Why Donald Trump gets a pass Politico

There is no doubt that Trump voters have a different set of expectations for their candidate, and it's politically correct to be quiet about it. They love his being a renegade who wants to build walls and say Hillary Clinton could shoot people in the heart and not be arrested. They love Trump's fist-in-your face attitude, saying he would blow up Iran in their serious and concerning skirmishes with the American navy. Trump is the ultimate macho f#ck you candidate, and Trumpsters love him for it. I disagree with Politico that the press is blameless because they made Trump a hero for ratings and profits. But based on the extensive polling and behavior of Trump supporters, he accurately represents the attitudes of large numbers of his supporters -- every poll we read DOES have numbers in the 45-70% approve scale on issues Clinton supporters vehemently disagree with like illegal immigrants are moochers. There was a 50 pt difference between Trump and Clinton supporters on data we posted last night.
Let's start talking -- not only about the candidates -- but the values of the supporters of both presidential candidates. They are REAL and the press shouldn't be scooping them under the carpet every day. ~ Anne

“We’d show voters stupid things he’s said, and they’d just shrug and say, ‘That’s just Trump being Trump,’” said one Democratic operative who has observed Clinton campaign focus groups. “It was a fairly common response, and it was horrifying.”

"People are willing to give him a pass because he doesn’t have a career in service. I think it’s the wrong approach because you should be assessing the candidate’s readiness to do the job,” said Lanhee Chen, an adviser to Mitt Romney’s 2012 campaign who recalls how Romney was excoriated for “gaffes” during his Europe trip that, by comparison to Trump’s behavior on an almost daily basis, would now be considered as minor mistakes. “People have such low expectations because his campaign has been so dysfunctional that when they run like a normal campaign should run, people tend to give them a lot of credit. There’s a relativism there.”
Indeed, Trump’s turn to scripted speeches, delivered via teleprompter in the last month since bringing in his third campaign manager to date, have been widely characterized as a much-awaited “pivot” into a “more presidential” mode — even though the candidate’s message hasn’t changed much. During one such speech before a raucous crowd in Pensacola on Friday night, Trump returned went off-script and told the crowd that Clinton could literally get away with murder.

“She could walk into this arena right now and shoot somebody with 20,000 people watching, right smack in the middle of the heart, and she wouldn’t be prosecuted,” Trump said. “OK? That’s what’s happening.”

In the same speech, Trump drew loud applause with even more provocative bluster as he referenced an incident earlier this year in which Iran seized U.S. Navy patrol boats on suspicions the American personnel were spying. If he were president, Trump said, the Iranians “will be shot out of the water.” But on the front page of Saturday morning’s Pensacola News Journal, a banner headline read “TRUMP WOWS AGAIN” while one of two stories covering the rally declared “Supporters: Trump more ‘presidential’ in second local speech.”'

Kaine: Clinton's 'Deplorables' Characterizations Doesn't Merit An Apology Washington Post

“She said, 'Look, I’m generalizing here, but a lot of his support is coming from this odd place, that he’s given a platform to the alt-right and white nationalists,’” Kaine said in an interview with The Washington Post. “But then she went on to say, ‘Look, there’s also a number of his supporters that have economic anxieties, and we’ve got to speak to those.’”

(....)

He noted Saturday that “I was just seeing this morning there’s some press event in D.C. today by a white nationalist group that’s talking about how they’ve received a higher profile because of the Trump campaign. We’ve seen (former Ku Klux Klan leader) David Duke do robo-calls encouraging people to vote for Donald Trump last week. So there is an odd way in which [Trump’s] campaign has elevated the profile of some of these groups that are very, I think, dangerous.”

Kaine said he doesn’t think the Democratic tickets needs to “chase after” voters aligned with those kind of groups.

176 Reasons Donald Trump Shouldn't Be President GQ

Count me out as a fan of Keith Olbermann and his shoe-pounding, testosterone-rich approach to political commentary. However, all the yelling and screaming in this campaign makes me receptive to the main message of Olbermann's first podcast for GQ.

As a young girl, my first boyfriend was the grandson of Wisc. senator Wiley, who was Sen. McCarthy's right-hand man. I learned fact moving to New York years later, sitting on a brownstone stoop with my landlord, a playwright who was imprisoned during McCarthy's 1950's roundup of writers, artists and all the educated thinkers and progressives, who were labeled Communists. McCarthy's young lawyer during those ghastly proceedings was Roy Cohn, who became one of Donald Trump's closest advisers before dying of AIDS.

Within this context that touched my own life, Olbermann's words resonate:

Every few generations, we Americans are called upon to defend our country. To defend it not so much from foreign dictators or war or terrorism, but from those here who have no commitment to progress or democracy or representative government—no commitment to anything except their own out-of-control minds and the bottomless pits of their egos.

Our society has thrown up these people before: Joseph McCarthy. George Wallace. Father Coughlin. Jefferson Davis. Aaron Burr. The Know-Nothings. The Blacklisters. The America-Firsters. And we have always thrown them out.

And now our generation has its own: the most dangerous individual ever nominated by a major party for the highest office in this country.

His base wants few details and fewer facts; they just want to burn it down and blame their failures on the collective other. And Donald John Trump is their demonic messiah in Oompa Loompa's clothing.

We must stop him.

There Were Five Phantom Donations in the Files of Donald Trump's Foundation. Here's What We Know. Washington Post

It is DEPLORABLE to have your name on a foundation, but you haven't contributed to it since 2008, as HWN has previously reported, thanks to WaPo. It is DEPLORABLE and CONTEMPTIBLE to take money that people have donated to your foundation and buy a statue of yourself for $20,000 and also buy yourself a $12,000 helmet. In our playbook, this is called STEALING.

WaPo reports that the Trump foundation has reported five donations that when queries with the organization, have never existed. We know about one of the 5: the illegal $25,000 donation to LA Attorney General Pam Bondi.

We already know -- that just like his campaign -- Trump used donations from others including business to hold charity events in his hotels and business properties. Using other peoples' money, did he pay himself above the going rate, as he does his presidential campaign, when far cheaper events could be help in luxury hotels in the same city?

Dear media. How about you give equal airtime going forward to focus on both the Clinton Foundation and the Trump Foundation. That's all we ask. Oh -- and please tell us that neither Trump or members of his family take salary for the Trump Foundation???? We'll be waiting. ~ Anne