TPM Reader RB checks in with this dispatch from the Trump rally in North Carolina yesterday. The perspective of a fellow TPM reader is different from what you typically get from news reports, and RB’s take is particularly nuanced.
One point before you dive in: This was the same rally where an attendee was caught on camera appearing to throw a punch at a black protestor, apparently out of RB‘s view.
Here’s RB‘s account:
Senate Republicans on why they can’t consider an Obama Supreme Court nominee: We can’t trust ourselves not to savage the nominee in an election year!
We’re listening to the Senate Judiciary meeting discuss the Republican refusal to hold any hearings on President Obama’s forthcoming Supreme Court nominee. (You can see running updates in Livewire over to the right.) The number of phony historical precedents, misleading analogies and just flat out bullshit Republicans are coming up with is frankly amazing – not surprising but amazing in its creativity. Everybody knows what’s happening. Everyone knows this is an entirely new thing. The stakes are high, yes. Everybody gets that. Apparently high enough to completely upend the practice of two centuries and at best ignore clear constitutional injunctions. But this again demonstrates that there’s no point talking to people who are committed to bullshit.
Sen. Ron Johnson: Of course we’d have a vote on SCOTUS if Obama were a Republican.
Trump supporter charged with assault for sucker punching protestor at Trump rally.
You may have seen this quite sad but also quite revealing article in The Washington Post about the collapse of the Rubio campaign. It’s fascinating piece. But the central element of the story is that what Byron York aptly called Rubio’s post-South Carolina “personality transplant” (I prefer to think of it as a firmware upgrade) was the turning point of his campaign and what really did him in. The additional critical element, according to the WaPo piece, is that big GOP donors were aghast when they saw Rubio go on his multi-day tear of sophomoric insults against Donald Trump.
But I don’t buy that for a second.
Of all the weird political stories of the last 24 hours, this may be the weirdest, and it has nothing to do with Trump so far as I can tell.
You’ve no doubt seen the news of the Trump supporter who brutally sucker punched a protestor as he was led out of the arena at a Trump rally yesterday. Unlike other earlier incidents, 78 year old John McGraw, the puncher, has been charged with assault. But here’s the thing. TPM Reader MS points out that at least once in recent months, Trump has offered to pay the legal fees of supporters who roughed up protestors at his events.
8:42 PM: So the big line tonight is that Trump is going to try to ‘go presidential’, calm down the tone and start pivoting to the general. That makes sense. And it does seem like Trump will try to do that. I’m skeptical he’ll be able to do that. Kasich won’t pull a Rubio 3.0. That’s not his brand. Rubio will have a hard time given all the grief he’s been getting over the Rubio 3.0 debacle. But Cruz has lots of incentive to hit Trump hard – not on silly Rubio stuff but on red meat ideological orthodoxy. I tend to doubt Trump can resist the characterological drive to strike back.
8:47 PM: I guess Reince Priebus is not part of the #NeverTrump movement. (I’m among the half hour hostage of CNN like you are.)
Former Jeb staffer, now spokesman for Anti-Trump group, imbibes the Trumpist mojo and goes in for inter-male height-shaming with CNN’s new official Trump surrogate (and former Apprentice contestant) Andy Dean.
Dean: “We are tough. We’re winning.”
Miller: “That’s why you’re sitting in a booster chair right now, because you want to seem tall and strong.”