Over the last year there has been a recurrent refrain about the seeming bromance between Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin. More seriously, but relatedly, many believe Trump is an admirer and would-be emulator of Putin’s increasingly autocratic and illiberal rule. But there’s quite a bit more to the story. At a minimum, Trump appears to have a deep financial dependence on Russian money from persons close to Putin. And this is matched to a conspicuous solicitousness to Russian foreign policy interests where they come into conflict with US policies which go back decades through administrations of both parties. There is also something between a non-trivial and a substantial amount of evidence suggesting Putin-backed financial support for Trump or a non-tacit alliance between the two men.
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TL;DR … Trump is a lying fraud repeating an endless list of fraudulent horror stories and blood libels meant to induce fear and desire for revenge. The rising police death toll claim is another one of these …
Per the Trump lie factory, the Washington Post notes that these are the average number of police fatalities per year from all forms of attack broken down by presidency …
Donald Trump’s dark, angry law-and-order appeal was a throwback to Richard Nixon’s 1968 presidential campaign. Here’s Nixon’s 1968 acceptance speech:
As we look at America, we see cities enveloped in smoke and flame. We hear sirens in the night. We see Americans dying on distant battlefields abroad. We see Americans hating each other; fighting each other; killing each other at home. And as we see and hear these things, millions of Americans cry out in anguish. Did we come all this way for this?
Ohio Republican says he’s now sorry for saying Clinton “should be hanging from a tree.” Licking County Commissioner Duane Flowers said he thought public county board of commissioner meeting were off the record and spoke in a moment of high emotion in response to criticism of Melania Trump’s speech.
If there’s one thing Tierney Sneed and Lauren Fox found while reporting for us in Cleveland that I probably don’t factor in enough in assessing the Trump phenomenon it’s the deep resentment and bitterness Republican Party rank-and-file feel toward their own leaders for not fulfilling the extravagant promises made to them since the 2010 Tea Party revolt. I tend to focus more on the white resentment, race-baiting, and xenophobia that arise from the tectonic social shifts way below the surface. They’re not decoupled from each other, but the promise that Obama would be put in his place (with all the accompanying racial overtones to that notion) and his political and policy agenda expunged from the public record were powerful GOP draws for three election cycles, as detached from political reality as those promises may have been.
You get a strong flavor of that intra-party resentment in Lauren and Tierney’s dispatch from last night. We’ve written before about how the grievances nursed against Obama ultimately came to be redirected at Republican leaders on the Hill, and you certainly saw that with the booing of Mitch McConnell this week when he was on the stage. But their story is a good reminder on that point and captures it well.
I spent the day wrestling with Trump’s Razor. It suggested something cataclysmically dumb for the final night of the convention. Yet it was hard to imagine just what that could be. No controversial speakers. Presumably no more plagiarism. Just go through the motions and don’t do anything stupid. It shouldn’t be that hard and the bar had been set unimaginably low.
11:05 PM: Tonally, this matches up pretty well with the Ivanka stuff, yes?
11:05 PM: Trump: We refused to be killed like helpless cattle by the hordes from the South!!!!
11:07 PM: This sounds totally like the man Ivanka described.
11:17 PM: Where was he radicalized?
11:24 PM: What I find kind of intriguing here is that Hillary seems much less present than I would have imagined. We keep hearing about some opponent. But she’s barely there, barely present. It’s overpowered by his ranting.
10:38 PM: So far I’d say it’s a good (in an optics sense) version of Trump’s message, which is hideous and built on lies. But as he goes forward the tone is getting more intense.
10:40 PM: Things will never change?
10:42 PM: I’m curious who these mothers are who he comforted because they were sold out by politicians.
10:42: How does she always manage to get into every convention? Believe me, they are not easy to get into. I was once sitting in a press box I think back in 2004 I think and suddenly the woman sitting next to me stood up and started protesters. And I think it was Medea Benjamin, the one who just stood up there.
10:44 PM: I think he just accused the FBI of being corrupt.
10:45 PM: Yep, he’s accusing the FBI of covering up for Hillary. I guess including James Comey.
10:52 PM: The Law and Order candidate always launches racist attacks on judges.
10:53 PM: He’s leveling with us and letting us know our country sucks. And we’re apparently all going to die.
11:03 PM: Okay, he’s really in the crazy Trump groove now. Please proceed, huckster.