[mattomac]

It’s a bit of a rock and a hard place, then again they’ve literally facilitated this so fuck em.

[The Weeping Angel]

Winning over the voters.

[Tubby Isaacs]

The trouble they have is that Trump has “nationalised” politics, or at least continued that trend. Conservative Democrats who could win in Red States or districts don’t really exist now. And hardly any relatively sane Republicans exist at all.

Susan Collins pulled that off in 2020 in Maine. Might be harder to distinguish herself from Trump this time.

[Abernathy]

The following, from the ever-perceptive David Knopfler on the Fleecebook :

And now, phase four (See previous post): Trump, unable to provide a staffer willing, or even feasibly, to fall on their sword for him, has admitted to having posted the racist AI altered video, but is claiming not to have spotted the last two seconds.
I would call this one “the Corbyn defence” when Corbyn offered support for a powerfully antisemitic mural but then when the bruhaha about it blew up and he was challenged about it claimed rather unconvincingly not to have looked more closely at it. If he did fail - he shouldn’t have.
Either way for Trump it illustrates a powerful lack of self restraint. And Trump personally has repeated form. Also his ICE goons, who operate outside the legitimacy of the law, are openly racially profiling their victims. Trump was already in the frame as a racist before cementing the perception with this particularly unpleasant, beyond the pale, own-goal.
The Trump administration has been an absolutely remarkable illustration of Trump’s own claim that he could shoot someone on Fifth* Avenue in New York and get away with it. The loyalty of his base was again illustrated when they gathered in Washington DC Jan 6th 2021 to “fight like hell” to overturn the legitimate Biden victory of 2020. Trump supporters have, like cultists, crossed a rubicon, where their unconditional support is as emotional, extreme, blinkered and unreasoned as the extremism of the entire White Nationalist MAGA movement that supports Trump’s illegal anti democratic norms.
The logical resignation of Nixon, when the Washington Post proved, over months with the help of an unnamed informer, that Nixon was complicit in the illegal break-in to smear a high ranking Democrat, was in part because Nixon felt shame at being caught in the act of debasing the honour of the post he held. Trump entirely lacks this modicum of decency. The shit-show will go on until the Senate say otherwise… and if Trump thought the Senate were going to say otherwise he would likely arrest them and put them in one of his detention camps. Saddam Hussain not only arrested his political opponents but made his remaining political leaders complicit in shooting those he had rounded up with his goon squad. Illegal power grabs are rarely quite as explicit but they carry their own “no turning back now” tsunami like momentum. The chaos gets baked in.
Vis-a-vis the Washington Post, now owned by billionaire Bezos what a falling off was there. Bezos lays off a third of his Washington Post staff, massively softens the editorial lean and simultaneously pays an absurdly high $70m for a hagiography about Melania Trump that nobody wants to see. Paying tribune by the shabby shameless tech bro elite is the new debasement under Trump who is never slow to appreciate a bribe that can be window dressed as something else.
Meanwhile, not even footage of a goon wantonly kicking a dog and breaking its rib seems to be giving Kirstie Noem, who implausibly heads up the Department of Homeland security, pause about these unpopular deployments in Democrat voting cities, where they aren’t generating the lawlessness her boss was hoping for.
*I edited Fifth from Seventh which I had misremembered

[Youngian]

Winning over the voters.

Not the honourable Republican again, they're the pandas of the Midwest a tiny electoral blip of no significance.

[The Weeping Angel]

Trump gave a reasoned, intelligent take on the Super Bowl halftime show.

[Youngian]

Don, the RoW doesn't give a shit about your crappy sports.

[Tubby Isaacs]

There's actually an interesting story about Trump and American Football from the 1980s.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_St ... all_League

This was an entirely separate thing to the NFL, formed by a bunch of people who saw either a chance to make money from it in parallel to the NFL (the USFL played in the Summer, not the Autumn, as the NFL did) or to scare the NFL into awarding them NFL franchises of their own. Trump was very much the latter, but the league ran out of money, and he didn't get his NFL franchise. The league itself was fun while it lasted, with exciting (though uneven standard) play, interesting rule changes and giving lots of cities without NFL teams some football to watch live.

So Trump and the NFL go back a long way. And he actually did have a point about the NFL being monopolistic. The NFL lost a legal case on this, but had to pay only symbolic damages.

[The Weeping Angel]

He also wanted to buy the Buffalo Bills, but the NFL wouldn't let him.

[kreuzberger]

He doubtless thought that the Buffalo Jills were for sale ...

[Oboogie]

Trump gave a reasoned, intelligent take on the Super Bowl halftime show.

There's an informative discussion of this performance and more here:

[Killer Whale]

Trump gave a reasoned, intelligent take on the Super Bowl halftime show.

There's a touch of L'état, c'est moi about the 'slap in the face to our country' in there, that, isn't there?

[Youngian]

Or 'yo soy el estado' as Trump's fellow autocrats in the Americas would say.

[Oboogie]

Trump's been describing criticism of himself as anti- American and treason for years, possibly since the beginning of his first term.

[Tubby Isaacs]

He also wanted to buy the Buffalo Bills, but the NFL wouldn't let him.

I didn’t know that, cheers.