Who Would You Rather Listen To, Lindsey Graham Or Jackie Mason?
Other than a bunch of Trump brainwashed MAGAts, almost no voters blame Kamala for the economic situation they ascribe to Biden. According to a new Ipsos poll, most normal people “say they believe Harris has had ‘just some’ or ‘very little’ influence on the administration’s immigration policies and more than 6 in 10 say she’s had limited influence on the administration’s economic policies. Democrats are more likely to say she has had more significant influence than are Republicans or independents. So… even as voters say the economy sucks, they’re no blaming it on Kamala.
Trump, of course, has to change that perception before November. Does he have the personal credibility with non-MAGAts to have any significant impact on the collective consciousness? I wouldn’t entirely write him off yet, although this kind of laughable nonsense probably won’t help much outside of Wyoming and the Dakotas:
Trump rallies have always been cheap entertainment for the MAGA-masses and it would be hard to not recognize his speaking style as a form of stand-up comedy… probably not a coincidence. His approach is heavily influenced by the tradition of insult comedy that became popular when he was growing up, characterized by brash, aggressive humor, often challenging social norms and political correctness. He seems to have modeled his routine on several professionals but heavily on Don Rickles— known for sharp, biting insults, mocking others— and Rodney Dangerfield, the perpetually disrespected underdog who never gets the credit he deserves. Trump’s riffs have also stolen bits and pieces from shock jocks Howard Stern and Morton Downey Jr., whose confrontational and over-the-top deliveries are used by Trump to energize and even enrage his audiences.
And then there were the Borscht Belt (the Yiddish Alps) comedians, who were the rage when Trump was a child. His dad, Fred, a virulent anti-Semite who was arrested at a KKK rally in Queens on Memorial Day, 1927, certainly never took the family to the Catskills hotels like the Concord, Grossingers, the Pines, Brickman’s, the Tamarack and other places where now-legendary Jewish comedians like Shecky Greene, Jackie Mason, Carl Reiner, Danny Kaye, Red Buttons, Phyllis Diller, Mel Brooks, Rodney Dangerfield, Joan Rivers, Milton Berle, Don Rickles, Buddy Hackett, even Jerry Lewis, Lenny Bruce and Woody Allen performed.
That overall school of comedy had in common quick-witted, self-deprecating humor, along with sharp one-liners and a conversational style that engages directly with the audience. Sounds familiar with someone we all know and hate who uses humor that blends insults with a kind of familiarity, as if he's speaking directly to the crowd with an inside joke or personal anecdote. Many people see Henny Youngman or Jackie Mason, Borscht Belt staples, when they hear Señor T delivering his lines with a mix of charm and biting humor that never shies away from being politically incorrect and always courts controversy. Trump's skillful ability to take shots at his opponents while maintaining an air of jocularity is a hallmark of this comedic tradition.
But even notorious Trump ass-licker Lindsey Graham, on Meet The Press yesterday, admitted that Señor T, “the provocateur, the showman, may not win this election.”
Yesterday, Jamie Raskin reminded his followers that “J.D. Vance called Trump cultural and political ‘heroin,’ but is now his full-time pusher.” As good as Henny Youngman or Jackie Mason? Better. “There are,” wrote Raskin, dead serious, “two major debates that America needs to see in this campaign: (1) the debate between Vice-President Kamala Harris and the squirming, evasive Donald Trump, and (2) the debate between J.D. Vance and J.D. Vance. Having once called Trump ‘unfit for our nation’s highest office,’ ‘cultural heroin’ for the white working class, and a ‘morally reprehensible human being,’ J.D. Vance— the self-proclaimed ‘Never Trumper”— now praises Trump’s authoritarianism, wants to ban abortion with no exceptions for rape and incest and strikes the same pathetic political poses he once denounced as ‘immoral’ and ‘absurd.’” You want more funny? How about this classic Raskin two-liner?
“J.D. Vance has no convictions. But Donald Trump has 34 of them— so maybe he’ll share a few with his sycophant apprentice.”
“Then again,” he concluded, “Trump may just drop Vance from the ticket as he is even more unpopular with American women than Trump himself. America deserves leaders who will put progress for America over personal greed and right-wing ideology— not grifters and shifters who give opportunism a bad name.”
So… how is Trump going to change that perception that Kamala didn’t drive up inflation? Yeah, that was the topic, not the Yiddish comedy the anti-semitic Trump trucks in. Unlike his advisors, the GOP establishment (including Lindsey Graham) and the conservative corporate media, Trump knows in his heart that the GOP policy positions are not going to save his ass— especially not in places like Wisconsin, of which Earl Stephens wrote over the weekend that “The traitor, Trump, has NO SHOT in Wisconsin this year. None… Come November, expect Kamala Harris to have a 200,000+ vote advantage here in Dane County alone. I am telling you right now, there is no making that up, even if the orange traitor has a half-decent showing elsewhere in the state (he won’t)… The GOP knows they are no longer able to win statewide elections, so their majority in the state senate are trying to cram these confusing, lawyered-up questions on the ballot to sucker voters into giving them powers they have lost at the ballot box. It is cynical and disgusting, but there is nothing they won’t do to try to hold onto what little power they have left up here. Thing is, we are on to them… and CAN'T WAIT for November.”
The GOP policy positions are popular with people brainwashed by Fox and with multimillionaires but— that’s it and there’s no room for growth. So Trump has turned to the art of insult again, which may drive the GOP establishment crazy, but has worked for him in the past— especially in taking down establishment figures like, well, Lindsey Graham, Marco Rubio, Jeb Bush, Ted Cruz, John Kasich and Hillary Clinton, all hack politicians who believe in the Austerity Agenda that most Americans detest.
Noting yesterday that Trump is still the undisciplined and capricious authoritarian he always was, David Graham noted that Trumpanzee tried turning over a new leaf… by retreating to the old one. “Even the people are the same: Aides from campaigns past are creeping back in. Yesterday Trump announced that Corey Lewandowski would join the campaign as a senior adviser. Lewandowski managed Trump’s 2016 campaign before being fired during that year’s Republican primary. In 2021, he was fired as the head of a pro-Trump super PAC after allegations arose that he made sexual advances toward a donor’s wife. ‘He will no longer be associated with Trump World,’ the Trump spokesperson Taylor Budowich said at the time. In a fun twist, Budowich— a Trump 2020 veteran— also just joined the 2024 campaign, along with the 2020 press aide Tim Murtaugh. Roger Stone, a political operative with the survival skills and personal appeal of a cockroach, has also somehow maintained ties to the Trump campaign. Stone recently told the Washington Post that his email account was compromised, allowing a hack of the campaign. Stone was convicted of several crimes stemming from Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation, but Trump pardoned him, and he later became a key player in attempts to steal the 2020 election… These men are members of the ‘let Trump be Trump’ crew, who encourage him to indulge his instincts. Meanwhile, rumors have begun to circulate that Wiles and LaCivita are in the hot seat. Such whispers are probably best understood less as an imminent threat to the pair— Trump is usually slow to fire anyone and prefers to just work around them— than as a sign of his discontentment with their strategy.”
One can see why Trump would want to go back to what he feels worked in 2016, but he faces two big challenges. First, he just can’t pull off what he did then. The shtick is no longer fresh; remembering why these events were so riveting back then can be hard. He’s also eight years older, and sometimes that is very apparent. His news conference yesterday began with a tedious stretch of him reading economic statistics from a page. Trump showed some energy only when fulminating against Harris. “I think I’m entitled to personal attacks,” he said. “I don’t have a lot of respect for her. I don’t have a lot of respect for her intelligence.”
Second, most people don’t like him, and they never have. Trump’s success in 2016 was less about his campaign than about the fact that many voters also didn’t like Hillary Clinton. (Even so, more voted for her than for him.) In 2020, running against a well-liked Biden, Trump lost. He was polling ahead in 2024 largely because Biden was no longer popular, but now that he’s been replaced with the more appealing Harris, Trump faces the problem of America’s durable anti-MAGA majority. “All we have to do is define our opponent as a Communist or a Socialist or someone who’s going to destroy the country,” he said yesterday. Easily said, not so easily done— Trump can’t even seem to pin a decent nickname on Harris.
This is a kind of reset, but not the change to a kinder, gentler Trump that Republicans promised after the assassination attempt. Meet the new Trump, same as the old Trump.
trump isn't what I would call "canny". he's more of an idiot savant. W was like that too. The only persona that he can project, arrogant cruelty, resonates with white dipshits who live to hate. Their plight has been made worse over the decades by BOTH parties, but they will always blame their hated demos even though they are largely blameless... and just as much victims as they are.
The same dynamic as in germany in the late '20s and '30s.
Like I keep saying... dumber than shit.
And, sadly, the NOT white dipshits only vote for democraps, a party that has refused to stand up FOR anything since the '60s. When they stumble into power, the lives of everyon…