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Monday, May 16, 2016

Monday Trump Dump


Image from Reddit via Giphy.
Trump responds to allegations from British prime minister:
“Number one I’m not stupid, I can tell you that right now. Just the opposite. I don’t think I’m a divisive person. I’m a unifier.” (Via Independent)
Well, then, that settles that. Who would know better than the man himself? He's not so sure whether he's divisive or not, but he's positive on the stupid issue. No pussyfooting or equivocation, no "I have no recollection of being stupid" or "it depends on what the meaning of 'stupid' is". Just boldly acknowledging the fact.

Although subtler persons will notice that Cameron did not actually say or even suggest that Trump is stupid, or divisive either; he said the Muslim-ban proposal is stupid. Trump isn't denying that.

He also doesn't deny that he's ignorant on Islam. He complained about London mayor Sadiq Khan's remark that his views on Islam are "ignorant" (when Khan invited him to London, saying "I want to educate Donald Trump") He told Piers Morgan on Good Morning America, "Well, let's do an IQ test," to which Khan's spokesperson explained, correctly, "Ignorance is not the same as lack of intelligence".

But he didn't deny it. Rather, he said it hurts his feelings:
Mr Trump said he had been offended by the remarks....
“Tell him I will remember those statements,” he added. “They’re very nasty statements.”
(Telling 3.3 million Muslim Americans they need to be registered in a special government Muslim American database or perhaps carry special federally issued Muslim American IDs in their wallets isn't "nasty", it's "politically incorrect".)

Why does Trump refuse to say he's not ignorant on the subject of Islam? He's afraid it would hurt him with his base.


Meanwhile, the inevitable falling into line has begun in the Grim Old Party, starting with those rigorist moralists of the conservative-evangelical persuasion, in support of the man who created not one but two audio sock puppets (the two Johns, Miller and Barron) so he could boast about his fornicatory exploits on the radio:

“Didn’t know we’d be here,” said Marjorie Dannenfelser, president of the Susan B. Anthony List, an anti-abortion group. Ms. Dannenfelser began the year in Iowa with a group of other politically active conservative women like Ms. Nance who tried to stop Mr. Trump because, as they said at the time, he “disgusted” them....
The Susan B. Anthony List is planning to spend $6 million to $8 million this year on a nationwide campaign, including hundreds of canvassers to knock on doors for Mr. Trump. “It’s more about rationality overcoming feelings than anything else,” Ms. Dannenfelser said.
Susan B. (the fictional anti-abortion crusader, not the real battler for women's equality in all aspects of life, political and personal) would be so proud.

There's something exceedingly funky, however, in the poll mentioned in Donald's tweet above claiming that evangelicals back him against Clinton 89% to 11%, by the way, from the One America News Network and Gravis Marketing (the latter also known as "the worst poll in America" for 2014), in the way it represents respondents' religious affiliation:


It's pretty normal to include "evangelical Christians" under the broader "Protestant" rubric, not as a distinct branch, and they should make up about 25% of the total population, compared to 14 or 15% mainline Protestant and 6 or 7% historically black; not just 8%. (The numbers for Catholics, Jews, and Muslims are also ridiculously high; Muslims should be about 1% in a representative sample, Jews about 2%, and Catholics around 20%.) Most evangelical Protestants must have found the question confusing, and it's possible that the only ones who answered "evangelical" were the ones too ill-informed to realize that they were Protestants too, which would help explain why their support for Trump was so overwhelming. It's also possible that it's just a terrible or fraudulent poll, like other Gravis products.

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