A major New York blog, Gawker, reports an interesting story about Donald Trump, courtesy of Mitt Romney’s body man, Garrett Jackson. Jackson tweeted a hint that he may have a recording of Trump saying "rightwing crazies" would go for a birther argument.
I recorded a lot @realDonaldTrump better hope I didn’t record him telling us to use birther argument bc "rightwing crazies will believe it"
— Garrett Jackson (@dgjackson) March 4, 2016
No recording has surfaced, and I’ve seen no confirmation of the story, but it’s not implausible as I see it.
There is a little news coverage of the story, but no one adds anything to what’s in the Tweet.
I have a strong feeling that true or false, Jackson’s story is irrelevant. Trump’s fans are so devoted I think that, if he murdered a 6 year old live on stage, his followers would rail against the unfairness of the Obama Justice Department in persecuting Trump.
I feel like there are three kinds of Republicans in relation to Donald Trump:
1) Fans who will vote for him no matter what.
2) Less ardent people who don’t really like him but will vote for him because that’s the way the primaries are going and people coalesce behind a winner.
3) People who will not ever vote for him.
Echoes of the “Whitey” tape, perhaps?
Yeah, this is going nowhere for all the above reasons: 1) the unconfirmed allegation of one person is not a fact, and 2) Trump’s supporters are immune to facts anyhow.
One thing about Trump that I feel gets lost in the noise is how low his support is. In every primary he has gotten nowhere near 50% — usually around 30-35%. A very large majority of GOP voters don’t want him, but the GOP delegate rules are designed to give the nomination to the guy with the plurality, no matter what.
I’m thinking that after this election is over, the Republican party is going to rethink their primary rules.
They rethought them after the 2012 election and got this year’s mess. The rules aren’t the problem, it’s the players.
If Trump doesn’t get a majority of delegates, a brokered convention is likely – and there, anything goes.
It’s still unclear where the Cruz votes would go if he quit. Carson’s supporters at least don’t seem to have flocked to Trump in large numbers.
Yes. I think this story is of interest only to anti-birthers, and without more evidence it’s dead.
Really? That’s kinda funny.
I still think they’ll redo them anyway.
Why do we even have primaries? You put the nomination process in the hands of people who are only the most dedicated. It seems to me that’s just asking for trouble because the more level headed majority have better things to do. Or they’re not registered with a party and couldn’t vote even if they wanted to. I vote in every election, but I think the only primary I voted in was 2000, because it was the first time I was old enough to vote and I was excited about it. Delaware’s primaries for both parties are on April 26th, and I’ll probably skip them (particularly since I had to relocate to Virginia earlier this year).
Not to mention that the staggered placement of them means a candidate’s performance in earlier primaries is going to influence voters in the later ones.
I remember being struck at the time by how much of the web of birther lies Trump knew, almost as if he’d been coached by Corsi or someone. He went on The View, and the ladies there were totally unprepared to rebut what he was saying. But he was prepared in a very thorough way. This tweet, however, implies that he knew none of it was true, and he only started talking about the birth certificate because he wanted to stir up the right-wing crazies himself.
It got him attention and made journalists write a lot of sentences that included the words “Trump” and “President”. This was clearly his goal. Whether he was seriously planning to run in 2012 and chickened out of challenging an incumbent or whether he was looking at 2016 even then, I don’t know.
But there is not a shadow of a doubt in my mind that he knew it was all b.s. That isn’t based on this tweet, but on everything I know about Trumpolini.
Some recent headlines:
Trump’s new wacko backer.
Trump’s new Florida ally is a vile Sandy Hook truther.
Florida pastor who endorses Donald Trump is a Sandy Hook ‘truther’.
Rev. XXX, who gave rousing invocation at Donald Trump rally, is a Sandy Hook truther, says grieving parents are nothing more than Hollywood actors.
Guess who this Birther is?
See NoBullU.com
The response by Gallups (excuse me, PPSIMMONS) was rather predictable: (1) Gallups never endorsed Trump; (2) Gallups was “just asking questions” about Sandy Hook; and (3) the media is filled with dirty, lying liberals.