How Far Will The Unpopular And Desperate Queens-Born Casino Operator Go To Hold Onto His Power?

I'm going to start with some polling from yesterday. Gallup first. They show Trump sinking below 40%-- 4 points down since the end of February. Republicans like him; everyone else hates him. Now a less known poll from Navigator Research, "a project designed to better understand the American public’s views on issues of the day and help advocates, elected officials, and other interested parties understand the language, imagery and messaging needed to make and win key policy arguments." This particular poll is mostly about Climate Change but they also have some Trump findings: "This month, just 38% believe the president generally does what’s best for the country, a new low and a 6-point decline from December. 62% now tend to say the president puts himself first. Perception of Trump as self-interested has grown more rapidly than overall disapproval. As Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into the the 2016 Trump campaign and Russia’s possible involvement winds down, support for the probe has reached an all-time high of 58%."

And that leads right to yesterday's House vote on Jerry Nadler's Resolution 24-- "Expressing the sense of Congress that the report of Special Counsel Mueller should be made available to the public and to Congress." Nadler is the chair of the House Judiciary Committee and is cosponsors included the chairs of 5 other top committees: Maxine Waters (Financial Services), Adam Schiff (Intelligence), Elijah Cummings (Oversight), Eliot Engel (Foreign Affairs), Richard Neil (Way and Means). It passed with 420 votes. Florida Republican Matt Gaetz pulled his head out of Trump's ass long enough to vote "present." He was joined by 3 other Republicans refusing to go on-record favoring the public release of the report.

It also leads to yesterday's Senate vote that Trump lost badly when a large bipartisan majority of senators approved HJ 46, the resolution of disapproval for his phony state of emergency declaration. A dozen Republicans voted with every single Democrat (including right-wingers Sinema and Manchin) against Trump. The Republicans include Lamar Alexander (TN), Roy Blunt (MO), Susan Collins (ME), Mike Lee (UT), Jerry Moran (KS), Lisa Murkowski (AK), Randy Paul (KY), Rob Portman (OH), Mitt Romney (UT), Marco Rubio (FL), Pat Toomey (PA) and Roger Wicker (MS). Publicly Trump says he'll veto it; there are reports that privately, he's furious and looking for revenge.

Thursday morning, rejecting Trump's insistence that he can't be sued in state court, a New York appellate court ruled that Summer Zervos, a former Apprentice contestant, who Trump sexually harassed, can move forward with her defamation suit against Trump now, while he's still "president." In their statement, the justices explained that they "reject defendant President Trump's argument that the Supremacy Clause of the United States Constitution prevents a New York State court-- and every other state court in the country-- from exercising its authority under its state constitution. Instead, we find that the Supremacy Clause was never intended to deprive a state court of its authority to decide cases and controversies under the state's constitution."

Looking bad for what Spy Magazine editor Graydon Carter long, long ago referred to as a "short fingered vulgarian?" He struck back with a veiled threat that it's unimaginable any legitimate president would have ever uttered, "armed pushback," reported Daniel Dale, "against his political opponents." Breitbart News was interviewing Trump when he stopped attacking Paul Ryan long enough to mention "it would be very bad, very bad" if his supporters in the military, police and a motorcycle group were provoked into getting "tough." Trump was arguing that "the left" plays politics in a "tougher" and more "vicious" manner than the pro-Trump right even though "the tough people" are on Trump’s side.

“I have the support of the police, the support of the military, the support of the Bikers for Trump-- I have the tough people, but they don’t play it tough-- until they go to a certain point, and then it would be very bad, very bad,” Trump said.

...The quote prompted criticism and alarm when The Star tweeted it.

“This is how an authoritarian talks. Happening right in front of us,” Brendan Nyhan, a University of Michigan public policy professor who co-founded an initiative monitoring the state of U.S. democracy, said on Twitter.

“We can’t sugar-coat this. The President of the United States is encouraging the military, police, and bikers to violently attack his critics on the left,” liberal journalist Judd Legum tweeted.

“In which the president of the United States threatens street violence against his political opponents,” the liberal advocacy group Public Citizen tweeted. “What happens if Trump loses in 2020? Is that the ‘certain point?’”

Trump’s former lawyer Michael Cohen, who has been convicted of several crimes, testified to Congress in February: “Given my experience working for Mr. Trump, I fear that if he loses the election in 2020, that there will never be a peaceful transition of power.”

Trump made another veiled suggestion of retribution from the military, police and Bikers for Trump at a midterm campaign rally in Georgia in November. After mocking Antifa protesters as weaklings-- “you see these little arms,” he joked-- he said, “And then you see the clubs in their hands. You know, they’re tough guys, right. Where are the Bikers for Trump? Where are the police? Where are the military? Where are the ICE? Where are the Border Patrol? No. No. We’ve taken a lot. We’ve taken a lot, folks.”

Bikers for Trump, which has more than 300,000 followers on Facebook, is not a criminal biker gang.

Bikers for Trump founder Chris Cox, a chainsaw artist described in one 2017 newspaper profile as “exceedingly polite,” offered in advance of Trump’s inauguration in 2017 to form a “wall of meat” between the president and protesters. He said, though, that he expected a peaceful gathering. While group members have had verbal confrontations with anti-Trump protesters, there have not been reports of major violence.

Trump met with some of the Bikers for Trump at his Bedminster golf club in New Jersey in August. In November, Cox travelled to Florida and made unfounded allegations of election fraud. In December, Cox and his German shepherd stood outside the courthouse where former Trump national security adviser Michael Flynn was to be sentenced for lying to the FBI, with Cox telling Mother Jones Magazine he was “here to make sure [Flynn’s] family is not assaulted or intimidated.”

Trump also endorsed violence against protesters at some of his rallies in 2016. At one rally in Iowa, he urged his supporters to beat up anyone getting ready to “throw a tomato,” saying, “Knock the crap out of them…I promise you I will pay for the legal fees.”

Trump-- A One Trick Pony With Infantile Strategies Will Be No Match For Any World Leader (Other Than Duterte)

Trump has been feuding with Vanity Fair editor Graydon Carter since Carter was at Spy in the 1980's referring to Trump as a "short-fingered vulgarian," implying that he's not just a disgusting person but that he has a small penis. Trump has been obsessing over it for 30 years. If Trump was actually the owner of Vanity Fair he could hardly have done more for them than he did yesterday morning when he woke up and tweeted some typical Trump nonsense (above), calling massive attention to a restaurant review by Tina Nguyen few people would have otherwise seen, a review that suggests Trump Grill is a contender for worst restaurant in the country-- a place that serves very mediocre food "for timid people with digestive problems."

Donald Trump is “a poor person’s idea of a rich person,” Fran Lebowitz recently observed at The Vanity Fair New Establishment Summit. “They see him. They think, ‘If I were rich, I’d have a fabulous tie like that.’” Nowhere, perhaps, does this reflection appear more accurate than at Trump Grill (which is occasionally spelled Grille on various pieces of signage). On one level, the Grill (or Grille), suggests the heights of plutocratic splendor-- a steakhouse built into the basement of one’s own skyscraper... And like all exclusive bastions of haute cuisine, there is a sandwich board in front advertising two great prix fixe deals.

The allure of Trump’s restaurant, like the candidate, is that it seems like a cheap version of rich. The inconsistent menus—literally, my menu was missing dishes that I found on my dining partners’-- were chock-full of steakhouse classics doused with unnecessarily high-end ingredients. The dumplings, for instance, come with soy sauce topped with truffle oil, and the crostini is served with both hummus and ricotta, two exotic ingredients that should still never be combined. The menu itself would like to impress diners with how important it is, randomly capitalizing fancy words like “Prosciutto” and “Julienned” (and, strangely, ”House Salad”).

...[I]t was slop: as soon as I got home, I brushed my teeth twice and curled up in bed until the nausea passed.

...I reflexively want to be generous in my assessment of what the post-election Trump Grill says about the Trump presidency. Perhaps it’s a sign that Trump is in over his head, and a shallow, mediocre man who runs a shallow, mediocre business empire (and restaurant) would sink and implode, crushing the expectations of millions of his hopeful supporters. But watching Trump parade his enemies through the nearby lobby, taunting them with prestigious appointments only to cruelly humiliate them, I had to look over at the human cattle herd at the Trump Grill, overwhelming a well-meaning staff with their dreams of a meal fit for a president, and wonder if he cared about any of them, either.

I know I would never have seen that review, let alone republished it here, had it not been from Trump's early morning tweet-rage. Nor would I have seen this lovely photograph of el President-elect Señor Trumpanzee having his short fingers attended to.

And, by the way, as we've mentioned in the past, Graydon Carter is also something of a restauranteur and there's been culinary rancor between him and el Presidente-elect forever, as we see in the 2013 classic Trumpanzee tweet just above. The Waverly Inn, still going strong... and using Trump's attacks as promotional material.


UPDATE: Trumpanzee Impact On Vanity Fair

Vanity Fair broke its one-day subscription record thanks to el-Presidente-elect Señor Trumpanzee's silly, fatuous and gratuitous attack on them and their editor this week. New subscriptions increased 100 fold after Trump woke up, chopped up some Adderall, snorted it and started his maniacal tweeting.

Vanity Fair has seen a 2 percent increase in revenues YoY, and is set to be profitable in 2016, according to Condé Nast. Digital revenues are up 74 percent YoY, and make up 18 percent of the brand’s overall revenue. This is up from 11 percent of the overall revenues in 2015.

Circulation is up 2.8 percent at the magazine, according to the AAM statements for June 2015/2016. The mid-year audit posted the magazine's circulation at 1,232,588, compared to 1,197,922 in 2015.

In addition, VF.com had 14.3 million unique views in October, according to ComScore-- a 26.5 percent increase YoY.