Vin Weber talked to TPM’s Lauren Fox about the Trump campaign “shake-up” and captures where things stands today: “Look, we are in a terrible position. The Republican Party has made a mistake of historic proportion and when you do that, you find yourself in a place with no good solutions.”
A few days ago the Trump camp started pushing the idea that Hillary Clinton was “America’s Merkel”, a reference to longserving German Chancellor Angela Merkel, by many measures one of the more successful European politicians of the post-war era. Trump even personally started pushing the Twitter hashtag “#AmericasMerkel. When I started seeing this my first thought was, “How many Americans do they think have even heard of Angela Merkel, let alone see her as some awful figure in a way that tying her to Clinton would send chills down people’s spines?” For better or worse, Putin is super high profile. Netanyahu is high profile. For your average American? Merkel is not high profile.
This morning I had a bit of time before I read the news about the latest surreal turn in the Trump campaign. And in that bit of time, I had one of those moments when I was completely wrapped and thankful for the never-ending stream of insight, humor, tips and more we all get here from TPM Readers. Particularly it was this email from TPM Reader ME, a childhood immigrant from the USSR/Russia. ME much more artfully and ably discusses something I was trying to capture in my post yesterday on Russian defense doctrine and Fox News, specifically how in trying to duplicate or capture things we don’t really understand we can create caricature cartoon versions of them which bare a superficial similarity, capture the most visible elements but yet miss the real picture entirely. From ME …
Through the years I’ve written numerous e-mails to this address, most of them likely less insightful than I thought at the time. However as a Russian immigrant (I’m sure one of many who has written to you) I felt inspired to throw more on the pile.
I want to draw some parallels between the modern Russian propaganda that you liken to Fox News, and the Soviet propaganda of yesteryear.
I’m flabbergasted by this Allegra Kirkland piece I’m reading bringing me up to speed on this morning’s news. But I’m also flabbergasted that I’m flabbergasted. Given everything that’s happened, given the cratering of support among not only all swing constituencies but even relatively reliable Republican constituencies – white married women, etc. – probably the most ridiculous thing you can imagine is going from the running the campaign with the antic mentality of Breitbart News to actually taking the head of Breitbart News and putting him in charge of the campaign.
Welp. That’s where we are. Trump has hired Breitbart News chief Stephen K. Bannon to take over running his campaign. No metaphor. No hyperbole. That’s straight up what’s happening. Allegra’s got the story here.
Gawker got sold today to Univision for $135 million. This is the fallout from the Hulk Hogan lawsuit.
Then I saw this tweet …
When you compare Fusion to Gawker/Jezebel/Gizmodo/Kotaku you really start to see the depth of what is lost here. sad day for indie media.
— ⤵︎ (@CodyBrown) August 16, 2016
Ultra-nationalist Serbia’s greet Vice President Biden with chants of “Voter for Trump!” on today’s trip to Belgrade. Vojislav Seselj, the head of Serbia’s ultra-nationalist Radical Party who was recently acquitted of war crimes toasted Trump as a “a supporter of Russia.”
Here are some pictures of some Trumpers who had Trump tattooed on their body.
Like the TPM Electoral Scoreboard, the 2012 TPM Senate Scoreboard was one of our most popular features during the 2012 cycle. And today’s we’re debuting the 2016 TPM Senate Scoreboard. It debuts with 49 seats in the Dem column, 49 in the GOP column and 2 in the toss up category. Check it out!