The Set-up

The CNN moderator, Anderson Cooper, asked an obvious set-up question of Donald Trump in the presidential debate last Sunday night ... clearly anticipating today's New York Times smear-Trump article ... see: CNN Video. This question presaged what the New York Times was to publish about Trump's supposed sexual peccadillos over these last many years. Such pre-election brickbats have been persistent October-surprise tactics of the Gray Lady against the Republican presidential nominees over at least the last three election cycles. Do you think that there might have been some collusion between Hellary's campaign, CNN and the New York Times?

Perish the thought!

The Worm Turns Again

Using an oft-repeated liberal media strategy,  MSNBC's "Morning Joe" show was very supportive of Donald Trump UNTIL he became the presumptive Republican candidate for president. Then what happened? Why this show turned on him like a pack of jackals ... and that includes the token Republican on this program, Joe Scarborough ... to see this worm turning go to: Politico Video.

For the early months of his campaign both Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski were very supportive of Trump, usually welcoming his call-ins almost every morning. Now, just a few short months later, you can see the venom falling from their and their guests' lips as they magnify any assumed Trump failing into a disqualifying lapse. This 180-degree turn isn't even subtle. It is too obvious to be caused just by circumstances.

I say "oft repeated" because this very same scenario occurred in the last two presidential elections. Both John McCain and Mitt Romney thought that they were media darlings until they became the Republican nominees. Then the media worms performed their traditional pirouettes and started running hit piece after hit piece on them ... many of them obviously fictionalized. So Joe and Mika are following this same script. Trump has got to be a little taken aback by the swiftness of this u-turn ... as am I. For some reason I thought that these two were sincere in their early warm reception of The Donald. I was wrong.

To me, "Morning Joe" has become as biased as most of the rest of MSNBC's programming ... so toxic that I find it difficult to watch this show anymore.

Now, let us shift to the overarching issue ... should Trump "pivot" and become the personality that the liberal media and the Republican establishment wants him to become? Trump certainly doesn't seem to want to morph into this pablum persona, I believe, because he thinks that he got this far being who he is ... and he feels that this will see him through. I have no idea if this will be the case. But I think one thing for sure ... if he adopts this pablum persona, he will most certainly lose in a landslide. In investment terms, this is called being whipsawed. Voters may not vote for a blowhard ... but they clearly will not vote for a pasty, rehearsed cardboard image ... except, of course, if she is a woman.

Rush to Judgment

I listen to Rush Limbaugh on the radio quite often ... although lately he has been more grating than usual.  Although he feigns impartiality, he is totally in the tank for Rick Santorum to be the next Republican nominee for President.  This is based upon his postulate that only true conservatives win for the Republicans ... and Romney is a McCain/Dole/Ford country-club clone who will be clobbered this fall in the debates and at the voting booths.  He says that he will rally behind whomever the nominee is ... but I kind of doubt it.  After all, if Mitt Romney gets the nod and loses, won't this just prove Rush's conservative-purist thesis?

Now Rush is in another pickle.  Apparently, he called that female Georgetown law student (who went viral with her demand that the government ... via this Catholic university ... should pay for her contraceptives) a "prostitute" and a "slut."  Although I didn't hear him say these exact things, I did hear him say that this student was having so much sex that she couldn't afford her own "protection" and so she wanted others to pay for her libido extravagances ... equivalent, I suppose, to these one-word slurs.  As a result Rush has lost, at latest count, seven sponsors, and he was forced to apologize nationally to this woman over the weekend.  (You have to understand, this is something that Rush never does, so this was tantamount to his eating crow in a cow-pie sandwich.)

I am somewhat ambivalent about these developments due to my distaste for Rush's current manic and easily-read antipathy toward Romney.  So as Joel Grey sang in Cabaret, "money makes the world go around ...", and Rush's lifestyle is such that I think he would find it difficult to start to economize.  And I do hope this incident brings a smidgen of humility to his often brilliant political commentary.  Perhaps now we can get a few advertisers also to pull away from Bill Maher (called Sarah Palin a "twat"), Rachel Maddow (called Teaparty members, "teabaggers" ... a sexual act between gay men), Ed Schultz (called Laura Ingraham, a "right-wing slut")  and Chris Matthews (said "Newt Gingrich looks like a car bomber") ... among many other slurs eminating from the Left?  KBI