Trump: Still Terrible

[Content Note: Misogyny.]

Another day, another eleventy-seven pieces of news about how Donald Trump is fucking terrible. The highlights:

1. Yesterday, a tweet from April which Trump immediately deleted, but was screen-grabbed by Lenny Jacobson, was making the rounds again: "If Hillary Clinton can't satisfy her husband what makes her think she can satisfy America?" Charming.

2. The New York Times highlights some of Trump's bullshit that he's said under oath, including calling a female lawyer who needed a break to pump breast milk "disgusting."

3. Donald Trump says that everyone loves Sarah Palin and he would totally find a place for her in his imaginary presidential administration:

Yesterday, Donald Trump appeared on "The Palin Update," a show dedicated to all things Palin. After Trump hailed Palin as a "tough and smart" leader who bravely stood up to "disgusting lies," host Kevin Scholla asked the GOP presidential candidate, "If there is a Trump administration, could you see picking up the phone, giving the governor a call and picking her brain on some things, or perhaps having her along in some official capacity."

"I'd love that," Trump replied. "Because she really is somebody who knows what's happening and she's a special person, she's really a special person and I think people know that."

"Everybody loves her," he added. Trump went on to say that unlike the former half-term Alaska governor, his current Republican rivals are "weak" and "ineffective" leaders "to a degree that's actually almost hard to believe."

Voters, Trump explained, "like the Sarah Palin kind of strength, you just don't see very much of it anymore."

Here, too, is an example of how Trump is not actually outside the GOP mainstream, but perfectly centered within it. Sarah Palin was, after all, a vice-presidential candidate on the Republican ticket. And the GOP might have since disowned her, but once they rallied around her like the second coming of Reagan.

And the "strength" to which Trump is referring is Palin's penchant for the same unvarnished rhetoric that he uses. That is, they don't couch their hideous policy positions in six layers of focus group tested language; they just say ugly shit as the ugly shit it is and don't try to dress it up as anything else.

Which appeals to a certain (and not small) segment of conservative voters, specifically because it does reflect their views. Here is, for example, billionaire asshole Mark Cuban on Trump: "I don't care what his actual positions are. I don't care if he says the wrong thing. He says what's on his mind. He gives honest answers rather than prepared answers. This is more important than anything any candidate has done in years."

Welp.