The Trump Collapse

Donald Trump debated a caricature of Hillary Clinton that he and the alt-right Breitbart bubble have concocted for themselves. The big headline of the debate? 

That’s really all that needs to be said, and make no mistake – this has no factual parallel with 2000, or any other election in US history. Al Gore wasn’t waltzing around the country 4 weeks before election day, being coy about whether he’d respect and accept the legitimacy of the electoral process. Indeed, Al Gore graciously accepted the results of that election after the mandated Florida recount was litigated.

There is no election fraud that exists in this country with any statistical importance, but especially not to the point where an election could possibly be stolen. It would be logistically impossible for the Democrats – or any group – to do across states. Elections are taken care of by local election boards made up of honest Democrats and Republicans who oversee the process throughout the country. The process is subject to inspection and monitoring by volunteers from any campaign, and there are safeguards in place to prevent such a thing from happening. Our country has had problem-free, fair elections for over 200 years, and nothing about that has changed, except for the identity of one candidate whose campaign is collapsing. Here is a set of Tweets that a prominent Republican election law firm posted the other day: 

The Buffalo News today calls on the Republican Party to disavow the Trump campaign. What a joke; the time for that passed many many months ago. Racist defamation of immigrants last July was enough for anyone to disavow that campaign, but instead they propelled him to the nomination. 

I want to highlight another reason why they should have disavowed him a long time: here’s Trump’s answer on Aleppo: 

Well, Aleppo is a disaster. It’s a humanitarian nightmare. But it has fallen from any standpoint. I mean, what do you need, a signed document? Take a look at Aleppo. It is so sad when you see what’s happened. And a lot of this is because of Hillary Clinton. Because what has happened is by fighting Assad, who turned out to be a lot tougher than she thought, and now she is going to say, “Oh, he loves Assad.” He’s just much tougher and much smarter than her and Obama. And everyone thought he was gone two years ago, three years ago. He aligned with Russia. He now also aligned with Iran, who we made very powerful. We gave them $150 billion back. We give them $1.7 billion in cash. I mean cash, bundles of cash as big as this stage. We gave them $1.7 billion.

Now they have aligned, he has aligned with Russia and with Iran. They don’t want ISIS. But they have other things because we’re backing, we’re backing rebels. We don’t know who the rebels are. We’re giving them lots of money, lots of everything. We don’t know who the rebels are. And when and if, and it’s not going to happen because you have Russia and you have Iran now. But if they ever did overthrow Assad, you might end up as bad as Assad is, and he is a bad guy.

But you may very well end up with worse than Assad. If she did nothing, we’d be in much better shape. And this is what has caused the great migration where she has taken in tens of thousands of Syrian refugees who probably in many cases, not probably, who are definitely in many cases ISIS-aligned. And we now have them in our country and wait until you see this is going to be the great Trojan horse.

And wait until you see what happens in the coming years. Lots of luck, Hillary. Thanks a lot for doing a great job.

Incoherent nonsense. Here is Hillary Clinton’s answer to a question about Mosul: 

Well, I am encouraged that there is an effort led by the Iraqi army, supported by Kurdish forces, and also given the help and advice from the number of special forces and other Americans on the ground. But I will not support putting American soldiers into Iraq as an occupying force. I don’t think that is in our interest, and I don’t think that would be smart to do. In fact, Chris, I think that would be a big red flag waving for ISIS to reconstitute itself.

The goal here is to take back Mosul. It’s going to be a hard fight. I’ve got no illusions about that. And then continue to press into Syria to begin to take back and move on Raqqa, which is the ISIS headquarters.

I am hopeful that the hard work that American military advisers have done will pay off and that we will see a real — a really successful military operation. But we know we’ve got lots of work to do. Syria will remain a hotbed of terrorism as long as the civil war, aided and abetted by the Iranians and the Russians, continue.

So I have said, look, we need to keep our eye on ISIS. That’s why I want to have an intelligence surge that protects us here at home, why we have to go after them from the air, on the ground, online, why we have to make sure here at home we don’t let terrorists buy weapons. If you’re too dangerous to fly, you’re too dangerous to buy a gun.

And I’m going to continue to push for a no-fly zone and safe havens within Syria not only to help protect the Syrians and prevent the constant outflow of refugees, but to, frankly, gain some leverage on both the Syrian government and the Russians so that perhaps we can have the kind of serious negotiation necessary to bring the conflict to an end and go forward on a political track.

A reasonable response from any American presidential candidate. Here’s what Trump said: 

Let me tell you, Mosul is so sad. We had Mosul. But when she left, when she took everybody out, we lost Mosul. Now we’re fighting again to get Mosul. The problem with Mosul and what they wanted to do is they wanted to get the leaders of ISIS who they felt were in Mosul.

About three months ago, I started reading that they want to get the leaders and they’re going to attack Mosul. Whatever happened to the element of surprise, OK? We announce we’re going after Mosul. I have been reading about going after Mosul now for about — how long is it, Hillary, three months? These people have all left. They’ve all left.

The element of surprise. Douglas MacArthur, George Patton spinning in their graves when they see the stupidity of our country. So we’re now fighting for Mosul, that we had. All she had to do was stay there, and now we’re going in to get it.

But you know who the big winner in Mosul is going to be after we eventually get it? And the only reason they did it is because she’s running for the office of president and they want to look tough. They want to look good. He violated the red line in the sand, and he made so many mistakes, made all the mistakes. That’s why we have the great migration. But she wanted to look good for the election. So they’re going in.

But who’s going to get Mosul, really? We’ll take Mosul eventually. But the way — if you look at what’s happening, much tougher than they thought. Much, much tougher. Much more dangerous. Going to be more deaths that they thought.

But the leaders that we wanted to get are all gone because they’re smart. They say, what do we need this for? So Mosul is going to be a wonderful thing. And Iran should write us a letter of thank you, just like the really stupid — the stupidest deal of all time, a deal that’s going to give Iran absolutely nuclear weapons. Iran should write us yet another letter saying thank you very much, because Iran, as I said many years ago, Iran is taking over Iraq, something they’ve wanted to do forever, but we’ve made it so easy for them.

So we’re now going to take Mosul. And do you know who’s going to be the beneficiary? Iran. Oh, yeah, they’re making — I mean, they are outsmarting — look, you’re not there, you might be involved in that decision. But you were there when you took everybody out of Mosul and out of Iraq. You shouldn’t have been in Iraq, but you did vote for it. You shouldn’t have been in Iraq, but once you were in Iraq, you should have never left the way.

Wag the dog! We lost Mosul when we turned over sovereignty and security to Iraq! Iran! Here’s a guy who never served a day in the military due to heel spurs questioning the military strategy of actual generals. What “element of surprise”? No one would have noticed a massive build-up of troops and weaponry on the approaches to a major Iraqi city under occupation? This incomprehensible word salad makes Sarah Palin seem like Jonathan Swift by comparison. 

There was Trump refusing to acknowledge the opinion of America’s own intelligence agencies, which is chilling: 

TRUMP: Putin from everything I see has no respect for this person.

CLINTON: Well, that’s because he would rather have a puppet as president of the United States.

TRUMP: No puppet. You’re the puppet.

CLINTON: It is pretty clear you won’t admit the Russians have engaged in cyber attacks against the United States of manager. That you encouraged espionage against our people. That you are willing to spout the Putin line, sign up for his wish list, break up NATO, do whatever he wants to do. And that you continue to get help from him because he has a very clear favorite in this race. So I think that this is such an unprecedented situation. We’ve never had a foreign government trying to interfere in our election. We have 17, 17 intelligence agencies, civilian and military who have all concluded that these espionage attacks, these cyber attacks, come from the highest levels of the kremlin. And they are designed to influence our election. I find that deeply disturbing. And I think it is time —

TRUMP: She has no idea whether it is Russia, China or anybody else.

CLINTON: I am not quoting myself. I am quoting 17, 17 — do you doubt?

TRUMP: Our country has no idea.

CLINTON: He would rather believe Vladimir Putin than the military and civilian intelligence professionals who are sworn to protect us. I find that just absolutely –

TRUMP: She doesn’t like Putin because Putin has outsmarted her at every step of the way. Excuse me. Putin has outsmarted her in Syria.

This is the key exchange, however: 

WALLACE: Mr. Trump, I want to ask you about one last question in this topic. You have been warning at rallies recently that this election is rigged and that Hillary Clinton is in the process of trying to steal it from you.

Your running mate, Governor Pence, pledged on Sunday that he and you — his words — “will absolutely accept the result of this election.” Today your daughter, Ivanka, said the same thing. I want to ask you here on the stage tonight: Do you make the same commitment that you will absolutely — sir, that you will absolutely accept the result of this election?

TRUMP: I will look at it at the time. I’m not looking at anything now. I’ll look at it at the time.

What I’ve seen — what I’ve seen is so bad. First of all, the media is so dishonest and so corrupt, and the pile-on is so amazing. The New York Times actually wrote an article about it, but they don’t even care. It’s so dishonest. And they’ve poisoned the mind of the voters.

But unfortunately for them, I think the voters are seeing through it. I think they’re going to see through it. We’ll find out on November 8th. But I think they’re going to see through it.

WALLACE: But, sir, there’s…

TRUMP: If you look — excuse me, Chris — if you look at your voter rolls, you will see millions of people that are registered to vote — millions, this isn’t coming from me — this is coming from Pew Report and other places — millions of people that are registered to vote that shouldn’t be registered to vote.

So let me just give you one other thing. So I talk about the corrupt media. I talk about the millions of people — tell you one other thing. She shouldn’t be allowed to run. It’s crooked — she’s — she’s guilty of a very, very serious crime. She should not be allowed to run.

And just in that respect, I say it’s rigged, because she should never…

WALLACE: But…

TRUMP: Chris, she should never have been allowed to run for the presidency based on what she did with e-mails and so many other things.

WALLACE: But, sir, there is a tradition in this country — in fact, one of the prides of this country — is the peaceful transition of power and that no matter how hard-fought a campaign is, that at the end of the campaign that the loser concedes to the winner. Not saying that you’re necessarily going to be the loser or the winner, but that the loser concedes to the winner and that the country comes together in part for the good of the country. Are you saying you’re not prepared now to commit to that principle?

TRUMP: What I’m saying is that I will tell you at the time. I’ll keep you in suspense. OK?

CLINTON: Well, Chris, let me respond to that, because that’s horrifying. You know, every time Donald thinks things are not going in his direction, he claims whatever it is, is rigged against him.

That is horrifying indeed. 

As much as we hear about how the media is somehow colluding with the Clinton campaign to promote her and take Trump out, Trump’s rise was driven wholly by free media. He is a media construct. He loved them when he was coming up, but now that his racist, ignorant, uninformed, amateur-hour shtick leaves him quite evidently unqualified for any elected office, anywhere, he claims the process is “rigged”. 

Towards the end of the debate, Trump interrupted Clinton while she was speaking, leaned into the microphone and said she was a “nasty woman”: 

Well, Chris, I am on record as saying that we need to put more money into the Social Security Trust Fund. That’s part of my commitment to raise taxes on the wealthy. My Social Security payroll contribution will go up, as will Donald’s, assuming he can’t figure out how to get out of it. But what we want to do is to replenish the Social Security Trust Fund…

TRUMP: Such a nasty woman.

CLINTON: … by making sure that we have sufficient resources, and that will come from either raising the cap and/or finding other ways to get more money into it. I will not cut benefits. I want to enhance benefits for low-income workers and for women who have been disadvantaged by the current Social Security system.

But what Donald is proposing with these massive tax cuts will result in a $20 trillion additional national debt. That will have dire consequences for Social Security and Medicare.

Red meat for the Breitbart bubble, and within minutes, a Clinton supporter registered the domain www.nastywomengetshitdone.com which redirects to Clinton’s website. 

Two things: 1. SNL is going to be lit this weekend; and 2. You built this, Erie County GOP. You own this, Nick, Carl, and Chris. Good job. Nice work.