Lots of smart people are anxiously sharing links to Nate Silver’s 2016 Election Forecast on their social media profiles, largely because, one assumes, they are beginning to realize the implications of the fact that there is an actual presidential election happening and Donald Trump is an actual presidential candidate.
You may remember the Freedom Girls. Or maybe you don’t. A lot has happened this election season and most of it would be better off permanently forgotten. The Freedom Girls were a trio of young women who performed a lobotomized pro-Donald Trump pop song at a rally of his in Pensacola, Florida back in January. You may think the story of three children forced to sing their allegiance to Donald Trump in front of a crowd of thousands, as well as millions of others on YouTube, has a happy ending. I am here to inform you that it does not.
You may recall that in early May, as part of an ill-advised attempt to give him a taste of his own medicine after calling Hillary Clinton “crooked Hillary,” Democratic party operatives and Clinton herself began referring to Donald Trump as “Dangerous Donald.” The epithet—if you can even call it one—was met with ridicule almost immediately, and, according to leaked emails, the DNC noticed.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation announced on Monday that it was investigating the hack of the Democratic National Committee’s email servers. The Clinton campaign has hinted at a supposed connection between the hack and the so-called “bromance” between Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin. In a statement, the FBI said it was working to determine the nature and scope of the “cyber intrusion,” and that it would “continue to investigate and hold accountable those who pose a threat in cyberspace.”
In what would certainly be one of the unholier unions of our time, rumors have begun to emerge that Roger Ailes, the former chairman and CEO of Fox News, might go work for Donald Trump, the Republican presidential candidate. “A lot of people are thinking he’s going to run my campaign,” Trump told NBC’s Chuck Todd on Sunday, confirming that the rumors exist but speaking no further to their veracity.
RNC Chairman Reince Priebus probably feels pretty good about himself right now. We can’t say for sure, of course, because like any other relatively well-adjusted adult, Reince Priebus understands that it’s unseemly to revel in someone else’s misery. Donald Trump, however, does not have that problem.
“Only weeks ago in Orlando, Florida, 49 wonderful Americans were savagely murdered by an Islamic terrorist. This time, the terrorist target: LGBTQ community. No good, and we’re gonna stop it,” said Donald Trump during his presidential nomination acceptance speech last night. The abbreviation that was supposed to represent the United States’ queer population was reduced to alphabet soup dribbling off Trump’s lazy tongue; he stumbled between the “G” and the “B”. “LGBTQ” is a catch-all for queerness that attempts to be inclusive while reflecting diversity. In another context, this could be sneered at as “politically correct,” but coming from Trump’s mouth, it sounded flattened so impersonal as to border on the clinical. At the RNC, “LGBTQ” existed in the abstract—just as the threat of Islamic radicals to this country’s queer population that Trump says he’s gonna stop did.
ACTUALLY, Mr. Trump...
Former Ku Klux Klan Grand Wizard and man who once said, “Our clear goal must be the advancement of the white race,” David Duke, has weighed in on Donald Trump’s RNC speech. And what does the man who was once the highest ranking Klan member in the country think of the GOP nominee’s words? He “couldn’t have said it better” himself.
Tonight Donald Trump told the world that “Anyone who endorses violence, hatred or oppression is not welcome in our country and never will be.” Trump, of course, has never endorsed violence, hatred, or oppression—as you can see in the above video.
CLEVELAND — Like pretty much everything else this week, Silicon Valley billionaire Peter Thiel’s speech at the Republican National Convention on Wednesday was not glaringly evil but mostly...pretty boring. “When Donald Trump asks us to Make America Great Again, he’s not suggesting a return to the past,” Thiel told the convention. “He’s running to lead us back to that bright future.” So: boring and incoherent.
Tonight, in Cleveland, Silicon Valley billionaire, Facebook board member, and Donald Trump delegate Peter Thiel will address thousands of party members and journalists at the Republican National Convention. Although he has never concealed his own fringe political views—such as his contention that human freedom and representative democracy are incompatible—Thiel’s open embrace of Trump has inspired some soul-searching in the proudly progressive technology sector. Among that crowd, he’s typically considered a brilliant if mercurial oracle, while the broader public has, for the most part, treated Thiel with confusion and fascination, most recently over his years-long covert campaign to bankrupt Gawker Media. Thiel, who has styled himself as a deep, innovative, and strategic thinker about the big questions facing the world, will, tonight, have the biggest audience he has ever had. So what is he going to ask for?
CLEVELAND — Two southern delegates discussed Ted Cruz’s speech last night in the slow-moving cattle drive toward the security perimeter exit outside Quicken Loans Arena last night.
Native English speaker Donald Trump has given yet another interview to the New York Times. He would be better off not speaking, considering the sentences he forms of his own free will.
