WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 22, 2025
In search of the missing 36 percent: Is "something wrong" with President Trump? Also, was something wrong with President Biden over the past few years?
In each case, we'll guess that the answer is yes. We'll also guess that the two commanders were (and are) dealing with different medical syndromes.
That said, the one man is OUT and the other is IN—unless you're watching the Fox News Channel, where the tools avoid discussing some of Trump's recent behaviors through their endless focus on the pointless trashing of Biden.
That said, is "something wrong" with President Trump—with the person who's president now? As a bit of comic relief, we'll offer one of the lunatic statements he made in a recent address.
We aren't referring to his inaugural address; we're referring to the speech he gave the night before. Headline included, here's part of the New York Times report on that odd oration:
Trump Celebrates in Washington at Rally Laced With Exaggerations and Falsehoods
President-elect Donald J. Trump delivered a boastful, campaign-style rally at a downtown Washington arena on the eve of his second inaugural, celebrating his election victory and vowing to advance his agenda in spite of what he called a “failed and corrupt political establishment” in the nation’s capital.
[...]
His speech was filled with the kinds of misleading or exaggerated claims he often made on the campaign trail. At one point on Sunday, the president-elect claimed that he had won the youth vote by 36 points. In fact, exit polls showed that while young voters did shift toward Mr. Trump, he lost most categories of younger voters to Ms. Harris.
Did the boastful commander really win the youth vote by 36 points? The Times challenged that claim in a rather fuzzy manner. They did provide a link to Daniel Dale's fact-check at CNN.
Dale was less fuzzy, more direct:
Fact check: Trump makes false claims about his 2024 victory, the 2020 election, immigration and more at DC rally
At the dawn of a new Trump era, the same old Trump lies.
The day before his second inauguration, President-elect Donald Trump held a campaign-style rally at an arena in Washington, where he repeated some of the most frequent false claims from the campaign trail while also sprinkling in some new falsehoods.
[...]
The youth vote: Trump falsely claimed that “we won the youth vote by 36 points” in the 2024 election. He didn’t say how he was defining “the youth vote”—CNN has asked his transition team to clarify—but there’s no basis for his claim by any reasonable definition. While young voters, particularly young men, did shift toward Trump compared with the 2020 election, exit poll data published by CNN found that Vice President Kamala Harris beat Trump 54% to 43% among voters ages 18-24, 53% to 45% among voters ages 25-29, and 51% to 45% among voters ages 30-39. Even if Harris’ actual margins were smaller—exit poll data is often flawed—there is simply no sign that Trump dominated Harris with young voters.
Even Dale was too kind. Those exit poll data are the only data we have. According to the exit polls, Harris outpolled Trump among voters in every age group up through age 39.
She outpolled Trump in every group—but he claimed he won the youth vote by 36 points! Why exactly would a person make a weird statement like that?
(Note to the kids at the New York Times—the statement in question is neither "misleading" nor "exaggerated." It's something much worse than that.)
Why would a person make such a weird claim? We think again of the comically pitiful Joe McCarthy figure in the original Manchurian Candidate, who keeps going out and making up fanciful numbers—wholly invented numbers which change every time he speaks.
Still, that was fiction and this is real life. We'll leave you today with an obvious question:
Is Donald J. Trump insane?
Related topic: We've got to change our way of talking, Charlie Sykes has now said.
We'd say he's making an excellent point. More on that some other day.
Yes.
ReplyDeleteDo we care whether Trump is still a liar and still focused on bragging? That really isn't the worst thing wrong with Trump, especially as president. His ignorance on every subect is more concerning, his corruption and theft, his treason and collusion with Russia. But Somerby only looks at his lying, which accusing Fox of distracting from his real problems. One could say the same about Somerby.
ReplyDeleteSome of the people Trump pardoned are already being arrested for new crimes. Isn't this what Trump himself complained about, when immigrants were being released pending asylum hearings, to commit crimes in our country? The J6 criminals were in jail but now they have been released and not all of them are good people who should be back in society:
ReplyDelete"If January 6th defendant Daniel Ball believed his legal woes were over after his case got dismissed in the wake of President Donald Trump's mass pardon, he would have been mistaken.
Politico's Kyle Cheney reports on BlueSky that Ball was arrested on Wednesday for pending federal gun charges, which Cheney notes is "the first arrest initiated by the Trump-led Washington Field Office."
According to the warrant issued for his arrest, Ball "is a two-time convicted felon with prior convictions for domestic violence battery by strangulation and resisting law enforcement with violence."
He sounds like a scary guy. Why was he released?
DeleteBecause he ran for president and was reelected, duh!
Delete"Is Donald J. Trump insane?"
ReplyDeleteLegally, it depends on whether he knew he was committing a crime, if he knew that his acts were illegal and wrong.
Is lying or exaggerating about one's accomplishments illegal or wrong? I don't think so. People do it all the time in everyday life.
Somerby needs to wade out into the deep end and talk about the actual crimes Trump has been committing, the ones that are illegal and that his actions suggest he may not realize are wrong. Are there any of those? I don't think so. Why? Because he tries to cover them up, which suggests guilty knowledge that what he was doing is wrong.
I am not a lawyer, but it seems to me that when Somerby focuses on non-criminal acts to suggest that Trump is insane, he is actually defending Trump because no one will consider such acts to be serious enough to suggest insanity. That includes his grifting and womanizing. People normalize that behavior because it is what is done on a smaller scale by non-insane people. When Somerby starts talking about Trump's actual crimes, I will believe he is sincere about suggesting Trump is insane.
"MADNESS: The silence was a part of the madness!"
DeleteSomerby then goes on to blame Biden and ultimately us for being silent about Trump's madness.
This is Somerby way of saying that because everyone, especially liberals, enabled Trump's madness, we are all complicit in it and it isn't really Trump's fault but ours that he is doing this extreme stuff.
That is, of course, total nonsense. None of us gave Trump permission to do any of these bad things. In fact, we were warning voters about Project 2025 and about what Trump would do if reelected. I don't know what more we could have done. Biden even issued a few more warnings on the way out the door, and has been chastised for it. So, no, we did not enable or condone or normalize or encourage Trump in any way, by silence or by being noisy. We have consistently opposed Trump, as we will continue to do.
But I have to ask -- is something seriously wrong with Somerby? Is Somerby insane? It sure sounds like it to me, and it would be a tragedy if we realized it and said nothing. So, Somerby, ask one of your family to take you to the doctor and let them decide whether what you are writing here is insane or merely disordered. (I say both.)
Good comment @4:06. It's hard to believe that Bob just realized that Trump wildly exaggerates. Non-Trump-haters long ago learned to interpret his comments. E.g., we understand that, "I won the youth vote by 36%" actually means "I did well with the youth vote."
DeleteI don't approve of Trump's wild exaggerations, but I can live with them because I understand what he really means. And, what he really means is generally true, even though the wild exaggerations are untrue.
Does Trump know that invading Denmark is wrong? If he doesn't know that, maybe he is insane. But he would have to actually try to do it, to convince anyone. And then what happens? Do we lock up insane people for being insane or for invading Denmark, or neither? Would his cabinet suggest his removal if he tried to invade Denmark? If they didn't, would that mean they too thought it was OK to invade Denmark. Are they then all crazy?
DeleteWhat Trump is really saying is, "I"ll rollback the Civil Rights Act of 1965, and put the blacks back in their place."
DeleteWhich David hears loud and clear.
Trump exaggerates, but he does it to make a point.
DeleteWhen he says we have a border crisis and immigrant problem, he's saying immigrants will be the scapegoat for all of white people's ills. From their drug addictions, to their lack of gainful employment, white people will have someone else to blame for their woes.
David, you fucking fascist whore, when orange chickenshit calls the FBI agents who worked on the Ross Ulbricht case "scum" after giving that arch criminal a full pardon, was he exaggerating or using mild hyperbole? I am really fucking curious, you lying treasonous bastard. What say you?
DeleteDon't ask whether there is something wrong with Trump. Ask whether there is something wrong with what he is doing. For example, was it wrong to pardon those J6 rioters:
ReplyDelete"U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan had some harsh words for the Jan. 6 rioters President Donald Trump just pardoned en masse.
"No pardon can change the tragic truth of what happened on January 6, 2021," Chutkan wrote in a new statement dismissing one of the cases, quoting from filings against several other defendants who are now being fully pardoned. "On that day, 'a mob professing support for then-President Trump violently attacked the Capitol' ... the dismissal of this case cannot undo the 'rampage [that] left multiple people dead, injured more than 140 people, and inflicted millions of dollars in damage' ... it cannot diminish the heroism of law enforcement who 'struggled, facing serious injury and even death, to control the mob that overwhelmed them' ... it cannot whitewash the blood, feces, and terror that the mob left in its wake."
Above all, she wrote, "It cannot repair the jagged breach in America's sacred tradition of peacefully transitioning power."
Few consider Trump a religious man, but the need to focus on Trump's actions and not his words was an important part of the National Prayer Service at the Washington National Cathedral before the inauguration.
ReplyDelete"[Bishop] Budde turned to deliver a message directly to Trump and other politicians by saying, "There isn't much to be gained by our prayers if we act in ways that further deepen the divisions among us. Our scriptures are quite clear about this, that God is never impressed with prayers when actions are not informed by them. Nor does God spare us from the consequences of our Deeds which always, in the end, matter more than the words we pray."
Yes, words can be damaging, but Trump's act of releasing incarcerated J6 rioters was worse than his lying about his vote count, something that is trivial and meaningless after the election.
Why is Somerby fixated on these voting stats? That is weird and makes no sense itself.
"President Donald Trump put former President Joe Biden on notice Wednesday that his failure to include himself as part of his flurry of last-minute pardons before departing from the White House could come back to haunt him."
ReplyDeleteWhy would the sitting president threaten the outgoing president with politically motivated prosecution? Biden can't do anything to Trump. This exhibits the cruelty and vindictiveness that are part of Trump's personality.
Trump also seems to have some sort of cognitive deficit that prevents him from realizing that he is the president of all of the American people. He is stuck in oppositional aggressive political warfare against the Democrats and doesn't seem to realize that he won and is now the President. He should be focused on achieving his own goals (if he has any beyond acquiring more wealth) instead of kicking someone who is retiring from politics.
What is the point of doing things that further aggravates Democrats now that Trump will need Democratic help to pass legislation and get cooperation on projects he may want to accomplish? It is gratuitous and self-defeating to push Democrats away from his party, as if we do not matter to him. Any actual politician would understand that you do not go around senselessly aggravating people you may need later.
It is only two years until the midterms. Trump should be thinking about that and not making sure that no Dems anywhere will ever support him or his party in 2026 or in the House.
Trump pardoned Ross Ulbricht, who ran Silk Road, an online black market that moved two hundred million dollars worth of illegal drugs, distributed fake passports, helped hackers collaborate, and laundered money. He was also prosecuted for allegedly soliciting six murders for hire, one against a former employee.
ReplyDeleteDavid and Cecelia support this pardon.
CNN: “There’s been a massive shift from when Trump was first getting into office 8 years ago… I think the American people are going to give Donald Trump the benefit of the doubt to do what he wants to do.”
ReplyDeleteAmericans have shifted 20 points toward Trump on deporting all illegals because of the last 4 years of Democrat corruption, "sanctuary cities," mismanagement.
No one watches Fox News.
Delete