Clickbait headers don’t work when they’re about Donald Trump, for he’s basically a walking tabloid headline.
Unlike the rest of the world, Republican candidates have been cagey about denouncing Trump’s reprehensible call to ban Mulim immigrants from the U.S. I hope that those candidates realize how bigoted such a call is, but they also know that a lot of Republicans secretly agree with Trump, so they’re loath to denounce him strongly.
And with the Iowa primaries coming up in seven weeks, Trump has taken the gloves off. (Well, he did that when he threw his hat in the ring, but now he’s donning the brass knuckles). Here’s what Trump said about Cruz at his rally in Iowa on Friday:
“I do like Ted Cruz, but not a lot of evangelicals come out of Cuba,” he told the crowd at a town hall event at the Iowa State Fairgrounds in Des Moines. Not a lot come out.”
The short video:
Now he’s not referring to any refusal by Cuba to let religious people emigrate. Instead, he’s criticizing Cruz for not being an evangelical Christian. That’s the sort of malarkey that plays to the Republican mindset. But seriously, Trump isn’t an evangelical himself, though he claims he is—when’s the last time he praised Jesus?—and Cruz more or less is:
The father of the Texas senator [Cruz], who has appealed to the born-again believers in the Hawkeye State, escaped from Cuba as a young adult. Both of Cruz’s parents come from traditionally Catholic backgrounds, but Cruz grew up Southern Baptist.
And Cruz’s political action committee, “Keep the Promise”, responded promptly:
“We knew when Trump criticized Cruz it would not be substantive, but we hoped it would be coherent,” the super PAC told CNN.
Seriously, they hoped it would be coherent? No way: they wanted it to be incoherent. There’s more than enough hypocrisy to go around in the GOP.
I predicted earlier that Rubio would finally get the nod when the dust settles, but now I think it’ll be Cruz. Well, that’s simply a wild guess, as there’s lots more fun ahead. As they say in the Catskills, the clown car will be here for eleven months, folks.
Those tabloid writers are pretty deliberate and professional in their way. Trump is more like a walking comments section on a completely unmoderated site, I’m afraid.
Thinking of Trump as the personification of the YouTube comments section almost explains him.
I like that. A walking internet troll with suspiciously unnatural looking hair.
I always like how virtually every picture of him is taken mid-shout, with a nasty expression on his face.
It’s giving me an uncomfortable feeling because that single comment has transformed Trump from attention seeking blowhard into a disturbing not-cute version of those 2-chan OS mascots. Trump-tan, the YouTube comment section personification D:
One wonders if he takes time to breathe. Or does he use some variant of the Mongolian Throat Singing trick where they can continue a note by some sort of pharyngeal contortion while inhaling.
Of course, if he is using some obscure Central Asian trick, then that is really going to sink badly with his core electorate.
I still honestly believe Trump is only in the race because he has already achieved everything else and he’s probably bored.
Rachel Maddow made a similar point and said he’s pushing the boundaries until he gets his ultimate goal – dumped by the party as being to right wing. He really does not want the Oval Office. He just wants to enjoy his celebrity.
I’d call that pretty close to performance art.
I think he’s just entertaining himself. From the first wacky idea–“why don’t I run for President?” to “why don’t I say something outrageous?” to “hmm, why don’t I say something more outrageous?”…”even more outrageous?”…”even more outrageous than that?…”Damn, I can get away with anything!”
I suspect he is astounded at how far his followers will follow.
I don’t think I would call it performance art; it’s closer to a reality show, which I find maddening.
Would it be possible for him to win the election and then refuse to be … what is it – ratified, sworn in ? … the big hoo-hah in January?
I would not predict who among the clowns will eventually get the nomination. It really does not matter because that’s as far as it goes. The fun for the media may be that it is still undecided when they get to the usually boring convention. That would be fun for all.
But Trump is giving us an example of the worst of the bad in this country. Kind of a modern day Hitler who specialized in fear. Close up the boarders and ban religions – what a great American this Trump. The ignorance that follows him is at the bottom of the septic tank.
For some time I have realized that Cruz is the most dangerous of the Republican candidates, more so than even Trump, Carson, and Rubio. He is smarter and slicker than the others, knows the political system as a sitting senator from Texas, and his views are as right wing or greater than the others. He is despised by most of his fellow Republican senators because he likes to project himself as an outsider and will not hesitate to attack other Republicans. He likes to portray himself as the candidate of the evangelical conservatives. This strategy seems to be working in Iowa. If he should win the Republican nomination and be subsequently elected president, I feel this nation will become ever closer to a fascist theocracy. I get chills at the thought of a President Cruz. Of course, the election of any other Republican is terrifying as well.
Luckily, there’s only so much a President can do unless the Congress think’s like him too. … And the SCOTUS. … OMG
I have thought the same way for sometime; Cruz is the most dangerous candidate. He is deviously smart. I am afraid that Trump’s supporters seem likely to jump over into the Cruz camp more so than any other candidate. I think the GOP mainstream leadership are also starting to understand this and willing to back Cruz in a brokered convention. They will probably eventually regret that if Cruz actually wins the presidency. Watch out for Cruz; I foresee a modern day Joe McCarthy on the rise.
Me too – Cruz is definitely the scariest candidate, and a stronger possibility to win the nomination than Trump.
To be fair to the GOP, all major candidates, plus Paul Ryan (leader of the House) and Reince Preibus (RNC chairman) have denounced Trump’s ban Muslims comment. The only one who hasn’t is Ted Cruz, and imo that’s because he want’s Trump’s voters when Trump gets sick of playing at being a politician.
I wrote a bit about Trump yesterday: http://www.heatherhastie.com/tau-ke-tenei-wiki-13-december-2015-gop-disavows-trump/
“ot of Republicans secretly agree with Trump”
Krugman points out that the only difference between Trump and mainstream Republican candidates is that the latter only use dog whistles to say what Trump says explicitly. They’re after the same racist voters.
Of course, once they get elected, they no longer serve those voters but rather the plutocrats that financed them.
Just last night we had a couple of my sons friends over for a sleep-over. These middle school youngsters got to talking amongst themselves about Trump, and they were clearly rather concerned about it. ALL of them (including my son, sadly), consider themselves Republicans right now, but it was clear that they considered Trumps’ principles of exclusion were a thing to be against.
One brought up the term ‘fascist’, and then they set about Googling that word on their smart phones to see if that is what he was. They could not reach a consensus on the matter, and anyway I thought the whole exchange was rather interesting. They then turned their attention to building a fort in the living room.
I love that, Mark. They are exploring subjects of importance on their own, growing in the ability to think for themselves along the way, and doing so in a group environment without, I hope, much in the way of peer pressure on exactly what to think. Those are the impressions I got from reading your comment, anyway.
I agree, so I chose to let them work it out on their own. But there is peer pressure, I am sure. For example, at this age what friends think is of utmost importance and so it is no surprise that they have matched party affiliation at this point.
True. I was thinking along the lines of near bullying, where one of the group states what they all must abide. Peer pressure, of course, must be present in these situations, it’s the nature of things, but hopefully it’s not to a denigrating level. Regardless, you were witness to something quite encouraging.
And to think that when I was a kid, affiliation was based on whether you liked metal or New Age music. No wonder my teachers were always so exasperated with us.
A far better criteria, IMO.
(Better music too)
cr
I believe Trump was lying about his birther suspicions, and lying about knowing a friend whose son’s autism was caused by vaccines.
His lies are more subtle than that of other Republicans because they are about things about his own background or thinking that may be harder to check.
Obviously, he knows Cruz is thoroughly evangelical.
Of course. He is the perfect political opportunist. In that sense I find him less disturbing than Cruz. Cruz is closer to a true believer, and I find all true believers more worrisome than opportunists. Opportunists will abandon their crazy causes as quickly as they picked them up. Opportunism regresses to centrism, unless the whole country is insane also. True believers, on the other hand, will blow everything up all by themselves if necessary for their cause.
I agree. I think that while no means a left winger, his actual beliefs are actually more moderate than he is currently displaying. Don’t confuse moderate with sane though as his business history has shown. My worry is that the GOP will settle on Cruz, who ,before Trump, was the scary candidate
Carson is a looney, Trump is a narcissist, and Cruz is practically an evangelist!? Great GOP material.
Just add the bread crumbs and shake. I’m sorry, I was thinking about chicken.
The larger question I would love for Republicans to ask is “so what?” Why should a person’s religion figure into public discourse.
Of course that won’t happen any time soon because the GOP has been taken over by the religious right starting with Reagan.
In Canada, eh, we have a three party system, with the Green party four? But the conservative party has made itself completely irrelevent!! In the states, only one party is relevent! The gop has absolutely no candidate fit to run for president!! They are all completely and utterly delusional.
I guess you’re not aware that Ted Cruz is Canadian by birth, eh? 😉
Ted Cruz and Justin Bieber were ok when they were in Canada but now that the US has ruined them, you have to keep them. No take backs! 😛
How about with a little billion dollar incentive. Brains we US’ns may not have, but money we have.
I understand that the return policy is void after 90 days, but that Made In Canada label isn’t coming off, either. 🙂
I am surprised that no one has insisted on asking Trump what his practical plan for banning Muslims is if it doesn’t involve shutting down the borders completely. I asked a couple people supporting this view how they’d accomplish this and they couldn’t give anything close to a coherent answer, especially after I reminded them that closing down immigration from specific countries as we did in WWII won’t accomplish his fascist goal.
That’s because no one asks him to lay out any of his plans and they just accept his bragging that it will “be fantastic”.
“I am going to make things happen,” answered Trump.
(With the answer, a thundering applause ensued.)
“I am going to make things happen”
Ya, like parents cheering an infants BM?
“Republican candidates have been cagey about denouncing Trump…” Not cagey, gutless.
The Republicans could thin out their presidential field, and likely resolve their perilous “Trump problem,” if they were to impose a mandatory drug test on the candidates before the next GOP debate.
There was open speculation, during his recent rise and slide in the polls, about what controlled substance might be causing Ben Carson’s narcotized affect.
But I wonder what drug is turning Trump’s skin orange and inducing his paranoid delusions of grandeur. Whatever it is, judging by how bloated and grouchy he always looks, Trump needs to be switched over STAT to maximum-strength Midol®.
Donald Trump hasn’t really gone after Cruz yet. Just wait till the Donald brings up Ted Cruz’s Canadian background and labels him a foreigner and a socialist.
Cruz and Rubio are tacking to-and-fro tightly off of Trump’s stern, like those slick 12-metre racing sloops jockeying for position as they approach the America’s Cup starting line. Their Iowa strategy is to claw upwind to just off the other guy’s starboard rail, not so far to the right to alienate primary voters in more moderate states.
Cruz in particular wants to block any breeze of support Rubio might get from evangelical voters in Iowa, figuring if he can win there he’ll be running with the wind at his back all the way to New Hampshire.
Interesting analogy. Makes it all sound like a sport, with America cheering in the stands.
“I do like Ted Cruz, but not a lot of evangelicals come out of Cuba.”
Rafael Edward Cruz did not come out of Cuba, he came out of Canada; that is, Calgary, Alberta, Canada.
I would like to find out just how religious Senator Cruz is. Does his religiosity match that of his father, which would make him more dangerous, or does he pretend to be more religious than he really is?
Not to worry. He’s a Hahvahd grad.
Anyway, Trump is wrong about this. Many of the most conservative Cubans who came to the US, generally those who left Cuba in response to Fidel’s assuming power there in 1959, also migrated from Catholicism to evangelical Christianity (as Cruz’s father did), finding a more hospitable home for their reactionary politics there. Cruz’s fellow Cuban-American Marco Rubio, although a generation removed from those émigrés, has his own history with Christ Fellowship, a Miami evangelical megachurch known for performing exorcisms and for its virulent anti-gay rhetoric.
I would think a minority of Cuban immigrants has switched from Catholicism to Protestantism. Be that as it may, Trump’s ploy is to cast doubt on Cruz’s evangelical legitimacy while underscoring his hispanic heritage even though the senator did not “come out of Cuba”. He merely had a Cuban-born father with a Canadian citizenship (until 2005).
Let’s see… tRUMP claims to be a Presbyterian… Presbyterians are not evangelicals by a looooooooong shot…
Therefore, tRUMP is a hypocrite. Nope, no surprise there.
As the grandson of Presbyterian preacher, I assure you there are evangelical Presbyterians. Trump isn’t one by any means.
I do not like Trump, but what he said was not racist to my ear. He just said that not a lot of Evangelicals came from Cuba. This claim can be perfectly factual (I do not know, but Cuban immigrants may be more Catholic than Evangelical) and is not offensive even to Cruz. There is nothing there about the race.