Every time we think Trump has hit rock bottom, the tycoon breaks out the jackhammer and keeps going. The only thing more alarming than The Donald? His supporters.
Welcome to “This Week In Crazy,” The National Memo’s weekly update on the loony, bigoted, and hateful behavior of the increasingly unhinged right wing. Starting with number five:
5. Ann Coulter
People on all sides of the aisle — including other GOP presidential candidates Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz; Dick Cheney (!); House Speaker Paul Ryan; a cornucopia of pundits, celebrities, business moguls, heads of state, disillusioned erst-Trump fans; and even the White House — have announced how appalled they are at Trump’s remarks that he would ban all Muslims from entering the United States.
Of course, consummate troll Ann Coulter has The Donald’s back. Calling his inflammatory remarks her “best birthday gift” in her syndicated column Wednesday, Coulter affirmed that Trump’s proposal was neither racist nor unconstitutional, and that Republicans condemning Trump were merely “eunuchs.”
In the blog post, she shows off her typical flair for sensible, tempered responses to current events:
Given the devastation caused by only two Muslims in San Bernardino, eight Muslims in Paris, two at the Boston Marathon, one at a Chattanooga military recruitment center, one at Fort Hood, 19 on 9/11, etc. etc. — it’s really irrelevant whether “most” Muslim immigrants are peaceful little lambs. It doesn’t take a lot of them to create havoc.
How else have the 1.5 million Muslims admitted since 9/11 made our country better? Their massive welfare use? Overburdening our schools and hospitals? The machete attacks? The clitorectomies? The honor killings? The occasional terrorist attack?
Of course, American Muslims don’t exactly have a monopoly on terrorist attacks or even machete attacks. But Coulter’s implacable hatred of all immigrants knows neither bounds nor logic. Anyway, happy birthday to her.
Via Right Wing Watch
4. Pamela Geller
Pamela Geller, the provocateur who launched the “Draw Muhammad” contest that inspired two gunmen to assassinate her, was saved in that instance by police who shot the gunmen dead. Now, she’s returning the favor with some choice words of appreciation and thanks for the nation’s chief law enforcement officer: “Come and get me, biatch!”
Defending Trump’s intention to ban all Muslims, Geller gave a radio interview with Joyce Kaufman, in which she lamented the “Jon Stewart-ization of the world, of America,” which has turned colleges into “hotbeds of inculcation, of anarchy, of hatred of freedom, of hatred of Jews, of hatred of America, of everything we are.” (I must have missed that episode of The Daily Show.)
This, she says, recalls the way the Nazis seized control. (First they came for the race-baiting Islamophobic bigots…)
But she reserved her most potent venom for Attorney General Loretta Lynch.
From Right Wing Watch:
The two also discussed comments by Attorney General Loretta Lynch that the Justice Department would “take action” when it sees “violent rhetoric,” which she later clarified by noting that “we prosecute deeds not words.”
Geller, of course, saw this as a threat that Lynch would arrest her if someone commits a violent act after reading her Atlas Shrugs blog. “I have one thing to say,” she said, “Come and get me, biatch.”
“If the Obama administration wants to go to war against freedom, wants to arrest me for my unalienable rights guaranteed under the First Amendment, I’m going to put on my little black dress, Joyce, my string of pearls and my thigh-highs and I’m going to head on down to the jail,” she added.
For what it’s worth, when Geller pulled her Muslim-baiting stunt back in May, a pre-candidate Trump, operating on a somewhat more grounded stratum of sanity, tweeted at the time that the “U.S. has enough problems without publicity seekers going out and openly mocking religion in order to provoke attacks and death. BE SMART.”
In the intervening months, it appears Trump sunk to her level — and then some.
ViaMediateandRight Wing Watch
3. Rush Limbaugh
If you condemn Donald Trump for his comments (as nearly everyone has), you’re no better than the terrorists.
This is the gospel from Conservative America’s demented, opiate-addicted id, Rush Limbaugh, whose logic apparently reduces to: You’re either with Trump or you’re for ISIS. Because if you disagree with The Donald, you’re on the “same side” as America’s enemies.
From Mediaite:
Limbaugh was apparently going off a statement one Hamas leader provided to Breitbart. Ismail Radwan reportedly told them, in response to Trump’s proposal, “We do not estimate that the current U.S. administration, any administration, will implement these racist suggestions. This is a pathetic attempt to attribute terror exclusively to Muslims.”
Limbaugh said, “That puts the Republican party, the Democrat party, and everybody else in the establishment, and Obama on the same side Hamas is on! And over here all by himself is Donald Trump, speaking out against it all.”
Expounding on Facebook, Limbaugh wrote: “Hamas is a terrorist group. Do you know that Hamas came out in opposition to Trump’s statement? That puts the Republican Party, the Democrat Party, and everybody else in the establishment and Obama on the same side Hamas is on.”
Transitive property, fools. QE-frickin’-D. Visit Mediaite for audio of Limbaugh’s ravings.
2. Fox & Friends
The fatuous folks at Fox & Friends — the ne plus ultra in well-dressed prestige trolling — in their ongoing project to excavate new lows for themselves are addressing the scourge of gun violence in schools, by encouraging children to fight back against armed gunmen, should they ever find themselves in the middle of a school shooting (which, after all, is just the price we pay for freedom).
Their Tuesday morning segment on the subject — chyron’d “Caught In The Chaos: How To Teach Your Kids To Fight Back” — de-emphasized the widely recommended self-preservation tactics of escaping and hiding, and devoted the majority of their feature to “two krav maga instructors and three children who demonstrated martial arts techniques that could be used to disarm an active shooter,” according to Media Matters.
Co-host Elisabeth Hasselbeck introduced the segment saying, “In an active shooter situation five seconds can mean the difference between life and death. But there are some things that you can do, and your children can do, to make a difference” before asking the instructor to “display for us and exemplify what would happen in an armed shooter situation.” The instructor then used a stapler as a prop while his co-instructor demonstrated how to disarm a gunman from behind.
Attempting to evacuate or hide only came up in passing when Hasselbeck asked the instructor what to do if you find yourself in an active shooter situation with alongside another potential victim. The instructor, said, “Once we’re hiding, let’s say we couldn’t run away, and we hide and then we’ve realized that we might be discovered, we have to basically communicate with each other and say, ‘Listen, this is what is going to happen, if I grab the gun, you guys are going to tackle the person.'” The comment didn’t clearly explain that these steps should be taken first — whether if you are alone or with someone else — and the segment then moved on to another demonstration of disarming a gunman.
Media Matters notes that the “Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has specific guidelines on how to act when one’s life is threatened in a shooting situation,” and that one should “take action against an active shooter only ‘as a last resort’ and when your life is in imminent danger.”
Besides, in a truly free society, children would be allowed to pack heat in the classrooms. Oh, wait.
1. Donald Trump
We know the play well.
First, Trump says something reprehensible, something reeking of illogic and hostility, perhaps something that threatens to upend domestic tranquility through incitements to racial violence at home, or perhaps some rant that could explode our international standing through ill-considered and uncouth threats that betray a dangerous, glaring ignorance of geopolitics and the finer points of diplomacy. The details hardly matter (as Trump would agree).
Next: luminaries, statesmen, movers, and shakers from within his own newly adopted party condemn the remarks; the punditocracy foresees the imminent downfall of The Donald. Surely, nobody could say such outrageous things about Hispanics, women, POWs, Muslims, or — for God’s sake — Iowans; nobody could lie through their teeth so loudly and so frequently and still secure the nomination.
And then, of course, he rises in the polls. So it was this week, when Trump articulated his “Ban all the Muslims” doctrine (conveniently after a new poll showed him getting beaten in Iowa — take that, Cruz!)
So what’s left to say about the autocratic, irresponsibly obtuse Orange-Julius-in-a-thousand-dollar-suit leading the GOP race, except that his poll numbers have, yes, gone up again. As we knew they would.
Whether he exits before the convention, loses 2016 for the Republicans, or mounts his own third-party folly, Trump will have irrevocably left his stain on American politics and discourse — and we are the worse for it.
Illustration: Chris Piascik via Flickr
Check out previous editions of This Week In Crazy here. Think we missed something? Let us know in the comments!
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