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babylonsister

(171,113 posts)
Tue Jun 26, 2018, 07:35 AM Jun 2018

Eugene Robinson: You can smell Trump's fear

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/you-can-smell-trumps-fear/2018/06/25/4459d618-78b1-11e8-93cc-6d3beccdd7a3_story.html?utm_term=.5937785b8ddc

You can smell Trump’s fear
by Eugene Robinson
Opinion writer June 25 at 7:54 PM


President Trump created an immigration crisis to stoke resentment and anger among his base — traumatizing innocent children for political gain. Lacking any kind of moral compass, he makes a show of being pleased with what he has wrought. But you can smell his fear.

Trump is desperate to keep his Republican congressional majorities, not because of anything they might accomplish but because he has cowed them into being afraid to hold him accountable. If his base is not motivated to vote in November, the GOP loses the House — and Trump and his entourage of grifters face a lineup of Democratic committee chairmen with the power to subpoena documents and compel testimony.

snip//

Trump has to wonder if even his staunchest supporters have the stomach for the kind of cruelty inherent in the family separations and the detention camps. He has to worry that his latest anti-immigration gambit is doing more to energize and mobilize anti-Trump political forces than the “Make America Great Again” crowd. He has to realize that it is hard to whip up punitive anger toward crying children — and that even his great skill at lying is not enough to obscure the truth of a mother’s tears.

And he has to know that backing down is a betrayal of his carefully cultivated brand of damn-the-torpedoes toughness. Who’s the snowflake now?

This was supposed to be a “good” crisis in which only some desperate Central Americans got hurt. Demonizing immigrants has always worked for Trump in the past, but he has to be deeply worried that it’s not working now.

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Vinca

(50,343 posts)
1. But at the same time Eugene is writing this, Don is speaking to a crowd in a town that makes BMWs
Tue Jun 26, 2018, 07:38 AM
Jun 2018

and he's trashing foreign carmakers. The crowd goes wild. I guess all we can do is chip away at the cult until enough are willing to accept truth again.

safeinOhio

(32,764 posts)
6. I saw a few of those standing behind him
Tue Jun 26, 2018, 08:11 AM
Jun 2018

with confused looks when he said BMW. He may have lost a bunch of votes in that state.

Dave Starsky

(5,914 posts)
9. Keep in mind that Donald travels with an actual Peanut Gallery...
Tue Jun 26, 2018, 09:07 AM
Jun 2018

Of Potemkin "supporters" who cheer loudly at every stupid fucking thing he says.

Cha

(298,152 posts)
3. I like the sound of that.. Fraud and his Doormats
Tue Jun 26, 2018, 07:47 AM
Jun 2018

created the Kidnapping crisis for cruelty and profit.. what could go wrong? trump is so stupid he thought it would be such a winner.. not having one clue of the Blowback of Real Americans and Real People around the World.

That's who's in charge.. a demented monster.

Thank you, Eugene Robinson

Hortensis

(58,785 posts)
7. Yes, he's backtracked again now, on prosecuting families
Tue Jun 26, 2018, 08:15 AM
Jun 2018

with children crossing the border. It's just temporary while they work out how to successfully incarcerate tens of thousands of children.

But if I'd prematurely exposed myself to myself and all who know me as a nazi at core, as the kind of person who would support atrocities against children, I'd be very angry about now. At the Democrats, of course.

VOX

(22,976 posts)
8. He daubs a little cheeseburger grease behind each ear...
Tue Jun 26, 2018, 08:25 AM
Jun 2018

For that heady bouquet of tallow and burnt meat, that just says to the world, “By god, this is a MAN!”

 

Nuclear Pyle

(51 posts)
14. One of the VERY few people
Tue Jun 26, 2018, 03:42 PM
Jun 2018

to whom I pay complete attention when I see 'em on TV. Along with Malcolm Nance and Robert Reich. Too bad none of the networks seem to know about Jim Hightower.

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