In a rare moment of levity, Jake Tapper recalls Drümpenführer's summary of his RNC performance as 'It was the Trump of times, it was the Trump of times,' a subtle dig at the narcissism we've grown so accustomed to, during this campaign. On Zakaria's GPS, also on CNN, Wall Street Journal columnist Bret Stephens said that the address made him feel like he was watching a Monty Python sketch of the Nuremberg Rally. It's certainly not unusual for Donald Trump to be panned by those on both sides of the aisle.
On State of the Union, Tapper shifts to the current accusations of collusion between Donald Sr. and Russian Despot Vladimir Putin. Donald Jr. was happy to be available to vehemently rebut the claims that the Russians are helping his father's campaign. He went ballistic, to put it mildly. Here's why.
Clinton co-chair Robbie Mook said earlier in the program:
“Experts are telling us Russian state actors broke into the DNC, stole these emails, and other experts are now saying the Russians are releasing these emails for the purpose of actually helping Donald Trump. I don't think it is coincidental that these emails were released on the eve of our convention.”
The tempo and freneticism of Donald Jr.'s rebuttal was reminiscent of Rudy Giuliani's convention rant. He was beyond livid that Mook touched a nerve, and he was defending his father's assessment of the wonderful convention that transpired.
DONALD TRUMP JR: It just goes to show you their exact moral compass. They'll say anything to be able to win this. I mean this is time and time again, lie after lie, you noticed, he won’t say well, I say this, his house cat at home once said that this is what’s happening with the Russians.
It’s disgusting, it’s so phony. I watched him bumble through the interview...you hear it with the DNC where they're leaking emails about Bernie Sanders and his Jewish heritage to be able to try to destroy him in the south, it's a rigged system, it's disgusting, and the people should be fed up with it because when I heard it, I certainly was.
The Jewish heritage wasn't the issue, Don Jr. got that wrong. The inference was Sanders is an atheist (as if that would make a difference in competency). Tapper tried to get in a word edgewise, but Donald Jr. repeated essentially exactly what he said, just with even more apoplexy and doubled down on the paranoid victimhood. Repetition and finishing sentences with 'okay?' is a commonality shared by both Trumps.
DON JR.: (Mook) should be ashamed of himself If a Republican did that, they'd be calling for people to bring out the electric chair.
Tapper wanted to know what the Lesser Don thought of President Obama's assessment of his pop, Drümpenführer's vision of violence and chaos and how it doesn't really jive with most people.
DON JR: *speaking more frenetically* Apparently he hasn't turned on the news lately. If you look at what's going on in this country it's a disaster, anything that's left of our economy is only there because it's artificially inflated with ridiculously low interest rates that don't work in the long run. It's a lie. You can't turn on the TV these days without seeing cops getting shot You have people enabling these things, where we're creating a system where we're encouraging criminals essentially, to go out and pretend that they're vigilantes.
Indeed, there's apparently no law and order in this country anymore, except for the statistics that show exactly the opposite. Tapper fills him in on the facts.
TAPPER: Let me play devil's advocate here because I want to push back a little bit. The crime rate is down overall nationwide and has been trending down. Unemployment is much much lower than when President Obama took office.
Donny Jr. countered those facts with the 'real unemployment rate,' which daddy once claimed was 42%, a figure pulled from deep inside his colon. He also spoke of the record number of police officer murders which, incidentally, are far lower than they used to be. He disavows the traditional methods of measuring employment in this country and his reasoning: we don't count those who have given up, and his daddy knows how to reach them, because he's so concerned with the common working man, as long as they're not Black or Mexican, of course.
DON JR: we're telling them that they're miraculously employed because some bureaucrat in DC says 'well these are the way the numbers read,' It doesn't work that way in the real world.
It's not as if the idea of a Putin/Trump alliance came out of thin air. Slate explains:
Vladimir Putin has a plan for destroying the West—and that plan looks a lot like Donald Trump. Over the past decade, Russia has boosted right-wing populists across Europe. Donald Trump is like the Kremlin’s favored candidates, only more so.
He celebrated the United Kingdom’s exit from the EU. He denounces NATO with feeling. He is also a great admirer of Vladimir Putin. Trump’s devotion to the Russian president has been portrayed as buffoonish enthusiasm for a fellow macho strongman. But Trump’s statements of praise amount to something closer to slavish devotion. In 2007, he praised Putin for “rebuilding Russia.”
Despite ample evidence, Trump denies that Putin has assassinated his opponents: “In all fairness to Putin, you’re saying he killed people. I haven’t seen that.” In the event that such killings have transpired, they can be forgiven: “At least he’s a leader.” And not just any old head of state: “I will tell you that, in terms of leadership, he’s getting an A.”
Politicus USA sums up the essence of the elder Trump son.
What we have here is Donald Trump Jr. carrying on the family tradition of getting angry about things he doesn’t understand and being outraged when someone repeats evidence. Mook didn’t make up the evidence he referred to. The only thing he can’t prove is that the Russians hacked and leaked the DNC in order to help Donald Trump.
But we do know that Putin has gone to great lengths to install people like Donald Trump throughout Europe in an effort to dismantle NATO, and Trump has already suggested he would weaken NATO. It’s really not a stretch with Trump’s bizarre policies that help Putin. It’s also odd that only the DNC that was hacked. Sadly for the Russians, no real dirt has come out of the hack so far.
The saddest part of all this is how the MSM is trying to both siderize these two conventions. One was a sham and the symbolic death of a political party. The other will likely be a more organized display of unity with coherent policies that don't show disdain for so many Americans. This is not a tale of two equal conventions, one is the Trump of times the other will be a hopeful prognosis for the future of the American people.
