Associated Press:
Donald Trump's chief lieutenants told skeptical Republican leaders Thursday that the GOP front-runner has been "projecting an image" so far in the 2016 primary season and "the part that he's been playing is now evolving" in a way that will improve his standing among general election voters.New York Times:
The message, delivered behind closed doors in a private briefing, is part of the campaign's intensifying effort to convince party leaders Trump will moderate his tone in the coming months to help deliver big electoral gains this fall....
Donald J. Trump’s newly installed campaign chief sought to assure members of the Republican National Committee on Thursday night that Mr. Trump recognized the need to reshape his persona and that his campaign would begin working with the political establishment that he has scorned to great effect.Washington Post:
Trump’s chief strategist Paul Manafort told members of the Republican National Committee in a closed-door briefing here Thursday afternoon that his candidate has been playing a “part” on the campaign trail, but is starting to pivot toward presenting a more businesslike and presidential “persona.”Bloomberg:
“He gets it,” Manafort told RNC members.
Outsider candidate Donald Trump sent emissaries to soothe tensions with the GOP's pre-eminent insiders Thursday, and tried to convince them that his bombastic demeanor is merely stagecraft, that his high negatives in the polls can be overcome, and that if he’s the nominee, he’ll raise money for the party and help the Republicans locally and nationally to win elections.And how did we find this out?
The Associated Press obtained a recording of the closed-door exchange.And:
Mr. Manafort’s comments ... were made behind closed doors, which were guarded by security. But a person in attendance taped the speech and shared the recording with The New York Times.Oh, I'm sure this was a totally unauthorized leak.
There's some skepticism in these reports, but the message is that everything will be fine and dandy and just be politics as usual if Trump is the nominee, so the press doesn't haven't to do hand-wringing coverage about the hijacking of the Republican Party by a dangerous barbarian. (Even after all these months of Trump, much of the press still hasn't been able to bring itself to say that the rot is within the GOP and conservative movement, but never mind.)
The #NeverTrump movement, oddly, is playing right along with this, telling fellow conservatives who've fallen for Trump that Trump has never really been the guy they've cheered on for months. Erick Erickson:
... this is an admission against interest that Trump has been lying to the American people and his supporters.Legal Insurrection's William Jacobson:
Trump is playing his core supporters, knows he can’t win a national election with his current message, and is planning to change characters mid-play to soothe the GOP elites he rails against to get you worked up....The mainstream media started selling us the New Trump line after he was reasonably civil in his victory speech after the New York primary -- never mind the fact that the next day he was praising torture. Charlie Pierce wasn't fooled:
Those of us who are not blinded by the light have tried to warn you.
This will now be the pattern. He, Trump will campaign thuggishly. It will work. Then he will accept victory less thuggishly, and he will be congratulated for it. Then it all will start again, over and over, all the way to November.Nor was Digby:
Since his victory speech didn’t include any crude epithets or mentions of his manly member, [the media] seemed to be under the impression that he’s a restrained and dignified statesman worthy of the presidency....But they're exceptions. They're not really mainstream. They'll notice that this is still going on, and Trump is making no effort to stop it, but it doesn't fit the new narrative, so much of the rest of the press will say it has nothing to do with the nice presumptive nominee:
But the big rally in Indiana yesterday showed no changes in Trump’s usual meandering lunacy punctuated by cries of “build that wall” and “get ’em out!” He was back to “Lyin’ Ted” and “Crooked Hillary” and rambling bizarrely about General Patton getting rid of ISIS in three days. At times he was completely unhinged, going on about how he “loves” waterboarding and wants to kill oil truck drivers in Iraq. Everyone can rest easy.
... In other words, Trump is still Trump.
First it was an email warning Steve House, the Colorado GOP chairman, to hide his family members and “pray you make it to Cleveland.” Then there was the angry man who called his cell phone and told him to put a gun down his throat.A political insider in an expensive suit is conveying the message that Trump is domesticated now. So that's what the mainstream press wants you to hear. The more you fall for this, the closer the race gets in November.
“He said, ‘I’ll call back in two minutes and if you’re still there, I’ll come over and help you’,” House recalled.
... In hotel hallways and across dinner tables, many party leaders attending this week’s meetings shared similar stories. One party chair says a Trump supporter recently got in his face and promised “bloodshed” if he didn’t win the GOP nomination. An Indiana delegate who criticized Trump received a note warning against “traditional burial” that ended with, “We are watching you.”
7 comments:
There's a saying about leopards and spots that seems applicable here. Given the nonstop coverage of Trump's every move in public, it's just a matter of time before he blows that "new" image out of the water in a way even the Beltway can't pretend didn't happen.
The press is little better than Hollywood gossip mongers from the 1940's. I listened to a story about the New Improved tRump, with tRump saying "i'll be so presidential, you won't believe how presidential I can be". Just substitute topics like Build the Wall, Deport Everyone, So Much Winning and it is just the same schtick/verbal tick, laughably so. Maybe I'm an over-educated idiot, but I really think that enough voting Americans are smart enough to see through this garbage.
In 2008, McCain, even with Palin as his veep ticket mate, even after 8 years of the worst administration in my lifetime, worse arguably than any since the first Johnson after the Civil War, worse arguably than that even, by the leader of his own party, and off just having proved himself totally out of his depth on the most important single issue to voters, the economic, STILL McCain got just short of 60 million votes.
4 years later, running a campaign based on total lies, and manifestly to the sole benefit of the less than one percent of the electorate, the largely unlikeable Romney - in his own party, that is! - STILL got almost 61 million votes.
So there's really no basis for thinking that Trump, awful as he is, awful as he's been, will fail to pull in something approaching 60 million votes. He'll lose a few, he'll gain some, maybe his percentage share of the total turn-out will be less than Romney's or even McCain; but the gerrymandering now is worse than ever, the caging, the fraud, if anything those are more refined, more effective (for the GOP) and more of a problem that at any time since the Voting Rights Act was first passed. Point is: even if the actual case for 60 million or so votes isn't strictly there, they've laid the bases for some arguments that it "is" there, and "more" - assuming they ven need more.
So, does it really matter all that much if Trump follows the pattern described by Charlie Pierce (whose views on such things I adopt seriatum and without reservation)?
The very next day after his victory speech in NY he was back to yelling about lyin' Ted and crooked Hillary.
He's a thug the way Mussolini was a thug.
Yes, it's a style.
But the style is native to the man.
Just how gullible is our media?
Never mind.
Don't answer that!
If the right Republicans gave them a plate of rocky mountain oysters*, and told them it was the finest Kobe beef tips, these idiots would swear it was the finest steak they ever ate!
*Bull's balls, for the uninitiated.
If he 'domesticated' himself by your definition, would he not confirm the anti-Elite attitudes and suspicions of the bulk of the people he's attracted?
Has he not said as much as that in the recent past?
Of course for my money if Sanders endorses Clinton he does the same for the most aware sector of his voters as well.
What is it that's made us so much smarter now than we were in 1980, 1984, and 2004?
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