24 March 2016

Lady and the Trump

So.  You thought the spectacle of the Republican front-runner reassuring the world concerning the yuuuge size of his "pocket Donald"* during a televised official debate was the lowest this campaign season could sink?  Pshaw.  Just before the Utah caucus, an anti-Trump PAC bafflingly named "Make America Awesome" began the bathysphere plunge into even profounder depths of nastyness with this ad:

The picture comes from a nude photoshoot which Melania Trump did for a men's magazine (British GQ) years ago.  Mrs. Trump, who is said to speak five languages and has a degree in architecture, can hardly be dismissed as a bimbo even if she was once willing to show off her more primally-appealing assets (and she is not the first person about whom such questions have been raised in a political context).  I agree with John Amato's assessment -- while Donald Trump is a horrible person, this line of attack was thoroughly slimy.

But nobody out-slimes The Donald, and the impresario of insults soon showed the amateurs at Make America Awesome how it's really done.  Wrongly assuming that the "support Ted Cruz" admonition meant the ad came from the Cruz campaign (it was based on Cruz being the sole viable alternative to Trump left in the race), he launched his counteroffensive with the following:

Having thus embraced the principle of "an eye for an eye, a wife for a wife" (maybe that's in his alleged favorite book somewhere?), Trump escalated further with this absolute gem:

The mind reels at the possibilities for memes exhibiting Mr. Trump himself similarly photographed at the moment of an unflattering facial expression, and I hope anyone with the relevant skills will exploit them to the full now that he has effectively declared open season.  But the real question, of course, is this:  Has the Republicans' contest, with this exchange, finally reached the bottom of the vomitous morass of teeth-gritting cringe into which they have dived -- or can it get even worse?  I'm not optimistic.  It's still more than seven months to the election, and this is Donald Trump we're talking about.

But this is quite bad enough.  The degeneration of the Republicans is staggering (try to imagine McCain, to say nothing of Eisenhower, campaigning on the basis of "Nyaah nyaah, I've got a big dick and your wife is ugly").  Then there's the issue of Trump's appeal to a certain critical voting bloc -- I'll give Nate Silver the final word:

We can dream.  Maybe nobody has told The Donald about the Nineteenth Amendment?

[*Kudos to Samantha Bee for this epithet.]

5 Comments:

Blogger Shaw Kenawe said...



"...the vomitous morass of teeth-gritting cringe into which they have dived -- or can it get even worse?"

Of course it could. The Trumper hasn't talked about eating babies as a "modest proposal" to control the out-of-wedlock birth rate of "those" people, has he? So don't give up quite yet, because the slime pit that is The Trumper's mind is bottomless.

25 March, 2016 06:12  
Blogger Paul W said...

Wouldn't it be pretty to think so?

Of course, in the real world, there will still be enough women to vote Republican despite (in spite?) of Trump's boorish ways. But it still amazes me how the Republicans don't seem to view women as an important voting bloc: they seem more fixated on keeping older voters and the low-education White Male demographics, and are more horrified by the loss of Hispanic voters.

It could well be that women do break down into their own demographics - mothers and Christian women can lean more conservative - to where Republicans don't view them as a whole. But there are issues on which I've found most women are joined as one: wages and job security, home income, public education, health care, and just overall awareness of how hard it is to be a woman in a man's man's world. Show them enough disrespect to the gender, and enough women are going to vote against you.

And Donald Trump just doesn't respect anybody who's not Donald Trump.

25 March, 2016 06:19  
Blogger Ranch Chimp said...

You know guy ... when I woke this morning I grabbed the remote and turned on the local WFAA8 (local ABC affiliate) to catch the morning news, for local stuff, weather, traffic, etc ... this came up ... I said "awhhh f**k ... not again man", I didnt listen much to catch who is starting this newest show, I just clicked over to Al Jazeera. Trump only dates I guess what is looked at as physically perfect popular type women, etc ... it's in the eye of the beholder I guess ... I just love women myself, and like all shapes, colours, and even many that may not have been former models or beauty queens, after all, I have a "Beautiful Girlz" series on my blog. But it's clear what these political battles have turned into, in particular on the further right wing side. When it comes to the serious issues we are up against, even though many folks like this kind of entertainment, when reality sets in 2017 with a new President, Congress or whatever ... they will wish they had gave more atencion to the issues, besides being concerned with who's pretty or ugly or how big someones dick is, or how much they can spend controlling the atencion of the masses. BTW ... when I woke this morning I looked like shit ... my hair was a mess too, all over the place! {:-)

25 March, 2016 06:33  
Blogger Jono said...

I am hoping that the map in November very closely resembles the blue one for all the reasons you have been stating. If women, brown-skinned people, and white people with the ability to process thoughts vote, it should be easy.

25 March, 2016 06:42  
Blogger Infidel753 said...

Shaw: Let's not give him ideas (shudder).

Paul: It's very striking when I read Republican discussion sites. Few women post there (liberal sites are more gender-balanced), and the condescending attitude toward women, even Republican women, is remarkable. As for Trump, he's on record as saying that one should treat women like shit, and I guess he's putting that view into action on a grand scale.

Ranch: At this rate 2017 will bring a Democratic President and Senate, and possibly House as well. That should serve notice that "I have a big dick and your wife is ugly" doesn't work, since it's only the Republicans who are campaigning that way. Whether there will still be much of a Republican party left to learn the lesson is another question.

Jono: Unfortunately religion remains the wingnuts' electoral weapon -- there are plenty of people whose "ability to process thoughts" is crippled by it. But after that poll showing Trump losing Utah to either Hillary or Bernie, I'm starting to think an all-blue map is possible.

26 March, 2016 04:39  

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