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Divided We Stand

Divided We Stand
New book about the 2020 election.

Wednesday, July 20, 2016

Another Trump Day

Andrew Kaczynski reports at Buzzfeed:
An adviser to Donald Trump on veterans issues said on Tuesday that Hillary Clinton should be put in a firing line and shot for treason.
New Hampshire state representative Al Baldasaro, who is also a Trump delegate from the state and has appeared with Trump at campaign events, made the comments on the Jeff Kuhner Show.
“I’m a veteran that went to Desert Shield, Desert Storm. I’m also a father who sent a son to war, to Iraq, as a Marine Corps helicopter avionics technician. Hillary Clinton to me is the Jane Fonda of the Vietnam,” he said. “She is a disgrace for the lies that she told those mothers about their children that got killed over there in Benghazi. She dropped the ball on over 400 emails requesting back up security. Something’s wrong there.”
“This whole thing disgusts me, Hillary Clinton should be put in the firing line and shot for treason,” he added.
By the way, threatening a presidential nominee or a former First Lady is a felony under 18 U.S.C. § 879

The Washington Post reports:
The refrain of this Republican convention hasn’t been “Make America Great Again.” It’s been “Lock her up!”

Over the first two nights of the GOP convention, at least three speakers have called for Hillary Clinton — the presumptive Democratic nominee — to be imprisoned. New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie recited a series of Clinton’s misdeeds and led the crowd in shouts of “guilty” after each.

“Lock her up!” the convention crowd shouted repeatedly on both nights. The chant — not heard before at Donald Trump’s rallies — has quickly become the theme of the GOP’s gathering in Cleveland.
...

Months ago, Trump — who calls his opponent “Crooked Hillary” — was among the first prominent Republicans to suggest that Clinton should be imprisoned for her use of the private server. That was before the Justice Department decided not to prosecute Clinton, although FBI Director James Comey said she had been “extremely careless.”
“I will say this: Hillary Clinton has got to go to jail,” Trump said at a June rally in San Jose. “Folks, honestly, she’s guilty as hell,” Trump said then. He indicated that, if elected, he would have his attorney general revisit the case against Clinton.
The Washington Post reports:
After a tortured 24 hours in which Donald Trump’s campaign struggled to come up with a coherent explanation for how portions of a 2008 speech by Michelle Obama had reappeared in remarks delivered by Melania Trump at the Republican National Convention, a Trump staff writer said Wednesday that she was responsible and apologized for the “confusion.”

In a statement, Meredith McIver said she was an “in-house staff writer” who had worked with Melania Trump on the speech. McIver took responsibility for including the passages from the first lady’s speech — though she said she had not revisited the earlier speech herself, only listened as Trump read parts of it that she liked to McIver over the phone.
...
 The statement, and Trump’s cheeky messages, capped a dizzying, more than day-long attempt by his campaign to explain — but primarily dismiss — evidence that Melania Trump’s speech on Monday night had repurposed multiple lines from Michelle Obama’s speech in 2008. The attempt was made all the more difficult by Melania’ Trump’s own statement on Monday that she had written the speech herself.
Tina Nguyen reports at Vanity Fair:
Dr. Ben Carson, the retired neurosurgeon-turned-presidential candidate-turned-perpetually confused Trump surrogate, returned to the political arena Tuesday night with a bizarre six-minute speech at the Republican National Convention in which he first railed against the dangers of political correctness, and then, as if to prove his point, linked Hillary Clinton to Lucifer himself.
“Now, one of the things that I have learned about Hillary Clinton is that one of her heroes, her mentors wasSaul Alinsky,” said Carson, departing from his prepared remarks that were sent to the press ahead of time. “And her senior thesis was about Saul Alinsky. This was someone she greatly admired. And let me tell you something about Saul Alinsky. So he wrote a book called Rules for Radicals. It acknowledges Lucifer, the original radical who gained his own kingdom.”
Carson, a prominent figure in the evangelical community, went on: “Now think about that,” he said. “This is our nation where our founding document, the Declaration of Independence, talks about certain inalienable rights that come from our creator; a nation where our Pledge of Allegiance says we are one nation under God. This is a nation where every coin in our pockets and every bill in our wallet says ‘In God We Trust.’ So are we willing to elect someone as president who has as their role model somebody who acknowledges Lucifer?”
Carson, whose anti-Lucifer position cannot be denied, won a rapturous response from what remained of the Republican crowd in the Quicken Loans Arena in Cleveland. “Think about that,” he admonished, once again.
The Des Moines Register reports:
U.S. Rep. Steve King, an Iowa Republican who has a penchant for controversy, created an uproar on social media Monday by questioning the contributions of non-white people during a cable television appearance at the Republican National Convention in Cleveland.
...
"This 'old white people' business does get a little tired, Charlie," King said. "I'd ask you to go back through history and figure out, where are these contributions that have been made by these other categories of people that you're talking about, where did any other subgroup of people contribute more to civilization?"

[Chris] Hayes asked: "Than white people?"

"Than, than Western civilization itself," King said. "It's rooted in Western Europe, Eastern Europe and the United States of America and every place where the footprint of Christianity settled the world. That's all of Western civilization." 
The Daily Beast reports:
Legendary retired Notre Dame coach Lou Holtz said Tuesday that immigrants coming into the U.S. made up “an invasion” and that they need to do a better job of assimilating, according to published reports.

Holtz, who supports Donald Trump, was speaking at a luncheon during the Republican National Convention in Cleveland.
“I don’t want to become you,” Holtz said of immigrants, according to the Daily Beast. “I don’t want to speak your language, I don’t want to celebrate your holidays, I sure as hell don’t want to cheer for your soccer team!”