When Do Violent Anti-Trump Protesters Turn Into a Major Story?
No, really, media, you have to start asking questions about the atmosphere of violence and fascism that is cultivated by . . . anti-Trump protesters. Police in riot gear and mounted patrol units faced off against a violent crowd of protesters outside a Donald Trump campaign event in Albuquerque Tuesday night. Hours after Trump and some 4,000 of his supporters left the Albuquerque Convention Center, approximately 100 demonstrators remained in downtown. Smoke grenades were used in an effort to disperse the crowd, while protesters threw rocks, plastic bottles, burning T-shirts and other items at officers. Albuquerque police said on Twitter late Tuesday that "several" officers were being treated for injuries as a result of being hit by rocks. At least one person was arrested. Inside the Trump rally, demonstrators shouted, held up banners and resisted removal by security officers. The banners included the messages "Trump is Fascist" and "We've heard enough." Trump responded with his usual bluster, mocking the protesters by telling them to "Go home to mommy." . . . Albuquerque attorney Doug Antoon said rocks were flying through the convention center windows as he was leaving Tuesday night. Glass was breaking and landing near his feet. "This was not a protest, this was a riot. These are hate groups," he said of the demonstrators. Here's a photo of a protester with a hand-drawn "F*** Trump, Free El Chapo" sign. He's wearing a "Straight Outta Sinaloa" t-shirt; Sinaloa is one of Mexico's states on the West Coast. This is about as good an image as the Trump campaign could possibly hope for; I suspect we'll see the image in future Trump ads. Well done, son of Sinaloa. You've completely confirmed Trump fans' worst suspicions and undermined all of his critics. We saw this at Occupy Wall Street; we saw this in Black Lives Matter. Heck, you can go back to the anti-war protests and the WTO protests in Seattle. There seems to be this sense in some newsrooms that left-wing protests are somehow inherently less violent, and if there is violence, it's somehow justified or understandable as a reaction to provocations from the Right. The Right's Internal Fights over Trump Reach an Insufferable Pitch Erick Erickson: In feudal times, the lords of a land had the right to have sex with women subordinate to them before the women then consummated their marriage to the man they actually married. Major evangelical leaders are right now shaving their legs and waxing their nethers getting ready to allow Donald Trump the droit du seigneur before they fully commit to Jesus. Hey, everybody who's getting a little tired of the #NeverTrump crowd, contending they make knee-jerk denunciations of anybody who sees a bad situation differently than they do . . . I'm starting to see your point. Unless Romney-Sasse becomes real, those Evangelical leaders are facing the same choice as the National Rifle Association and every traditional conservative right now. Do you choose the certain foe in the corrupt oligarchic progressive pathological liar Hillary Clinton, or the unreliable nominal ally in the incoherent authoritarian populist demagogue with the white nationalist/anti-Semitic fans? (Cue Jeopardy! theme.) I'm picking neither, but I can't begrudge any of my usual allies who conclude Trump is slightly less bad than Hillary and vote accordingly. If you're an Evangelical who's passionate about protecting life, preserving traditional marriage, ensuring religious liberty and personal conscience in the face of a growing state, and fostering a culture that reinforces your values instead of being hostile to them . . . Donald Trump is not that good a choice. But Hillary Clinton's probably a worse choice, and potential Libertarian nominee Gary Johnson isn't likely to do any good, either. You knew he was pro-choice, pro-gay marriage and a CEO of a legal marijuana company; what you might not know is that he's the kind of libertarian who thinks the government can punish a Christian baker who refuses to make cakes for gay weddings: Does a public bakery have to sell a cake to a Nazi? Probably so. Does that bakery have to draw a swastika on it? Absolutely not. And that's the way it should be. Of course, we all know that this conversation is really "code" for the current, and far more real, conversation about society's treatment of LGBT individuals. I have even heard some talk of a "right to discriminate". And of course, we have states and municipalities today trying to create a real right to discriminate against the LGBT community on religious grounds -- the same kinds of "religious" grounds that were used to defend racial segregation, forbid interracial marriages and, yes, defend discrimination against Jews by businesses. That is not a slope Libertarians want to go down. Pick your metaphor: The Iran-Iraq War, the South Park school mascot contest, Hobson's choice, a Cowboys-Patriots game. In a scenario with no good choices, how fair is it to denounce somebody for making a different calculation for what's less bad? Now, if somebody starts making the case for Trump that's just flat-out false, that's different. You notice the National Rifle Association didn't say that Donald Trump was a longtime friend of the Second Amendment who has been down in the trenches with gun owners when their rights were threatened and fought the good fight. He's just a guy who showed up who says he believes in gun rights now – and the NRA's endorsement spent a lot of time on Hillary Clinton's terrible record and concluded that Trump would offer "a very different kind of White House" than Clinton. Meet William Weld, the World's Most Pro-Hillary Libertarian Speaking of Gary Johnson, over on the homepage I have a long, fun look at the varied career of his choice to be his running mate, former Republican governor of Massachusetts William Weld. Weld, who's been largely forgotten since his unsuccessful 1997 fight to become President Bill Clinton's ambassador to Mexico, is one of the most unlikely figures to emerge as a potential major player in the 2016 election. The Welds are one of the quintessential Boston Brahmin families. Once, during Weld's gubernatorial years, then-Massachusetts Senate president William Bulger quipped that Weld's ancestors had come over on the Mayflower, prompting Weld to jokingly correct him. "Actually they weren't on the Mayflower," he said." They sent the servants over first to get the cottage ready." Another time, a reporter covering Weld's first gubernatorial bid for the Boston Globe asked him where he got his money. "We don't get money, we have money," he replied. Indeed they do. After a childhood spent at a home on Long Island's north shore that later became a nature preserve, Weld graduated summa cum laude from Harvard with a degree in economics, studying the subject further at Oxford before returning to Cambridge, Mass., to earn his JD from Harvard Law School. Three years later, he was hired to work on the U.S. House of Representatives Impeachment Inquiry into Richard Nixon's Watergate scandal. "If I was the first staffer, Hillary Rodham from Yale Law School was the second staffer," Weld told the Nixon Library Oral History Program. "She's just a very decent person, and if I recall correctly, on the occasion when I got in the middle and [special counsel to the Judiciary Committee] John Doar himself got frowny-faced with me — which he should not have, by the way, I was doing my duty — I think Hillary intervened and defended me on that and I've never forgotten that." You always want Hillary defending you when your boss gets "frowny-faced." ADDENDA: When Donald Trump says, "I gave $1 million" -- past tense -- to veterans, what he really means is, "I haven't given $1 million, and I will only get around to actually giving it four months later when the press keeps asking me about it." He also doesn't feel that you're entitled to know which veterans' groups he gave to and how much.  | 
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