 

    I watched a Youtube of Nixon the other day, and the guy actually had decent comedic game-show timing, came across congenial and educated and could hold an audience walking around, and besides actually did pass environmental laws and discuss race and wound down over 500,000 troops over 3-4 troops. Agnew was the less polished Trump-like Jersey style corrupt pol, the law-and-order sidekick who went to jail for embezzlement - no way he would ever be seen as #1 billing (even though impeachment came close to putting him there)

    Our deplorables don't even deserve Nixon, and he was considered unacceptable by 1972 - language, lying, character. Now there's absolutely nothing that would disqualify Nixon from the modern crowd. Even the hacking attack put many Dems squarely behind the Watergate break-in and rifling Ellsberg's psychiatrist records. It's the new normal, and it ain't pretty.

    PS to add yet another round of email leaks from Clinton associates. Politico jumped in with a poorly edited excerpt from a Hillary speech in February that starts off making Hillary sound bad but then makes her sound reasonable and sympathetic if you read the whole thing. Still, most readers don't notice it's 8 months ago so wonder why she's appearing with Bernie now.


    His campaign should tell him she doesn't matter, except they likely did. Thus the 3am attack, they weren't there to stop him and their admonitions had faded.

    Proving the man is totally unfit and a veritable psycho.


    Well I I am watching Rachel tonite.

    Her issues:

    Why choose fat old men to discuss a female's weight. hahahaha

    Why choose adulterers to discuss 'porn' ? hahahhahah

    Oh and by the by they find some old 'soft' porn movies that Trump appeared in.

    I hate Rudy so damned much anyway. And Newt has been anathema to me for decades. And Trump is obese anyway and now Rush is rushing in on this whilst sitting on his big fat butt.

    But you are right.

    Trump must attack all those who have nothing to do with nothing as long as he feels threatened.

    GOOD FOR ALL OF US.

    Let us hope this rotten human being keeps exposing his weaknesses.

    I still am not sure he will show up for more debates.

    On Tuesday, sing a song of six pence. hahahaha


    I do hope that you are correct, I do hope this has the same effect that the Sandra Fluke incident had on Limbaugh. Limbaugh might still be on the radio, but he certainly is no longer the force he was before calling Sandra Fluke a slut. I just don't see the evidence that you see, that this is the one thing that sinks Trump, he's been shitty to women before this, he has slut shamed women before this, what makes you think this is the one thing that sinks him?

    Why wouldn't his hoax charity end his campaign? I mean he is breaking the law! And yet people seem to think ahh, whatever, he can use his charity as his personal pool of tax-free money to buy himself gifts, so far it seem to have fallen off the radar, and no one cares he is flagrantly breaking the law. Then there is this Cuba thing, and his campaign manager admits he broke the Cuban embargo, you would think that breaking those kinds of laws would effectively end his campaign because it lends credence to the belief that Trump's businesses do not operate within the law and he doesn't care. And yet, here we are, Trump is like Teflon, more so than Reagan.  So it's hard to understand for a regular person how Trump gets away with real true law breaking. I mean let's look at the case of Carter Page, who a Putin apologist who met with the Russian counter-intelligence official charged with disrupting our election! What, this gets no coverage, and these revelations should have had the press questioning Trump and his campaign about Page, yet, crickets. Nothing.  It seems pretty dangerous when one of your foreign policy advisors has seemingly close ties to Russian counter-intelligence. This revelation would be an election ender for anyone else, and it is a serious issue that the Trump campaign should be forced to discuss Carter Page, but we get nothing. 

    So yeah, I want you to be correct about this, I just wonder since nothing else seems to stick to Trump if this sticks to him. I am keeping my fingers crossed that this is the one line that he crossed that hurts his campaign and his ability to be elected. 


    I am in Deltaville, Virginia helping a friend revolver from surgery.  Deltaville is in southern Virginia at a confluence of rivers and is alongside of the Chesapeake Bay.  It is rural, agricultural, nautical, and in places, artisanal.  It is very pretty, all except for the 10 foot high TRUMP/PENCE signs all over the place.  We drove into Matthews County earlier and I saw a HILLARY sign.  My hope was dashed by the bottom of the sign, which read:

    "Belongs in Prison."  

    No doubt that sign was put up on Monday - Thursday so as not to break the injunction to keep the Sabbath Day Holy.

    The other signs that are everywhere, and appear without explanation say:  "Thank You Jesus"

    I seriously

    Just

    Don't

    Get

    It.


    May change an eensy bit on Wed when John Warnwr endorses her. Eensy.


    Looks like the Ms. Universe fiasco pushed Michael Chertoff over to Clinton:

    "This issue came up at the debate about Miss Universe," he said. "Not only did he seem at the debate to lose his temper, but to get up at 3:30 a.m. and reach for your smartphone is to me a hysterical reaction. If you're president, the button you reach for is not the Twitter button; it's the nuclear button."


    Poll: "74 percent heard of Trump’s comments about Machado — and it appears to have hurt Trump's standing with women. Fifty-five percent of women said it gives them a less favorable view of Trump, and 43 percent of voters said the incident makes them less likely to support Trump."

    That said, the tax dodging will certainly overshadow the 3am tweeting now (and rightly so).


    Every blow to his image at this point peels off another segment of voters.  Taken individually each one may not be that YUUUUUUUUUGE, but aggregated....  Ah, that drains his pool of likely voters, drip by dribble by trickle by... well, his pool will not run dry in a great gusher, but each drop pulls others in its wake, does it not?


    I'd say fits and starts--a gush and then a trickle and then another gush. Like rain in October.


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