A Few Trump Fans Suddenly See the Man They've Been Defending
Something odd is going on among Trump's most ardent defenders. Start with Ann Coulter in this podcast interview with Breitbart.com's Milo Yiannopoulos. COULTER: Moreover, I'm a little testy with our man right now. YIANNOPOULOS: You are? Daddy's annoyed you? [Yes, Yiannopoulos calls Trump "Daddy." Because that's perfectly normal.] COULTER: Our candidate is mental! Do you realize our candidate is mental? It's like constantly having to bail out your 16-year-old son from prison. Let's move past last night's tweet -- you know perfectly well what tweet I'm talking about. This is the worst thing he's done. I mean the McCain thing -- I would say there are only really two, liberals would say, "Oh, every day," no, everything else I could probably defend. I could. I think. Most of that is them overreacting . . . But the McCain thing, that was a dumb joke, it didn't work. Oh, well. Didn't kill him. But that tweet last night . . . YIANNOPOULOS: And he's retweeting these images that are, like, 'I don't need to make implications, you know, the pictures speak for themselves.' And a picture of Cruz's wife and a picture of Melania! COULTER: That's exactly the tweet I'm talking about! No, you can't defend it! This is when we're bailing out sixteen-year-old out of jail! YIANNOPOULOS: It's so outrageously funny! Then Newt Gingrich and Sean Hannity: GINGRICH: Tweeting about, or repeating a Tweet about Mrs. Cruz is just utterly stupid. It has frankly, weakened everything that Trump ought to be strengthening. It sent a signal to women that is negative, at a time when his numbers with women are already bad. It sent a signal of instability to people who may be beginning to say, "Maybe I've got to get used to it, maybe I've got to rely on him, maybe he could be presidential." And frankly, it energized Cruz. The interview you just did is as good as I have ever seen Ted Cruz. He was clear, he was vigorous, he was prepared to be combative but at the same time he was getting into big issues and big ideas. My guess is he's going to do well in Wisconsin. This ought to be a wake-up call for Trump that he had better rethink what seem to be the underlying patterns of his campaign. HANNITY: For the life of me, I can't understand when families and wives are brought into it. I'm sure he's mad about the ad about Melania, I'm sure he assumed it was the Cruz campaign. Gingrich added, "I'm not sure anybody in the Trump campaign understands yet what a big mistake this is. They can't keep doing this stuff and think they're going to get the nomination." Now look at Stephanie Cegielski, formerly the communications director of the Make America Great Again Super PAC: He doesn't want the White House. He just wants to be able to say that he could have run the White House. He's achieved that already and then some. If there is any question, take it from someone who was recruited to help the candidate succeed, and initially very much wanted him to do so. The hard truth is: Trump only cares about Trump. And if you are one of the disaffected voters -- one of the silent majority like me -- who wanted a candidate who could be your voice, I want to speak directly to you as one of his biggest advocates and supporters. He is not that voice. He is not your voice. He is only Trump's voice. Trump is about Trump. Not one of his many wives. Not one of his many "pieces of ass." He is, at heart, a self-preservationist. Just FYI, Trump supporters, no one should let you off of that bandwagon now. You should be handcuffed to that Titanic you volunteered to crew. Donald Trump didn't suddenly change in the past few days, weeks, or months. He's the same guy he always was, the same guy that most of us in the conservative movement and GOP have been staunchly opposing for the past year. He didn't abruptly become reckless, obnoxious, ill-informed, erratic, hot-tempered, pathologically dishonest, narcissistic, crude, and catastrophically unqualified for the presidency overnight. He's always been that guy, and you denied it and ignored it and hand-waved it away and made excuses every step of the way because you were convinced that you were so much smarter than the rest of us. You were so certain that you were on some superior wavelength giving you special insight into the Donald; only you could tell that it was all an act. Only you could grasp that his constant courting of controversy was just to get attention from the media. Only you could instinctively sense that his style would play brilliantly in the general election and win over working-class Democrats. (SPOILER ALERT: It isn't.) You insisted that you could "coach him." You came to those conclusions not because you're smarter than the rest of us, but because you're actually more foolish than the rest of us. You insisted Occam's Razor couldn't possibly be true -- that Trump acts the way he does because this is who he is, this is the way he is all the time, and he will always be like this. You fooled yourself into believing that Trump was playing this nine-level chess game that only you and a few others could perceive and understand. Only you could see the long game. But there is no long game. He's winging it. There is no grand strategy. There is no master plan. Trump doesn't look ahead to the next sentence, much less the next step in getting elected. "Our candidate is mental?" No Shinola, Sherlock, some conservatives said this from day one and all we got for it was the alt-Right vomiting forth endless vitriol and profanity and threats. Oh, what's that? Trump's Twitter behavior is "utterly stupid," Newt? Thanks for noticing; six days ago you were telling the media there was absolutely nothing about Trump that worries you. Maybe your previous comparison of Trump to Reagan was frankly, fundamentally, profoundly wrong from A to Z. "Trump only cares about Trump"? Gee, thank you, turncoat former insider, for this shocking bit of secret intelligence. News flash, some of us didn't need to work for Trump for several months to figure that out. We saw it, we said it, and you called us liars for saying it. 
Technically we're supposed to welcome previous Trump fans-turned-foes with open arms. But barring some miraculous comeback by Ted Cruz, the Trump campaign will have cost the Republican party the presidency after eight years of Obama, and perhaps the Senate and even the House -- not to mention Scalia's replacement on the Supreme Court. Years of effort spent attempting to dispel the accusations of inherent Republican misogyny, xenophobia, hypocrisy, ignorance, and blind rage have been undone by Trump's campaign. And every Trump advocate in front of a camera had a hand in this. We're not just gonna hug it out. Florida Governor Rick Scott: Hey, Yale, Want to Relocate? Even if Yale University would never in a million years move to the state of Florida, proposals like this make life more difficult for Democratic governors and state legislatures that want to raise taxes: What Florida needs is an Ivy League college. At least that's what Gov. Rick Scott thinks. Scott released a statement Tuesday saying Yale, one of the country's most prestigious colleges, should move to Florida. The reason? A proposal by Connecticut lawmakers to tax the school's $25.6 billion endowment. "With news that the Connecticut Legislature wants to unfairly tax one of the nation's most renowned universities to deal with the state's budget shortfall, it is clear that all businesses in Connecticut, including Yale, should look to move to Florida," Scott said. But Yale won't be retiring to Florida anytime soon. "It's wonderful to be recognized as an outstanding asset, but Yale, New Haven, and Connecticut have been on common ground to great mutual benefit for 300 years,'' Yale spokesman Tom Conroy stated in an email. "We're looking forward to reaching even greater heights in education, research and civic engagement over the next three centuries and more." Connecticut lawmakers face a $266 million deficit this year and a projected $900 million deficit next year. Some have proposed a 7 percent tax on the investment profits of Yale's massive endowment, which made gains of $2.6 billion last year, according to the Hartford Courant. For what it's worth, Democratic governor Dannel Malloy -- a contender for the worst governor in the country -- thinks hiking the tax on Yale is a bad idea. But it's good that Democratic lawmakers in that state are feeling the pressure. Yale may see itself as immovable, but most companies won't. Looking Beyond the Happy Headlines for the Old 'Government Motors' Remember GM -- the old "Government Motors"? The car company that U.S. taxpayers lost $11.2 billion saving? You remember the defect about the ignition that would stop the car if the key chain was too heavy or a knee bumped it right, right? The Detroit-based carmaker has already paid out more than $2 billion to resolve legal issues stemming from the scandal, including $900 million to end a criminal probe by the U.S. government; $575 million to settle a shareholder suit and more than 1,380 civil cases by victims; and $595 million through a victims' compensation fund outside of court. Yet somehow, the company managed record profits last quarter. Hey, guys, how about a little generosity to the taxpayers who pulled you back from the brink? And if you're thinking GM is back to being an American manufacturing success story . . . well, look at the fine print: Buick now makes four of the seven models sold in the U.S. overseas: one in China, one in Poland, one in Canada and one in South Korea. Neither China, nor Poland, nor South Korea helped to save GM, but their economies are the beneficiaries of the "new" General Motors. To be fair, I must admit that the government of Canada (and the province of Ontario) invested $13 billion to help save GM, a small fraction of the tab paid for by U.S. taxpayers. Canada lost about $3 billion as a result of its investment. During Superbowl 50, Buick announced its first convertible-style car in forty years, the Buick Cascada. The ad, however, did not mention that this new Buick is made in Gliwice, Poland and retails for $33,000. The workers at that GM's plant in Poland make an average of about 30 zlotys per hour, the equivalent to $7.80 an hour. This is about $15,000 per year. Very few of the workers at GM's Poland factory could afford to buy one of the cars that they manufacture, a violation of Henry Ford's rule of paying autoworkers a decent wage. If you add on the cost of shipping these cars from Poland to the U.S., GM's savings is minimal; probably less than the cost of one Superbowl ad. The thirty-second Superbowl ad cost GM $5 million, enough to pay Poland's workers for 650,000 hours of work, or 300 workers for one year. Say it with me: "The United States government should never own a car company. That is not the job of the federal government." ADDENDA: Josh Krashaaur on the flip side of Trump's suburban weakness, his urban strength: Against the odds, Trump has won widespread support in some of the most liberal Democratic areas of the country. He carried 40 percent of Cook County's Republican vote, which includes the city of Chicago and its inner suburbs, allowing him to take most of Illinois's delegates. Trump won 41 percent of the GOP vote in Wayne County, which encompasses the city of Detroit. He won 36 percent of the GOP vote in the city of St. Louis, and carried Boston's Suffolk County with 47 percent of Republicans. What explains this dynamic? A major reason is that Trump's (mainly white) supporters are disproportionately concentrated near areas with many minorities, suggesting that strained race relations may have played a role in their backing of Trump. He has won over white Republican voters in rural Southern counties where African-Americans make up a majority of the vote, and he has performed well in urban neighborhoods where the racial composition of surrounding areas has changed over the years.  | 
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