Every week on Monday, the Council, members of the Watcher's Council Community and our invited guests weigh in at the Watcher's Forum, short takes on a major issue of the day, the culture, or daily living. This week's question: What Was Your Reaction To Donald Trump's Speech This Week?
Don Surber :My reaction, courtesy of the late Mister James Brown :
GrEaT sAtAn"S gIrLfRiEnD: Powerful meds for Americans!
Trump nailed HRC's hair to the floor so tight - she's unable to even blink!
"The Hillary Clinton foreign policy has cost America thousands of lives and trillions of dollars – and unleashed ISIS across the world. No Secretary of State has been more wrong, more often, and in more places than Hillary Clinton. Her decisions spread death, destruction and terrorism everywhere she touched."
Like a torpedo strike, the speech blasted great gaping holes in HRC's curious blend of failed progressivism, unbridled globalism and self enriching international crony socialism that may very well be criminal.
Trump's first 100 Days agenda should totally close the deal with many including any stand offish cats.
Stately McDaniel Manor: The Republican Party has a well-deserved reputation of snatching defeat from the jaws of victory. The “Stupid Party,” routinely violates Ronald Reagan’s 11 th Commandment, and brilliantly attacks its own,leaving Democrats unscathed. But this election year, Donald Trump may serve as a Republican red on red force multiplier beyond imagination.
For perhaps the first time since his campaign began, Trump delivered a professional, rational, and necessary speech in which he actually attacked Hillary Clinton by telling the truth about her. What’s that you say? He’s done that before? Yes, but not consistently, coherently, and primarily by tweeting.
Trump’s biggest problem thus far, beside the fact that he is a dangerous narcissist, is that his entire focus has been on maintaining the purity of being Donald Trump. He absolutely, pig-headedly refuses to adapt to the demands of a presidential campaign. He does not work and play well with others, and behaves like a cheap, prickly street thug: “who you lookin’ at? You dissin’ me? You dissin’ me?!” This leads him to continually go off message-- as though he has a consistent, coherent message from which to deviate-- attacking primarily potential friends and supporters, including Republicans of all stripes, and ignoring his actual political enemies. He whines that this person, or that group, hasn’t been nice to him or treated him with proper respect. He threatens to take his marbles and go home if he isn’t treated in the manner to which he has become accustomed.
Grow the hell up, Trump.
He seems incapable of realizing that the thousands that come to his rallies are already in the bag. He doesn’t know that their numbers aren’t sufficient to elect him president, and that it is the far, far larger numbers of Americans that he never sees that he must convince to vote for him. He thinks he can get away with ignoring the Republican Party and he can win without it, despite the fact that he has built no national mechanisms to get out the vote and November is coming--fast.
Trump thinks vacuous slogans like “make America great again,” are all he needs. How will you make America great again Mr. Trump? “I’ll make America so great you won’t believe it!” But how? “Because I will; you’ll see.”
Part of his arrogance has been his insistence on not using a teleprompter, on winging it onstage, which at this stage of the campaign ensures not only that he won’t consistently communicate coherent, rational policies and principle, he’ll ramble, make idiotic gaffes, and fail to effectively define Hillary Clinton, the most corrupt, weak, and dangerous candidate the Democrats may have ever put forth. Trump need not use a teleprompter all the time-- Ronald Reagan often spoke from notes he wrote -- but Trump needs it. That he is not a professional politician has aided him to this point, but no longer.
The speech was a good start. It framed Hillary Clinton as the liar, criminal and national security disaster she already is, but those messages must be driven home again and again and again, consistently, every day, every week, not only with speeches, but clever ads.
Trump can’t do it himself. He has no consistent principles that inform policies. His life has been dedicated to deal making, to doing whatever is necessary to make more and more money. Those skills can be an asset for any president, but only if he makes the adjustments necessary to obtain advantage for America instead of Trump. It’s time to discover those principles, to pledge belief in and adherence to those policies, and to shut down the ego machine and spin up the political machine.
It’s time, over and over again, and absolutely consistently, to tell America exactly how Trump intends to make America great again. If Trump can’t do that, he’ll lead the Stupid Party into being the Insanely, Terminally Stupid Party. We’ll end up with a progressive Supreme Court, a Progressive Congress, and a Progressive President.
The Republicans have been able to do almost nothing when they hold majority control of Congress. If they lose even one house, they’ll have the perfect excuse to do nothing but help Progressives enact their agenda. America will be no more, but by all that is holy, Trump will still be, pure and shining, Trump.
He needs to decide-- yesterday-- which is more important: America or his ego?
The Glittering Eye: The speech was pretty good. Mr. Trump certainly can play offense. Whether he can play defense or needs to remains to be seen. He clearly understands Sec. Clinton's defects and what his supporters think of her. I don't think he'll convince anyone because everyone's already made up their minds. The only real question is who will turn out and vote?
As to whether he can win, I genuinely have no idea. As I've repeatedly said over at my place, I find this election cycle completely baffling. I think that everyone has lost their minds. We have a corrupt, incompetent criminal running against a hipshooting blowhard.
I also think that lying to pollsters has become incredibly commonplace.
Bookworm Room : The speech showed four things that I think are all to the good:
1. Trump did what his supporters wanted, which was to go directly to Hillary's jugular.
2. He's working his way towards slightly more conventional statesmanship in his speeches. If he could just learn not to use every speech as a business promo, he'd be more effective.
3. He was smart to fire Lewandowski, who was the right man for the primaries, but too much of a mafia enforcer type for the general campaign.
4. If it was indeed his children and their spouses who urged him to fire Lewandowski and become more disciplined, he should continue to listen to them.
If Trump can master discipline and statesmanship, while keeping close to his primary promises (blogging illegal immigration, greater protections against the Islamist threat, supporting Israel, knocking the pins out from under the media, getting things done, etc), I think he will -- as Scott Adams promises -- run a successful campaign. To the extent Hillary's polling higher now, I see three things at work: the post-primary bounce now that Bernie is gone; slanted polls from the Dems, the media (but I repeat myself), and the GOP, all of which weight Democrats too heavily; and the Shy Tory effect, which is to say that many people are embarrassed to admit, even to a pollster, that they like Trump. I suspect that the Shy Tory effect was at work in England again, explaining the ruling class's absolute shock that the Brexit vote went to "Leave."
JoshuaPundit:The speech itself was so on target that it shocked a lot of people...a sign of how used we've become to our political figures lying to us and avoiding the obvious. The Clintonista media tried to downplay it of course, but failed miserably. CNN in particular wound up with egg all over its porcine face when they 'fact checked' Trump's claim about Mrs. Clinton okaying the sale of a large chunk of America's uranium uranium holdings to Russia, in exchange for the funneling of $145 million from nine investors to the Clinton Foundation as 'false'. They later had to eat their words publicly.
Trump is being criticized for not being able to raise money or put together a campaign staff. Isn't it logical that a candidate who wants to end the flow of cheap labor coming across the border, clamp down on outsourcing and and renegotiate ruinous trade deals and globalization might have trouble getting support from the donor class who profit from these things and from the politicians and pundits they own? The only big ones willing to publicly put country before their own greed and self interest so far are Sheldon Adleson, Rupert Murdoch and some of Trump's friends like Carl Icahn.
The same thing applies to building a campaign staff. In the face of threats from the GOP establishment that their careers are over if they sign on to Trump's campaign, a lot of political operatives and potential staffers have decided that employment opportunities with down ticket campaigns and even anti-Trump organizations funded by the donor class like Free The Delegates that are a lot safer for them.
Trump's also being urged to make concessions 'to unify the party.' But what if they don't want to be unified? What if they'd rather see business as usual with a President Clinton? All of the candidates signed a pledge early in the campaign that they would all support whoever the eventual nominee was. Out of the major candidates, the only one to keep his word was Marco Rubio, and the Republican National Committee (RNC) has done nothing about it.
A quarter of a billion dollars was spent to stop Donald Trump from getting the nomination, much of it in the form a relentless negative attack ads. Yet in his victory speech in New York, Trump went out of his way to extend an olive branch to his opponents, especially Ted Cruz. Imagine how different the current climate might be if Ted Cruz had accepted that, swallowed his bitterness and kept his word.
When I say that what's going on here is strikingly familiar to me, it's because it reminds me of what's been happening in the Middle East. Israel was and is the victim of aggression, terrorism and constant incitement, yet it is Israel whom is repeatedly being asked to make concessions, release convicted murderers and to give up land no matter how many genuine offers of peace get slapped away by the Arabs. And when that happens, it's usually Israel who gets blamed for not being 'flexible' enough. If they were as 'flexible' as President Obama wanted, they would soon no longer have a country.
Trump's getting a similar treatment. Any Republican nominee could count on being labeled as a racist, a homophobe and a hater of women by the Democrat minions in the media no matter what he did or didn't say, but here, they're getting ample assistance from the GOP establishment. Because Trump's real crime is exactly what got him the nomination...his willingness to look at Islamist terrorism, globalization and illegal migration as problems that need desperately to be solved, along with plain speaking about Obama's agenda and the damage it has done to America. For him to change that stance significantly would destroy him as a viable candidate for those whom support him.
If Trump gets the nomination - and I put the odds at 60-40 in his favor, just because he won by such a huge majority - I predict that his acceptance speech will remind Republicans of the consequences if they fail to unite and allow the Clintons back in the White House again. Here's hoping they listen, but based on their usual behavior, The Donald will likely have to fight that battle without them.
We'll see...
Laura Rambeau Lee, Right Reason :If Donald Trump continues to speak as well as he did last week he could well become our next president. He did well and appeared more presidential than he has in the past. Trump needs to continue to stay on point; focusing on jobs, the economy, making sure we do not allow refugees into our country without a comprehensive vetting process, and preventing illegal aliens from coming here and draining our limited welfare programs and threatening the safety of Americans.
He should keep talking about Clinton’s corruption and untrustworthiness going as far back as her and her husband’s career in “public service.” He needs to attack her on her ties with Wall Street, her exorbitant speaking fees, her setting up a private server for her emails during her term as Secretary of State which jeopardized our national security, and her dealings and receipt of monies personally and through The Clinton Foundation from countries with horrific records of human rights violations and barbaric Islamic shari’ah in exchange for obvious favors granted through her position in government.
Hopefully he will stay focused and keep from making any comments the media will perceive and publicize as racist, bigoted, misogynistic and vulgar, especially going into the Republican National Convention next month. Trump must present himself as the president he promises he will be if elected; restoring the power to the people and tearing down the “rigged system” our government has become.
Well, there you have it.
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