You may have thought the shoe dropped yesterday or at various other points in the campaign. But the big one, in electoral terms, just dropped in the last hour. In any case, Trumpism has more than two shoes to work with. Last night, GOP electeds all agreed to issue statements of condemnation of Donald Trump, maintain their endorsements and hunker down. Today there’s been a steady stream of Republicans, especially those in tight races, abandoning Trump. As I said in my previous post, all the abandonments can do is leave the GOP in an acutely vulnerable electoral limbo – with zombie Trump, a name on the ballot, either dropped out or disowned by his party. But now we have the real players returning to the stage.
It’s not that I feel the least bit sorry for them. They made their bed with eyes wide open. Nor is ethical or civic decision very hard. But as a purely political matter, the choice now faced by Republicans in tight reelection battles must be an excruciating one – particularly for embattled senators like Ayotte, Toomey, Heck and the rest.
I wanted to share a few thoughts on that already infamous Trump video and its likely political repercussions.
In a statement just released moments ago, Speaker Paul Ryan says he’s “sickened” by the Trump tape and says Trump is “no longer attending tomorrow’s event in Wisconsin.”
Ryan appears to remain a supporter and endorser of Trump, saying he hopes Trump “works to to demonstrate to the country that he has greater respect for women than this clip suggests.”
Variety and Access Hollywood (I know, I know) are reporting that the woman Donald Trump was describing in his now infamous comments with Nancy O’Dell, Billy Bush’s then-co-host on Access Hollywood.
Shortly after Reince Priebus released his statement tonight there was a veritable flood of statements released from various GOP officeholders currently running for reelection. They were all some version of ‘this is indefensible, this is unacceptable’ with some customization left to the individual politician’s sensibilities. And then no more.
In other words, no defections or recantations of support. The timing of the statements strongly suggests that they were released after some high level conference call or decision making. But the general plan seems clear: Say it’s deplorable and then hunker down.
We’ll have a list of the various statements for you shortly.
“No woman should ever be described in these terms or talked about in this manner. Ever.”
That’s a statement just out from RNC Chair Reince Priebus.
Notably, the issue is framed as entirely a matter of word choice and denigrating language.
This is a good moment to remember: long before the 2016 election cycle got under way one woman, his estranged wife, had accused Trump under oath of raping her and another had accused him, again under oath, of sexual assault and attempted rape.
Two big items of news in Lauren Fox’s amazingly reported piece on Trump and the middle class tax cut. First, she finally got the goods on whether or not Trump tried to get the New York City middle class tax break. He did. Second, Trump was apparently still going tax-less or virtually tax-less even after the expiration of those loss carry-forwards he got in 1995. Yes, even after the ability to use that close to $1 billion in losses had expired, Trump was still paying little or no taxes. Check it out.
In episode #5 of my new weekly podcast I talk to Bronze Age historian Eric Cline about his recent book 1177 BC: The Year Civilization Collapsed. We discuss this critical transition era in the ancient world, which coincides with the probable era of the Trojan War and the arrival or emergence of the Israelites in Canaan, his book and the challenges and bounties of studying this period of history in which archeology is so central to what we know of the era. Click here to listen.
Enjoy.