Everybody Sees Trump As A Conman Now, But Every Side Wants To Blame The Other Side

#NeverTrump conservatives feel vindicated... even vaguely brilliant and heroic. They said all along that Trump has always been a political opportunist who's never believed in anything but himself. Great... but I don't know anyone who didn't know that all along. Yes, Trump has always been a con man. Who could have missed that? John Ziegler began his Saturday column reminding us that almost exactly a year ago Señor Trumpanzee had said "I’m very capable of changing to anything I want to change to." That confirmed what he had long seen in Trump, namely that he was "a liberal conman who was uniquely unqualified for the job."

Normal people tend to just see Trump as a conman who was uniquely unqualified for the job. But to Ziegler, a conservative Republican, Trump had to be a liberal for the demonology to work. He reminds his reader that It was obvious that Trump was never going to be "able, or even willing, to fulfill most of his often insanely unrealistic campaign promises. It was also clear that he was very likely to move to the left, just as Arnold Schwarzenegger did here in California if things didn’t immediately work out for him politically."

Now, even after all the back-wrenching flip-flops of his fledging administration, the changes have come at an accelerated pace in past few days. Trump has altered his entire persona as if he is a man in the midst of a mid-life crisis. Like Madonna or Lady Gaga, he has suddenly reinvented himself into an almost completely new character, without even a hint of concern for what he consistently promised previous to taking office.

The campaign version of Donald Trump is officially dead. Having catastrophically crashed against the jagged rocks of reality, not even 100 days into his presidency, Trump is clearly abandoning his original ship and setting a new course in a vastly different direction.

Just this week Trump drastically altered his position on:

• China and the prospect of his promised a trade war with them
• The importance of NATO
• Steve Bannon’s role in his White House
• Whether Wikileaks is good, or bad

All of this was quite shocking, even to media veterans who have been highly skeptical of Trump in the past. Meanwhile his press secretary, taking a page right out of George Orwell’s 1984, actually claimed, with a straight face, that Trump isn’t the one who is “evolving,” but rather, it is the issues that are moving towards him!

On top of all of this, the man who ran of a platform of “America First” and who routinely mocked an interventionist foreign policy, specifically in Syria, has instigated immediate military action in… Syria, apparently at the behest of his… daughter. He has also gotten credit (dubiously) for dropping a huge bomb on Afghanistan and has been rattling his saber with regard to North Korea.

Oh, and apparently Russia is now our enemy again and we even seem to be bragging about how horrible relations with them suddenly are. Of course, that all does seem a bit like a man going out of his way to distance himself from his mistress once he realized that his wife was getting too suspicious.

There have been many interpretations of this remarkable transformation. The Washington Post says that Trump is now a “conventional” Republican. Glenn Beck believes that he is looking like another Republican who didn’t keep his promises. Politico suggests that Trump is now basically just like Hillary Clinton.

I think that there is truth in all of that analysis. However, there seem to me to be a few things missing from what appears to be the emerging (and almost always wrong) “conventional wisdom” about this (not really) stunning turn of events.

Part of why Trump is so “capable of changing into anything” is that he believes in absolutely nothing except what he thinks is good for him at that moment. So, while some in the media have given him credit for some sort of instant maturation or recognition of the realities of governance, I see him simply adapting via his finely-honed survival instincts.

It seems clear that he had no idea what he was in for with regard to how impossible it is to get things done in Washington. As a guy who has been a dictator most of his business career, he was very poorly suited for this job. The healthcare debacle made him realize this and he quickly, somewhat to his credit, turned exclusively to things over which a president has almost complete control.

Consequently, renegotiating trade deals, building massive walls, draining the swamp, repealing Obamacare, putting Hillary in jail, and maybe even drastically reducing taxes, are all out. What remains are, usually vastly overblown executive orders and military strikes.

Effectively, Trump is feeling impotent in most of the job, so he is now going to basically ignore the areas where he lacks real power and simply focus on the parts where people pretty much have to do exactly as he says. Military strikes also happen to be super fun and probably really good for his already sadly sagging poll numbers.

Now, to be clear, some of this is good. As long as we don’t go too far, a strong show of US military force can pay dividends elsewhere around the world. Trump’s rhetoric on illegal immigration has, on its own, apparently drastically reduced the flow across the border (at least until they realize that it’s all a bluff). A trade war with China would have been an economic disaster.

“Never Trump” conservatives like me have been ridiculed because Neil Gorsuch was, thankfully, confirmed to the Supreme Court, thus ensuring that no matter what Trump does from here, it can’t be worse than what we would have gotten with Hillary. However, this denunciation from our “conservative” critics is extremely shortsighted.

The upgrade from Merrick Garland to Gorsuch may indeed be significant for many years to come. But much like a sports trade where one team gives up its future for a small immediate gain, I believe that “conservatives” will be paying a very dear price for Trump in ways which most of us haven’t even fully contemplated.

Obviously, since that won’t be known for quite some time, this isn’t the reason that this week was a vindication for the “Never Trumpers.” That happened because we warned the Trump cult that he would never be able to deliver what he promised and that he would change in unpredictable and potentially very unsatisfactory ways if he was ever somehow elected.

We now know that we were indeed right. The Trump who got elected didn’t even last 100 days. Now we will all find out which form this chameleon takes on next and how many more transformations there will be between now and the end of his time in office. You can be pretty sure that this one won’t be the last.

So that's how conservatives see Trump. OK? I wonder if it would be enough for Ziegler to slow him down on Tuesday in the GA-06 special election, where a vote for Jon Ossoff is a vote for Trump to spend even more of his time-- like all of his time-- going from one shoddy Trump resort or gold course to another. I doubt it.

China Is As Successful As A Trump Manipulator As It's Been As A Currency Manipulator

Today MSNBC's morning mental midget show celebrated Señor Tumpanzee discarding virtually the entire electoral platform he used to lure morons into voting for him-- and yes, I admit it; I do feel everyone and anyone who voted for Trump is a moron-- and if that makes you feel bad, I'm not sorry-- time to face the music and go back to school or get a tutor or something. And no, there are no exceptions. If you voted for Trump, you are a moron. Anyway, Wednesday he flip-flopped on a whole slew of issues and Joe Scarborough was so proud of him because he flip-flopped in the right direction on all of them! Hurray!

China is no longer a currency manipulator. NATO is no longer obsolete. The crony capitalism of the Export Import Bank is actually a wonderful thing after all. And Jenet Yellen is just swell too. So he flip-flopped... as long as he doesn't withdraw his statement that Mexicans are rapists, the moron brigade won't care and will continue supporting him. Besides, as Politico put it Wednesday evening, "The man who pledged to cut deals rather than adhere to any ideology-- or to any detailed policy platform-- has, in recent days, demonstrated an incredible willingness to bend his past positions, or abandon them entirely. Sometimes he offers an explanation; sometimes not... From health care and the Export-Import Bank to NATO and to China’s alleged currency manipulation, Trump has made moves that would leave a more traditional politician labeled a flip-flopper. But for Trump, who sold himself in part on a businessman’s flexibility, the moves fit his reputation for unpredictability. "I said it was obsolete," Trump said of NATO during a news conference with Jens Stoltenberg, the body’s secretary general on Wednesday, referring to a comment he made during the campaign. "It’s no longer obsolete."

On China, too, Trump has changed his posture. He regularly, and gleefully, lambasted China on the campaign trail, painting it as a prime culprit for Americans’ economic woes and vowing to toughen up trading policy with the world’s second-largest economy-- first and foremost by labeling the nation a currency manipulator.

“They’re not currency manipulators,” Trump told The Wall Street Journal on Wednesday. He said any currency manipulation has ceased and suggested such a label would hurt the prospects of working with China to declaw a nuclear-armed and increasingly belligerent North Korea.

If He'll Sell Them Out On Xenophobia, Can Trump's Fans Trust Him On Anything At All?

Despite all the hubbub in recent days, Team Trumpanzee isn't grappling for a coherent immigration policy, just a p.r. approach that can appease suburban voters who shun overt racism, xenophobia and gratuitous viciousness while not turning off Trump's base among racists, xenophobes and the gratuitously vicious. Republican Party operative Stuart Stevens hasn't been impressed. He referred to the Trumpanzee Campaign as "utter chaos [and] a smash and grab operation, not a campaign." The Hispanic Chamber of Commerce has always remained neutral in presidential races-- until this year. Because of Señor Trumpanzee's unending provocation against Hispanics in America they broken a nearly 4 decade long tradition and endorsed Clinton. Yesterday the president of the group, Javier Palomarez, told MSNBC that Trump's "new" rhetoric on immigration "is nothing more than an act of desperation."

Trump's patently insincere "outreach" to minority groups ins't moving minority groups, who see right through him and it probably isn't doing him much good with the suburbanites its supposed to mollify. As Greg Sargent's solid tweetstorm yesterday made perfectly clear that "by signaling a softening, Trump and Kellyanne Conway were testing whether they could have it both ways," trying to simultaneously assure suburbanites (and media patsies) they only want to deport criminals (like Obama does), "while also winking at hard liners by saying, 'don't worry, the 11 million still remain subject to deportation, and won't be legalized'."

Byron York made the case on the far right that Trump and Kellyanne are making a mess of things with what is being perceived as flip-flops.

One thing is certain in the current brouhaha over Donald Trump's immigration proposals: the candidate and his top aides are making a mess of things. What is the status of his old proposal to deport all immigrants who are in the United States illegally? After days of Trump and his senior advisers talking about it, the answer is entirely unclear.

The fundamental problem vexing Team Trump is that the deportation proposal was never really clear. Yes, Trump said it often last year, but he also pointedly left it out of many immigration discussions, as well. It went largely unnoticed, for example, that when Trump posted an immigration position paper on his campaign website last year, it had a lot about a border wall and enhanced enforcement-- and nothing at all about mass deportations.

...The strategy-- making strength on immigration Trump's signature issue-- worked fantastically well in Trump's march through the Republican primaries. But the general election campaign is different, and Trump has finally found himself under pressure to clarify his position. And in the last 72 hours Trump has lost control of the issue.

His new campaign manager, Kellyanne Conway, has said Trump's position on deportations is to be determined. Trump himself has said things that appear to be hardline and things that appear much softer. The problem will not be resolved until Trump lays out, in some systematic way, where he stands on the question and explains in turn where that position fits into his larger immigration policy.

Trump's deportation mess is troubling to some of the best-informed conservatives on the immigration issue because it creates a huge and damaging controversy over a matter that is not at the heart of solving the larger immigration problem. "The disposition of the 12 million illegals already here is not the core dilemma we face," writes Mark Krikorian, of the Center for Immigration Studies, which favors tighter limits on immigration. "The core dilemma is how to make sure we don't end up with another 12 million illegal aliens."

What Trump does could have a serious effect on his campaign. Perhaps a new, more moderate position might attract some undecided voters. But a retreat from the deportation pledge, or at least what many supporters believed Trump's deportation pledge to be, could disillusion some who have supported and worked for Trump's candidacy. There are a significant number of Trump supporters who were drawn to him because of his stand on immigration.

Like Ann Coulter. The conservative author has written a new book, In Trump We Trust: E Pluribus Awesome!, and in an appearance on MSNBC Tuesday said she hoped Trump is not, in fact, backing away from his positions on immigration.

Still, Trump's recent statements "sound very consultant to me," Coulter said. "I think this is a mistake." And she added: "This could be the shortest book tour ever if he's really softening his position on immigration."

Coulter has basically said it doesn't matter to the mass of Trump's brain-dead fans how much flip-flopping he doers on anything... except white nationalism. The Know Nothing position on immigration is not a bargaining chip for her and for at least a large portion of the most bloodthirsty of the deranged Trumpists. Embracing the Jeb-and-Marco amnesty plan is not something they'll take laying down. Nick Gass at Politico called Coulter's attitude shift a sense of disgust with the hint of Trumpanzee openness, as though she ever thought he ever really stood for anything at all beyond attaining his own personal goal of winning.

Speaking to Fox News' Sean Hannity in a town hall event broadcast Wednesday night, Trump floated multiple ideas for the audience's reaction, including one in which undocumented immigrants would pay "back taxes" but added, "there's no amnesty, but we work with them." Trump recounted meeting with "very strong people" who have told him "it's so tough" to throw out people who have been in the country for 15 to 20 years.

"It's a very, very hard thing," Trump conceded.

State Senator Pramila Jayapal (D-WA) is one of the most accomplished and forceful of the Blue America-endorsed congressional candidates this cycle. She has never stood for the ugly bigotry and divisiveness behind the Trump messaging. Last might she told us that "Trump would do well to remember that the majority of candidates-- even at a local level-- who try to talk tough on immigration end up losing. That will certainly be true at the Presidential level-- and his recent vagueness and flip flopping seems to be admitting this reality. The majority of Americans-- both Republican and Democrat-- know that America needs humane and just comprehensive immigration reform that brings 11 million undocumented immigrants out of the shadows, creates a path to citizenship, reunites our families and levels the playing field for and protects workers. Deporting 11 million people makes no sense and is inhumane-- and spending billions more on border security and building a wall is equally nonsensical. It’s also no formula for winning elections. I’ve fought for immigration reform for 15 years, and in 2013, the US Senate passed-- with 67 bipartisan votes-- a bill that would finally move us forward as a country. Smart politicians would do well to get on board with that quickly."

Nevada state Senator Ruben Kihuen, an immigrant himself, has a similar approach to Pramila's. He told us that Trump will be unable to pivot away from having called "Mexican immigrants rapists and drug criminals or calling for a mass deportation force. But these hardline policy ideas that demonize families like mine aren't just Trump's views-- they are representative of today's GOP. My Tea Party opponent, Congressman Hardy, plays right into this playbook: he fear-mongers about immigrants taking jobs, opposes a path to full and equal citizenship, and votes against President Obama’s actions that protect hard-working immigrant families from being ripped apart."



And in the midst of all this, we have a Washington Post/ABC News poll this month that shows a whopping 60% of Americans agreeing that Trump is biased against women and against minorities. Only 36% of Americans think Trump isn't biased.

Who Will Protect Social Security From Paul Ryan? Not Trump-- And Not Any Corrupt Conservatives From Either Party

Over the weekend, the NY Times speculated that the "early optimism" in the Clinton camp for an easy landslide win against a Trump campaign weighed down with so much baggage "is evaporating." The hopeless party hacks and mercenary lobbyists who control her dull, utterly conventional campaign have no idea how to fight Trump. "In the corridors of Congress, on airplane shuttles between New York and Washington, at donor gatherings and on conference calls, anxiety is spreading through the Democratic Party that Mrs. Clinton is struggling to find her footing. While she enjoys many demographic advantages heading into the fall, key Democrats say they are growing worried that her campaign has not determined how to combat her unpredictable, often wily Republican rival, to whom criticism seldom sticks and rules of decorum seem not to apply." Today one of the world's most brilliant men, Stephen Hawkings told a British TV audience that Trump is a demagogue who seems to appeal to the lowest common denominator." Does anyone doubt what Trump's pre-adolescent respond is likely to be?

In any case, Bernie would make a far more formidable opponent to Trump, and not just because independent voters-- as much as 40% of the electorate-- find Bernie the most appealing candidate at a time when they find Hillary and Trump about equally unappetizing. Bernie is a credible opponent for the Establishment Trump and Hillary personify. When Daniel Marans excoriated Trump for his flip-flops and lies on Social Security, he outlined a field of attack that Bernie would use effectively and with fluency against Trump that probably couldn't be carried off by a candidate like Hillary who's lives in a space halfway between Bernie's and Trump's. If Bernie is an FDR Democrat and Trump is an opportunist with fascist tendencies, Hillary is an Eisenhower Republican, all positions going back to each of the candidates' upbringings.

Marans reported that at their May 12th fence-mending meeting, "Trump supposedly told House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) he supports cutting Social Security but will not admit it publicly because it would hurt his election chances, according to a report in Bloomberg Business Week."

“From a moral standpoint, I believe in it,” Trump said of cutting Social Security. “But you also have to get elected. And there’s no way a Republican is going to beat a Democrat when the Republican is saying, ‘We’re going to cut your Social Security’ and the Democrat is saying, ‘We’re going to keep it and give you more.’”

Trump’s professed opposition to cutting Social Security and Medicare has been both a hallmark of his campaign and one of his greatest departures from traditional conservative ideology. And Ryan, who repeatedly criticized Trump before the mogul effectively secured the GOP nomination, has made proposing dramatic reductions in the popular social insurance programs a defining feature of his congressional career.

Many conservative House Republicans told The Huffington Post shortly after the May 12 meeting that that they were unconcerned about Trump’s public posture on the programs. Several members interpreted him as wanting to extend the solvency of Social Security and Medicare solvency through some combination of the benefit cuts and other reforms that conservatives favor.

Trump policy advisor Sam Clovis had already appeared to reverse course on May 11, indicating that Trump would be willing to consider cuts as president.

Of course, what Trump reportedly said to Ryan is consistent with what he told Fox News host Sean Hannity back in 2011.

“Things have to be done, but it has to be done with both parties together,” Trump said at the time. “You can’t have the Republicans get too far ahead of this issue.”

Trump may very well be running his campaign according to beliefs he espoused years ago: Social Security and Medicare must be cut, but telling people that should be avoided, because it is too politically unpopular.

“It is really clear: Donald Trump would 100 percent go along with the Republican donor class position of cutting Social Security,” said Alex Lawson, executive director of Social Security Works, a group that promotes benefits expansion. “He openly says he will lie to the people about it because he knows that the people are against it.”

“In his eyes the ‘moral’ thing to do is to steal people’s hard-earned benefits and not talk about it,” Lawson added.

Social Security, the United States’ public retirement, disability and life insurance program, faces a funding gap beginning in 2034. Without congressional action to either raise the program’s revenues or scale back benefits there will be an across-the-board benefit cut of approximately 20 percent.

The Democratic party has adopted steadily more progressive positions on Social Security in recent years, arguing not only that the shortfall should be closed entirely through revenue increases-- such as lifting the cap on earnings subject to Social Security taxes-- but also that benefits should be expanded to address a growing retirement income deficit.

Of course the first congressional candidate we went to for some insight was Eric Kingson, Syracuse University professor and founder of SocialSecurityWorks. Eric is the progressive candidate vying with 2 random establishment Democrats to take on Republican freshman John Katko. (Needless to say, the DCCC, Pelosi, Schumer, Israel, Gillibrand and the rest of the Democratic Party shitheads are supporting the conservative Democrats.) "No surprise, Donald Trump is now telling Speaker Ryan that he's willing to cut Social Security," Eric told us today. "What else would you expect from the political sociopath who's captured the lunatic fringe and what's left of the Republican Party? He knows that Americans-- conservatives moderates and progressives-- do not want to see our Social Security cut. So he simply lies and says he won't do it. It's the same game many Republican representatives play, like Representative Katko in my district. But when Speaker Ryan demands their vote to cut Social Security, they'll gladly give it."

Bill Ostrander is another Bernie-supporting progressive, like Eric Kingson (above) and Lou Vince (below), who is adamant about protecting and expanding Social Security.He's running for the open seat in Santa Barbara/San Luis Obispo against a gaggle of conservative establishment candidates from both political parties. This morning he told us that "Given that Donald Trump inherited more wealth from his father at a young age than most people earn in a lifetime, and has never suffered from want, he is uniquely unqualified to offer perspective regarding social security. Those among us who choose, or are often confined, to our communities less skilled jobs and services, are still filling necessary functions of our community and deserve to have a basic financial safety net of dignity, gratitude, and access to health care. The contempt and lack of compassion shown to our elderly is not only economically short sighted-- the cost will not go away but be born elsewhere, it reveals a lack of social maturity among us."

Lou Vince, in the district next door, is the progressive opponent to Social Security and Medicare slasher Steve Knight in a district spanning northern L.A. County and eastern Ventura County. Lou is the official nominee of the California Democratic Party but is being violently attacked by a now tragically unhinged Nancy Pelosi and her whacked-out and fully destructive DCCC on behalf of some rich conservative guy the DCCC parachuted into CA-25 from Orange County. Lou has been vocal about protecting Social Security and Medicare from Republicans and from conservative Democrats who make common cause with Republicans. "Steve Knight," he told us, "is one of the biggest dangers to Social Security in Congress. He went so far to say Social Security was a mistake at a recent debate with me. Not only did I disagree, I called him out for his belief that Social Security is an entitlement. It's no such thing. It's an earned benefit that our seniors worked hard for and paid into. With the likes of Congressman Knight in office, Social Security will always be under threat. I will be a steadfast defender of Social Security and attempts to undermine it, like the idea of 'chained CPI' which is just another way to take money from our seniors. I also stand for raising the payroll tax cap so that everyone pays their fair share."

Protecting Social Security-- and Medicare-- isn't going to be easy. That's why it's absolutely essential that we elect members of Congress who are unequivocally committed to doing just that. No one gets on this list unless, like Lou Vince, they are:

Is America Really Ready For A Con Artist As President-- One As Blatant As Trump?

It's not like all of his Republican rivals haven't mentioned over the course of the primary campaign that Trump is a con man. They did. But now, whether tribally or opportunistically, most of them want to force that con man onto the country. Is it hard for you to imagine that the majority of Republican political leaders would put their party first and the country last? Marco Rubio may have said he would never stop exposing Trump as a dangerous con artist, but, apparently, "never" to a Florida Republican doesn't mean the same thing as it means to a normal person. He's now on the Trump-is-better-than-Hillary team. In fact, almost all the members of the House who are still in the #NeverTrump camp are also-- like Scott Rigell (R-VA), Richard Hanna (R-NY), and Reid Ribble (R-WI)-- retiring from Congress this year or fighting for reelection in blue districts like Carlos Curbelo (R-FL), Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-FL) and Robert Dold (R-IL).

Then you get a clown like Peter King, from a blue-leaning district that stretches along the South Shore of Long Island, and who wants it both ways. He's endorsed Trump, since they agree on almost everything, but says he won't campaign for him because Trump said Japan, Korea and other nations should develop their own nuclear weapons and stop depending on the U.S. for defense. King's Democratic opponent, DuWayne Gregory, presiding officer of the Suffolk County Legislature, is making sure his constituents are aware of King's support for Trump. He told us that "King is trying to have it both ways. He said Trump was 'unfit to be President,' and now supports him, because he is the party nominee but will not campaign for him. Putting politics before the good of the country is irresponsible. It isn't want people who live in Nassau and Suffolk expect from their Representative."

Last week a poll from Morning Consult indicated that almost half of the general election voters say they are less likely to support candidates for office if those candidates say they back Trump.

If a candidate running for elected office said they support Trump, 38 percent of voters said they were “much less likely” to support them and 11 percent said they were “somewhat less likely.” Among those who identified as independents, roughly one-third (34 percent) said they were much less likely to support a Trump-backing candidate, while 40 percent said they were more likely to support a candidate who opposed him.

Twenty-nine percent of all voters said they were “much more likely” to support a candidate if they said they opposed Trump, and 20 percent said they were somewhat more likely.

Support for Trump’s candidacy is particularly troubling for women. Almost half of the 522 women polled (43 percent) said they would be much less likely to vote for a candidate who backs Trump, and 20 percent of Republican women said supporting Trump would also make them less likely to vote for a candidate.

This is even more pronounced in districts with large Hispanic populations where Republicans like David Valadao, who represents a California district that is 74% Hispanic, Jeff Denham, also a Californian with a heavily Latino (42%) district, Steve Knight, 38% Hispanic, also in California, and Cresent Hardy, a Nevada Republican with a 29% Republican district, are all likely to lose their seats. Except for incompetent-- and in some cases corrupt-- recruitment by the DCCC, the Democrats would be able to win back over half the 30 Republican-helf districts that have 25% of higher Latino populations. Unfortunately, the DCCC wrote off 22 of those 30 districts and are weak in most of the others.

Meanwhile-- going back to the con artist aspect of Trump-- Greg Ip, writing for the Wall Street Journal Friday wonders whether Republican voters even care that almost nothing that Trump says about economic matters adds up. Trump, he wrote, "would slash taxes by trillions of dollars, leave entitlements alone, boost spending on infrastructure and defense, and, claims an advisor, deliver a budget surplus of $4.5 trillion to $7 trillion. There is no credible way to reconcile these claims. Mr. Trump’s proposals will, if enacted, dramatically raise the debt, not decrease it, much less produce a surplus. Politically, though, it doesn’t appear to matter. As Mr. Trump understands well, voters care a lot less than wonks and journalists do about policy details." Ip then points out that Trump changes his positions virtually "at will to neutralize his rivals’ lines of attack. In others, this would be called flip-flopping or prevarication. To Mr. Trump’s supporters, it’s candor." He adds that "[a]ll politicians make conflicting promises on the campaign trail. The question is, once in office, which prevails? Mr. Trump is a populist, not a movement conservative. His instinct will be to give his political base what it wants, not what conservative wonks prescribe. That means lower taxes and no change to entitlements. And if that drives up debt? If it doesn’t bother voters, it probably won’t bother him."



Want to help elect a Trumpist-free Congress? Clicking on the thermometer will take you to a page where you can do just that:

Democratic Primary Voters Don't Like Flip-Flopping On Social Security-- And In Oregon, It's Not Just Trump Who Is-- Tuesday Is D-Day For Kurt Schrader

At least Trump doesn't support "saving" Social Security and Medicare by cutting the benefits, the way Paul Ryan, most Republicans and the Wall Street-owned New Dems do. Right? As with all policy matters involving Trump, who knows? At one time he said he opposed cuts to Social Security nut now that he's trying to corral support from the Republican Establishment-- not just approval from Paul Ryan by $100 million from anti-Social Security fanatic, half man/half pig Sheldon Adelson-- Trump now says he's open to cuts to Social Security and Medicare. Speaking Wednesday at the world capital of Let's Get Rid Of Social Security, the Pete Peterson Foundation, a top Trump advisor, Sam Clovis, said Trump would be open to a bipartisan look at entitlement spending and would consider changes to Social Security and Medicare if he is elected. "After the administration has been in place, then we will start to take a look at all of the programs, including entitlement programs like Social Security and Medicare... We'll take a hard look at those to start seeing what we can do in a bipartisan way," said Clovis. But "a bipartisan way" doesn't mean dealing with mainstream Democrats like Pelosi. It means dealing with the treacherous Republican wing of the Democratic Party, the New Dems and Blue Dogs. We'll come back to that in a moment.

On the campaign trail in Wisconsin last month, [Trump] attacked Republicans who he said would cut Social Security benefits.

"It's my absolute intention to leave Social Security the way it is," Trump said during a Republican debate in March. "I want to make our country rich again so we can afford it."

Trump has been using Social Security and Medicare as a bludgeon to beat up on Paul Ryan and has connected the dots for his followers over the months: "[Ryan is] so anti-Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security," Trump told them. Last week he responded to Ryan by tweeting "I am not ready to support Speaker Ryan's agenda."

As Morning Consult reported Thursday, this is getting more serious as Republicans huddled with Energy and Commerce Committee chairman Fred Upton behind closed doors last week, plotting how to eliminate the Affordable Care Act and cut Medicare benefits.

Medicare changes discussed at the meeting included enhancing Medicare Advantage, the private alternative to traditional fee-for-service Medicare, and raising the Medicare eligibility age... [L]eaders also talked about using per-capita caps to fund Medicaid.

..."A lot of it is just trying to understand what they’re trying to do. But it’s turning out to be more encompassing than what we expected. Previously, we only talked about the private marketplace and Medicaid expansion. Now, we’re actually adding in Medicare and the premium support-- the things Paul Ryan has been talking about for years," said Rep. John Fleming (R-La.), a member of the conservative House Freedom Caucus.

So what about the Democrats who are the Ryan side of the argument, the ones who want to cut Social Security and Medicare benefits and raise the retirement age? Almost no Democrats will publicly admit they're in that camp but when the head of the Blue Dogs, Oregon Congressman Kurt Schrader, offered an amendment on February 6, 2013 to accept the Simpson Bowles proposals that do just that, 54 right-of-center Democrats went along. Schrader's House Amendment 19 to HR 444 failed 75-348. Thankfully, many of the Democratic traitors were defeated at the polls and are no longer in Congress, but these are some of the Democrats who voted for a death sentence for Social Security that day:

• Ami Bera (New Dem-CA)
• Cheri Bustos (Blue Dog-IL)
• Gerry Connolly (New Dem-VA)
• Jim Cooper (Blue Dog-TN)
• Jim Costa (Blue Dog-CA)
• Joe Crowley (New Dem-NY)
• Henry Cuellar (Blue Dog-TX)
• Susan Davis (New Dem-CA)
• John Delaney (New Dem-MD)
• Denny Heck (New Dem-WA)
• Jim Himes (New Dem-CT)
• Steny Hoyer (MD)
• Derek Kilmer (New Dem-WA)
• Ron Kind (New Dem-WI)
• Rick Larsen (New Dem-WA)
• Dan Lipinski (Blue Dog-IL)
• Gregory Meeks (New Dem-NY)
• Scott Peters (New Dem-CA)
• Collin Peterson (Blue Dog-MN)
• Loretta Sanchez (Blue Dog-CA)
• Kurt Schrader (Blue Dog-OR)
• Terri Sewell (New Dem-AL)
• Adam Smith (New Dem-WA)
• Chris Van Hollen (MD)
• Filemon Vela (New Dem-TX)

New Dems Joe Garcia (FL) and Pete Gallego (TX) both voted for it as well and were subsequently defeated for reelection. I mention these two scumbags because both are trying to worm their way back into Congress this year. This would be an especially good year week to defeat Kurt Schrader, who has a strong progressive opponent, Dave McTeague. The two face off Tuesday. Bernie is expected to win in Oregon. If all his voters back McTeague, who is actively campaigning for Bernie-- while Schrader is a pledged Hillary SuperDelegate-- Schrader will be defeated and a major message about accountability will go out to every corrupt Democrat in Congress. McTeague and all the progressives on this list want to expand, not cut, Social Security:

And You Thought Romney Was A Serial Flip-Flopper? Meet The Donald

Anyone who's watched this season's dysfunctional Republican primary reality show-- Herr Trumpf vs the (Not Very) Deep Bench-- understands that Trump has, in the words of McCain top staffer Mark Salter, "an unstable personality." Once Trump sewed up the nomination Salter, a lifelong Republican, decided to support Hillary, although, when questioned, he said he could still change his mind if Trump gets "a brain transplant." Trump he explained "is just an asshole. I mean, you don't want a guy like that for a neighbor, for a friend, for a member of your church, for a colleague, for a boss. You wouldn’t want-- really, you wouldn’t-- you know, if he had a flat tire, you wouldn’t pull over and offer to help... Trump’s sort of breezy, which is galling, given his own lack of military service... He said he was waging his own personal Vietnam, you know, avoiding venereal disease. So yeah, it just shows you what a vainglorious, foolish, ignorant, low-character, bum of a guy Trump is."

And then there are the policies. Well, in truth, there are no policies-- there's just Herr Trumpf and his cult of personality. A spokesman told Politico yesterday that Trump "doesn't want to waste time on policy and thinks it would make him less effective on the stump. It won't be until after he is elected but before he's inaugurated that he will figure out exactly what he is going to do and who he is going to try to hire." A policy-- even one rooted in core values and principles going back decades-- is utterly meaningless once it makes a momentary, opportunistic point. What he says at 8AM is as likely as not to have completely changed by noon and could very well change again by the time he's up late at night getting into Twitter wars.

Monday Brody Mullins, explained for Wall Street Journal readers a basic trusim of American politics: markets fear and loath uncertainty.

Andrew Weinstein, a former Republican strategist and adviser at the Securities and Exchange Commission, said that companies “hate uncertainty around tax, regulatory and trade policy” and so may steer clear of backing Mr. Trump.

“Business interests are generally not sold on the notion that Trump will be a more business-friendly candidate; there’s a lot about Trump they don’t know,” said Ed Rogers, a Republican lobbyist. “They know Hillary. And they know that she is not antibusiness.”

...Even some donors who previously backed Mr. Trump have since changed their minds. Ralph Herzka, CEO and founder of the investment advisory firm Meridian Capital Partners, is among the couple hundred donors who have donated the maximum to Mr. Trump’s campaign, giving $2,700 late last June. He appears to have since soured on the real-estate billionaire, donating twice that amount to Mrs. Clinton in January-- $2,700 for the primary, and another $2,700 for the general.

Sunday, on This Week, Trump told George Stephanopoulos that all that analysis of his tax plan that shows humongous and unsustainable tax breaks for the mega-rich is wrong and that taxes on the rich "will go up a little bit... In my plan they’re going down, but by the time it’s negotiated they’ll go up... In my opinion the taxes for the rich will go up somewhat." Yesterday he was singing a different tune-- one more in line with conservative orthodoxy-- on Chris Cuomo's CNN show:



"Everybody’s getting a tax cut, especially the middle class," he said. "I said I may have to increase it on the wealthy. If I increase it on the wealthy, that means they’re still going to be paying less than they’re paying now. I’m not talking about increasing from this point, I’m talking about increasing from my tax proposal. [The wealthy] will be getting a reduction."

There are virtually no policies he's discussed where he hasn't muddied the water. Sunday on Meet The Press in a discussion of the minimum wage, he said, "I would like to see an increase of some magnitude... I don’t know how people make it on $7.25 an hour." Later he remembered he was supposed to stick to anti-right-wing sentiments about the minimum wage and she added that he'd "rather leave it to the states. Let the states decide." So does Trump want to abolish the minimum wage entirely in deep red, anti-union states or does he want it to go up? Who the hell knows? Probably not any of the people around him and probably not Trump himself. Before endorsing him yesterday, Bobby Jindal had told Republican primary voters that Trump is nothing bit an "unserious and unstable narcissist" with "no understanding of policy" who is "full of bluster but has no substance. He lacks the intellectual curiosity to even learn."

Trump, wrote Sahil Kapur "has been famously fickle when it comes to his proposals. In April he abruptly abandoned a three-week-old proposal to eliminate the national debt during his presidency. In March, he took three positions on abortion in the span of three hours. During his interview on ABC on Sunday, Trump also acknowledged softening his opposition to a higher minimum wage after saying U.S. wages were 'too high' during a November debate. 'I'm allowed to change. You need flexibility,' he said."

James Pethokoukis, a policy writer with the conservative American Enterprise Institute, described Trump's Sunday comments as “a big deal” for the Republican Party.

“Ronald Reagan's tax cuts were a generation ago. The economy boomed even with the Clinton tax increases and tanked after the Bush tax cuts. Whatever the accuracy of that causality, that sequence plus rising inequality has increased voter skepticism about tax cuts,” Pethokoukis said in an e-mail. “The public clearly sees the GOP as the ‘party of the rich,’ and it needs to re-establish trust with the middle and working class. Imagine a future Republican presidential primary where it isn't always 1980, where GOP candidates don't feel compelled to mimic Reagan and offer fantasy tax plans as the price of admission.” ... If sustained, they would mark a departure from Republican candidates dating back to Reagan, who embraced across-the-board tax breaks, a litmus-test plank for conservative activists and some major donors. Democrats, who defeated Mitt Romney in 2012 by painting him as a candidate interested in serving the rich at the expense of the middle class, have been gearing up to make a similar case against Trump in November.

“Trump offered a big tax cut in the primaries in what now looks like a transparent ruse to win over the supply-side wing of the party,” Pethokoukis said. “But seeing as those tax cuts aren't popular, he is shifting away from them.”

Norm Ornstein, a political scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, attributed Trump's Sunday shift to three factors. First, Ornstein argued, Trump has “no anchors” in conservative ideology and thus is “not wedded to that orthodoxy.” Second, he's sending a signal to House Speaker Paul Ryan about who's in charge, as Ryan withholds his endorsement of Trump. “If you were playing by normal politics, the Speaker would have some leverage here. And Trump is basically telling him ‘No you don't,’” Ornstein said. Third, he said, the end of the Republican primary contest gives Trump “more freedom to say” what he wants to.

... “This is a going to be a very significant ongoing struggle that is partly over ideology, and partly over power,” Ornstein said. “Who's going to control the party? There is an anti-leadership, populist, Trumpist wing that's not going away, even if he loses.”

Is the point of this post that the Republicans are about to nominate someone who doesn't know shit from shinola? Yes, that's exactly the point. Technically he's not changing his mind, not he doesn't have anything in his mind-- other than what Rand Paul-- before endorsing him-- correctly diagnosed as a frightening and insatiable lust for unfettered power. Let Willy describe Trump in a song (live in San Francisco, June, 1978), "Cabretta," from his debut album: