NRA Suckers Fall For Trump

Yesterday the NRA endorsed Trump, who they are very aware once said, "I support the ban on assault weapons." Watch him slightly modify his stand-up routine for the gun-nuts. Trump changed his tune and is now singing the kinds of lies the NRA chieftains love, like how Hillary Clinton wants to abolish the SecondAmendment. She doesn't'o one does. Herr Trumpf 2 weeks ago: ""Hillary Clinton wants to abolish the Second Amendment. Hillary Clinton wants to take your guns away, and she wants to abolish the Second Amendment." PolitFact's ruling on Trump's bullshit:

We found no evidence of Clinton ever saying verbatim or suggesting explicitly that she wants to abolish the Second Amendment, and the bulk of Clinton’s comments suggest the opposite. She has repeatedly said she wants to protect the right to bear arms while enacting measures to prevent gun violence... [W]e rate it False.

Friday at the NRA convention in Louisville, Trump said, "My sons have guns. They have so many guns and rifles sometimes even I get a little bit concerned." They're not allowed to bring them into Donald's Lifestyles of The Rich And Famous club at Mar-a-Lago, though. He made that a gun-free zone. Same for his hotel in Chicago-- Trump made it a gun-free zone for some reason, although did say "We're-- [not sure who that "we're" is]-- getting rid of gun-free zones." (I just called Mar-a-Lago and he hadn't called in with the order yet.) All guns were banned from the NRA Convention while Trump was there, although that didn't stop Wayne LaPierre from braying something to the effect of "If a bad guy with a gun came into this room, he'd find out what good guys with guns could do." (Technically, that's true, because the Secret Service agents would handle him.) LaPierre, worked up into some kind of a fascist frenzy, also claimed "If she could, Hillary would ban every gun, destroy every magazine, run an entire national security industry right into the ground."

I doubt it. Hillary has generally been gun-friendly except when political opportunism kicked in during campaigns. As for Trump, nothing he says on policy means anything at all. He's as likely to end gun free zones in schools-- which he promised the NRA he would do-- as he is to confiscate all guns and ban them outright. There just is no way to say what he would do. The American Bazaar posed the question yesterday, Are Americans stupid to support, vote for Donald Trump? "The answer," they asserted, "is a resounding yes. And if there really are enough stupid Americans who vote for Trump this November to actually get him elected to the White House, then the world will know America as a stupid nation... The world will know America as a befuddled, racist nation who willingly let a rabid bully into their sanctum sanctorum, to wreak political, social and diplomatic havoc with his almost schizophrenic tendencies and aggravations; cheerily gave a free hand to a brash demagogue to tear asunder in a few months the respect the world had for America and Americans."

It’s not a question of liberals not liking Trump. Most conservatives in the Republican Party know it too in their heart of hearts, detest and dislike Trump-- some at least, like Speaker Paul Ryan, has the guts, heart and conscience to say it, balk at endorsing him; refuse to answer the question whether Trump is ‘qualified’ to be president. Hedge for time to reconcile himself to the prospect of not throwing up looking at vomit.

Envisage a generation full of Trump clones who would talk, behave, and tweet like him; a misogynist who has talked publicly of lusting after his own daughter Ivanka Trump, insinuated he wanted to sleep with her when she was a teenager; sexualized his one-year child Tiffany on a TV show, saying she’s got her mother’s legs, wondered if she would have breasts like her mother, his daughter from then-wife Marla Maples. Is it OK for Trump to call most other women not in his own coterie of billionaires, ugly and fat? Are Trump voters going to be immune to shame and disgrace? Do they have any self-respect left?

But the GOP continue to tolerate Trump, embrace him in larger numbers as he is after all their presumptive presidential nominee; desperately hope that the spoilt, uncouth, loudmouth brat that Trump is, will shift gears once he becomes ‘mature’, transmogrify into an ‘adult’ in the Oval office, not want to hobnob with the likes of North Korean evil dictator Kim Jong-Un. Dennis Rodman can sell his soul to whomsoever he wants to, for money or worse. One doesn’t expect the president of the United States of America to do the same.

Here’s the bad news, especially for those who vote for Trump, and hope for change: It’s not going to happen folks! Mr. Trump is going to be 70 years soon. At that age to expect somebody to change dramatically his ways, beliefs and mannerisms would be akin to white supremacist and former grand wizard of the Ku Klux Klan David Duke converting to Buddhism, donning orange robes of a monk. Since Trump and Duke know each other, the latter having endorsed the former, they have a thing or two in common.

William Saletan, the author of Bearing Right, describes Trump as ‘a sectarian arsonist, a threat to the Constitution, and a war criminal in waiting,’ writing in Slate.

Warren Farrell, the father of the men’s right’s movement in the US and the author of one of its foundational texts, The Myth of Male Power, is quoted in Mother Jones saying of the businessman: “Trump is the quintessential example of the immature man and men at their worst.”

Not all NRA members were thrilled with the sudden LaPierre-engineered endorsement for Trump, especially this early on in the process.

“I have no clue why they did it,” said Brian Abney of Missouri. He was among the much smaller contingent that showed up to the NRA’s Annual Members Meeting on Saturday, hoping to grill the NRA’s brass about the decision to endorse a man who not long ago backed longer waiting periods to buy guns and a ban on assault weapons (which, NRA activists will tell you, is an inaccurate, anti-gun term for that category of firearms).

...Abney is in complete agreement that Hillary Clinton is unacceptable. “I don’t trust her,” Abney said, who traveled from St. Louis to attend his sixth NRA conference. “It seems like scandal follows her around.”

But of Trump, he added, “I think of him about the same way I think of Hillary,” noting the billionaire’s many position changes over the years. Abney said he hopes Trump can somehow win his trust, but he’s also considering a third party.

The NRA’s early endorsement of Trump makes any third-party bid on the right more difficult.

...Asked whether he trusts Trump to protect the Second Amendment, (ex-Rep Allan West responded, “We’ll have to see.”

The backlash, which also played out in a pitched debate among the rank-and-file on NRA’s Facebook page, is a sign that GOP unity cannot be rushed, even by groups with the credibility of the NRA.

“You can endorse anyone you want including the lying, progressive, anti-gun democrat DJ Trump, but you don't get to tell your dues paying membership ‘get over it,’” posted David Davis, who said he was ending his 30-year membership. “I didn't leave the NRA, the NRA left me.”