Mike Pence refusing to label David Duke as “deplorable” is a good example of why “Deplorable” was always far more of a double-edged sword than the Trump crew seemed to realize.
As we noted over the weekend, the “half” part of Clinton’s remarks was what got her in trouble. Some argue that you should never attack a candidate’s supporters. That’s probably true if you place the percentage so high. But Trump’s white nationalism and embrace of dominance politics is both what gives his campaign fuel and keeps it locked at about 40% support nationwide. The racist demons Trump has brought openly into the public square are a major liability for him.
Veep candidate Mike Pence is currently being interviewed by Wolf Blitzer. And it’s not going terribly well. One key moment happened when Pence refused to call David Duke “deplorable.” Transcript after the jump …
For those still living in the fantasy world where people believe that Donald Trump, a man a man driven by an instinctive belief in control and domination, is a dove or a foreign policy Realist, here’s a wake-up call. Trump has chosen James Woolsey as his new foreign policy advisor.
The TPM Electoral Scoreboard now stands at Clinton 238, Trump 189. Trump is much closer than he was a few weeks ago. And we have many more electoral votes in the Toss Up category (111).
As of this morning, the PollTracker Average puts Hillary Clinton 3.8 percentage points ahead of Donald Trump. But there are two points that I think will be important to watch as we move through the last eight weeks of the campaign.
Laith Alkhouri is the author of “ISIS Has Lost Land, But It Still Has a Giant Foothold In Cyberspace” for TPM’s The Arch and a co-founder and director of Middle East & North Africa research at Flashpoint, where he heads the counterterrorism desk and directs the jihadist threat intelligence service. He has assisted law enforcement in terror investigations, and his team works on identifying latest trends in the Deep Web used by terror groups and their supporters.
Laith will be taking questions about online radicalization, the Deep Web, and how the Islamic State uses online media on Tuesday, Sept. 13th — drop them in now or between 12:30 and 1:30 p.m. EST on Tuesday.
In case you missed it on Friday, check out the first episode of my new podcast. I talk to Romney top strategist from 2012, Stuart Stevens.
As far as I know, this hasn’t been mentioned. But it jumped out at me pretty immediately. As far as I can tell, none of the Trump campaign pushback to Clinton’s “basket of deplorables” comments have said anything about the people Clinton was talking about not being racist, not being misogynist or by whatever definition not being ‘haters.’ It’s not referenced once. Check out the statements after the jump.
Does that strike you as a bit odd.
32 year old Emirjeta Xhelili, who social media postings identify as an avid Trump supporter, has been charged with assaulting two Muslim women in Brooklyn as they pushed their babies in strollers.
Let me take a moment to address this “basket of deplorables” comment because I think it’s critically important to get this right. Hillary Clinton has simply said what is the premise of most election coverage of the 2016 campaign: a big chunk of Trump supporters are haters. Racists, misogynists, people who are angry at the social and demographic changes in the country that most Americans see as progress. They want to stop it in its tracks and they want payback for what has happened already. To emphasize the point, this is not just what she and likely the great majority of her supporters believe. It has been the premise of most reporting on the campaign and validated by a vast cache of public opinion data confirming these points.