Tuesday, March 29, 2016

THIS IS WHY TRUMP IS IN FIRST PLACE AND CHRISTIE IS A HAS-BEEN

Corey Lewandowski has been charged with a crime, and his boss has his back:
Despite loud calls to fire campaign manager Corey Lewandowski after he was charged with misdemeanor battery, Donald Trump strongly defended him and voiced serious doubts about his accuser.

... Trump addressed allegations corroborated by police that Lewandowski yanked the arm of a female reporter at an event in Florida on March 8 as she tried to question the candidate.

... "If you look at her she's actually grabbing me," Trump told reporters. "She was running up and grabbing and asking questions and she wasn't supposed to be doing that."

Trump said that he believed Lewandowski was innocent and "should never settle this case." The billionaire added that he had no plans to fire Lewandowski, and questioned whether the bruises on Fields' arm had been a result of her altercation with Lewandowski.

"How do you know those bruises weren't there before?" Trump said. "I'm not a lawyer. She said she had a bruise on her arm. I mean, to me, if you're going to get squeezed, wouldn't you think that she would have yelled out a scream or something, if she has bruises on her arm?"
Lewandowski will stay on, we're told, even if he's found guilty:
Katrina Pierson, Donald Trump's national spokeswoman, said Tuesday that embattled top aide Corey Lewandowski would stay with the campaign even if he's convicted of a criminal battery charge in Florida.

When CNN's Wolf Blitzer asked if Lewandowski would stay with the campaign even if he was convicted of a misdemeanor for allegedly roughing up a reporter, Pierson replied "yes" without hesitation.

"Yes, absolutely. Mr. Lewandowski is an integral part of the team, the camp wholeheartedly supports him and will see him through the ordeal," she said.
This is making me think about the guy who used to be the Republican base's favorite Northeastern bully: Chris Christie. It's widely assumed that Christie's future as a national Republican star was snuffed out by Bridgegate. That's true, but it's not really because of what happened on the roads during Bridgegate.

I'm think Republican voters might well have forgiven Christie for Bridgegate if it hadn't transformed him from a Trumpesque verbal abuser into a cowering wimp, a guy who actually apologized for something he and his administration did.
Sounding somber and appearing contrite, the normally garrulous Mr. Christie said he had no advance knowledge of the lane closings and had been “humiliated” by the entire episode.

“I am a very sad person today,” he said. “I am heartbroken that someone I permitted to be in that circle of trust for the past five years betrayed that trust.”
If he'd been defiant -- if he'd insisted that no apologies were necessary and the whole thing was a partisan witch hunt ... well, sure, he might have infuriated prosecutors so much that he'd be looking at prison time now. But if he'd remained defiant and managed to avoided being indicted himself, he might still be the right-wing hero he used to be back when he was being nasty to schoolteachers in video clips.

It's said that Christie couldn't survive Bridgegate because Bridgegate hurt ordinary people in a way rank-and-file voters can relate to. But the Trump campaign reminds us that GOP rank-and-file voters don't care if you do something awful as long as they like you. Remember when we were told that voters would turn against Trump once he insulted John McCain or the Pope, or once they learned that he'd used eminent domain against ordinary homeowners? These things rolled off Trump's back -- just the way Bridgegate would have rolled off Christie's if he somehow could have dug in his heels and stayed out of jail.

Christie said nice things about President Obama after Sandy. Then he said mistakes were made in Bridgegate, which weakened him. Then he spent a year as head of the Republican Governors Association trying to trade favors in advance of the presidential race when he should have been upping his bullying game. And that's why Trump is king of the hill and Christie is trying to be his valet.

8 comments:

CF2K said...

For Authoritarian Followers, the unforgivable sin is failing to be the authoritarian they can follow.

Feud Turgidson said...

If this were shogunate Nippon, for so debasing himself so, it would necessary for Christie to donate all his property to the local temple, to sell his children into servile bondage, and offer up wife as a comforter to itinerant samurai, and to commit seppuku.

That's in theory. Life actually lived is rarely so stark. For one, it's unclear whether a seppuku blade would suffice to get thru the belly's wall of protective fatty tissue. It might be necessary for Christie to carry out the ceremony in increments, possibly with the aid of an assistant (which, right there, is capable of compromising the ritual irretrievably.

Tano said...

Wow. Really???
This is kinda like the dumbest post I have seen this year, and my goodness, imagine winning a contest like that!!!
Trump's support of his manager makes perfect sense to most people, not just Republican nut jobs. The guy pushed a obnoxious reporter out of Trump's face. He was a total douche for lying about it, but he really did not do anything wrong.
Christie's administration totally screwed over thousands of people, condemning them to hours of traffic backups, and potentially (wow is he lucky that this did not pan out) causing people to die in ambulances stuck in traffic, all to get back at a Democratic mayor who chose not to endorse him for an election he was obviously not going to lose.
How can you equate the two? That is transcendentally dumb. You cannot expect Christie, or any politician, including Trump, to double down against an indisputable charge of screwing the public for petty personal political point making.
Do you actually, like, think before you publish?

Feud Turgidson said...

The grasshopper Tano appears to have been raised among the under-bridge dwellers. His words carry that classically aromatic Drumpfian insincerity.

Anonymous said...

Have you actually watched the video?

Cuz if you have, you know the charges are a joke.

Unknown said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Grung_e_Gene said...

As CF2K points out its the right-wing desire to follow an authoritarian. Conservatives love a strongman who will dump political correctness and take America back to the good ole days when you could stomp "the other" and manhandle women. And Frank you are wrong it was a misdemeanor battery. But, what right-wingers love was the way Trump gaslighted her and the continued bullying attitude today.

Philo Vaihinger said...

News reports indicate Donald Trump has gone full on Buchananite in foreign policy.

Down with the UN, NATO, the EU, he says.

And just yesterday he said let Japan, South Korea, and Saudi Arabia get their own nukes to defend themselves without us.

US out of Europe, the Far East, and pretty much anywhere.

And Trump opposes immigration of Muslims and Africans into Europe undermining national identities, and supports Brexit.

This is all vintage Pat Buchanan, the policy of Antiwar.com and of the paleocons, the nationalist, anti-globalist, anti-cosmopolitan right.

This is not the foreign policy of either Republican or Democratic internationalists like the Bushes or the Clintons, or even Obama.

Buchanan says it's about a Europe of the Nations, but it's a Europe of the skinheads.

He says it's about an America at peace for lack of entangling alliances, but it's about a much more dangerous world with far more nuclear armed flash-points, and far more nuclear states from which terrorists might acquire the worst of all WMD.

When you think of Nixon, Kissinger, Cap Weinberger, and Reagan, you have to shake your head and wonder how Buchanan could possibly have hung out with people whose politics were so totally opposed to his own.