Josh Marshall:
What's most telling about this is that little of this has been due to bad luck or news events out of Trump's control. With the partial exception of the release of Trump University documents, it's been almost entirely from Trump himself. A month ago Republican elected officials were unenthusiastically but resolutely rallying around Trump. Since then they've slowly been reduced to a public and political version of a family dealing with a hopeless addict or a degenerate gambler. They keep saying, insisting he'll change, only to have him provide more evidence he can't, won't and has no intention to. Their very indulgence seems to prompt more unbridled behavior.
The disgraceful way Trump handled the hours after the Orlando atrocity seems to have confirmed for many Republicans that change will never change or pivot or whatever other phrase we're now using. It's not an act. It's him. How this couldn't have been clear months ago is a topic for the psychology of denial and wishful thinking. But now it seems clear.
No single poll should ever carry that much weight. But yesterday's Bloomberg Poll, which is actually in line with the trend of polls of recent weeks, will probably serve as a wake-up call for where things could go. (ABC and CBS both have polls out this morning which lack 'horse race' numbers - probably coming soon - but show equally devastating approval numbers for Trump.) The GOP might pay a catastrophic price for months with the party headed by a man who is erratic, morally rudderless, mercurial and emotionally unstable - and that on his better days.
No one could have expected this. Except, of course, everyone.
Don’t miss this Iraq veteran’s take on Donald Trump disrespecting Iraq soldiers:
Ryan Cooper:
This election is developing something of a signature: Each and every day, Donald Trump says or does something horrible. Democrats have their squabbles, to be sure, but have now basically settled into a normal pattern. The final primary vote was completed on Tuesday, and now Hillary Clinton is laying the groundwork for what will undoubtedly be a very boring and cautious campaign.
Trump, by contrast, is constantly getting massive attention for being a deluded, ignorant, racist maniac. He combines an unprecedented facility to manipulate the modern media environment with gutter bigotry and a complete lack of policy knowledge. If elected, he would almost certainly displace Andrew Johnson as the worst president in American history.
Third GOP Gov to say no (Baker MA and Snyder MI):
New CBS News poll with a Clinton +6 and this important observation:
Philly Inquirer:
John E. Jones III is a federal judge in the Middle District of Pennsylvania
Federal judges are subject to a Code of Conduct that prohibits us from engaging in political activity. This includes writing about politics, so at the outset I want to be very clear that it is neither my intention nor purpose to do so. Rather, I am offering a judge's perspective on Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump's recent criticism of U.S. District Judge Gonzalo Curiel.
I do not know Curiel, but I do know something about the difficult vetting process he went through before taking the federal bench. Suffice it to say that it is properly designed to screen out and disqualify those who are for any reason unfit to achieve a life appointment under Article III of the Constitution. I also know that the same Code of Conduct, as well as simple judicial prudence, cautions against Curiel responding to criticisms by litigants in cases pending before him.
It is against this backdrop that I consider Trump's recent assessment of Curiel. Trump was responding to a decision by Curiel that he did not like. Nothing new there, as losing litigants will typically blame the decision-maker. What is remarkable, however, is that Trump went further and attributed his loss to what he claimed was Curiel's Mexican heritage and the resulting bias it created. Trump has cited no facts in support of this assertion save that he suffered an adverse decision. Indeed, if Curiel had exhibited actual or even implied bias, Trump's lawyers could have formally sought his recusal. It is telling that they have not done so.
As noted, Curiel's lips are sealed and he cannot respond to Trump. While Curiel has not asked me to do so, I think it is important for one of his colleagues to speak out about this incident.
Molly Ball:
“I am getting I-told-you-so delivered to my house by the truckload every day,” Rick Wilson, the Florida Republican consultant who has vocally opposed Trump from the beginning, told me. “I am eating up the I-told-you-so like a fat kid eats cake.”
Wilson had little patience for the idea that Trump might still turn it around. “He’s 70 years old. He’s a narcissistic sociopath. He’s not going to change,” he said. “There is no better version of Donald Trump, no mindful, serious, presidential version, only the reality-TV, con-man, pro-wrestling dipshit Donald Trump.”
Paul Waldman (June 3):
If this evolution in coverage takes hold, we can trace it to the combined effect of a few events and developments happening in a short amount of time. The first was Trump’s press conference on Tuesday, the ostensible purpose of which was to answer questions about a fundraiser he held in January to raise money for veterans’ groups. In the course of the press conference, Trump was at his petulant, abusive worst, attacking reporters in general and those in the room. “The political press is among the most dishonest people that I’ve ever met,” he said, saying to one journalist who had asked a perfectly reasonable question, “You’re a sleaze.” These kinds of criticisms are not new — anyone who has reported a Trump rally can tell you how Trump always tosses some insults at the press, at which point his supporters turn around and hurl their own abuse at those covering the event — but Trump seemed particularly angry and unsettled.
Paul Waldman (June 15):
Journalists have begun a debate amongst themselves and with their audiences about the best way to cover Donald Trump, and there’s an assumption running through that debate that I want to challenge. Many seem to believe that the kind of unvarnished coverage Trump has received, particularly on cable news, is a great and undeserved favor the media have done him.
But is that really true? Might it be that the most compelling case against Donald Trump is Donald Trump himself?
Let’s start with this. It’s fair to say that in the last couple of days, Trump’s reaction to the Orlando massacre got lots of media attention, and President Obama’s reaction to Trump’s reaction got even more. Hillary Clinton’s reaction got relatively less attention. But a new CBS poll released today showed that when people were asked whether they approved of how the three responded, the differences were striking. If we take the net approval (percentage approving minus percentage disapproving), Obama came out at plus 10 (44-34), Clinton was at plus 2 (36-34), and Trump was at minus 26 (25-51).
So Trump got plenty of coverage for his response, but it only served to turn Americans off.
Mark Murray on Bernie:
But there are still two ways in which Sanders succeeded. One, he performed better than anyone - probably including himself - ever expected, giving Clinton a truly competitive race.
Two, he's already pushed Clinton and the Democratic Party to the left. Take Clinton opposing the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade agreement early in the primary season, despite her earlier work as secretary of state laying the groundwork for the accord. Or Clinton saying she'd sign a $15-per hour minimum wage bill into law, even though she previously called for $12 an hour. Or President Obama stating he'd expand Social Security benefits.
Yet after those victories, after the final primary results and after Clinton became the party's presumptive presidential nominee, Sanders still marches on. He hasn't conceded to Clinton or endorsed her. And on Tuesday, Sanders made a series of demands, including:
- New leadership inside the Democratic National Committee (presumably replacing DNC Chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz);
- The most progressive Democratic platform in history;
- More open primaries;
- And eliminating superdelegates in the Democratic nominating system.
But the demands on DNC leadership, open primaries and superdelegates seem small. Why call for reforms to processes that you and your supporters deem unfair (rightly or wrongly), while not touching other processes (the caucuses) that benefited you?
Not conceding to Clinton appears even smaller, especially after she became the first female to become the presumptive presidential nominee of a major political party.
So now Trump wants to surveil mosques:
Presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump on Wednesday called for surveillance of mosques as part of U.S. law enforcement efforts to prevent terrorism, and stood by his remarks on banning Muslim immigrants that others in his party have criticized.
Trump repeated his call for a temporary ban on Muslim immigration to the United States after a U.S.-born Muslim man with Afghan immigrant parents fatally shot 49 people at an Orlando gay nightclub early on Sunday.
The billionaire New York real estate developer said that while the Florida gunman was born in the United States, “his parents weren’t and his ideas weren’t born here.”
“We have to maybe check, respectfully, the mosques and we have to check other places because this is a problem that, if we don’t solve it, it’s going to eat our country alive,” Trump said at a rally in Atlanta.
Don’t even start with bullshit about ‘both sides’. Trump is a menace and a danger to this country. If you are not working to defeat him, there’s something wrong with you.
This one is just epic:
Reminder from Jeet Heer: We are likely stuck with him.
What’s true of the Curiel controversy is true of all debates around Trump: The Republican base likes Donald Trump and generally agrees with what he says. For the party elite to get rid of Trump now would shatter the party, doing even more damage to its chances in November than having Trump as its standard-bearer.
To pull off a convention coup now means alienating not just everyone who voted for Trump—a strong plurality of Republican primary voters—but also the majority that is ready to line up behind him. A coup would put into stark relief the contrast between the Republican elite and the base. Trump would be able to fashion a potent (and accurate) stabbed-in-the-back narrative that would tear the party apart and unleash furies of recrimination that would last for years. And when Hillary Clinton won the presidency in the fall, as she almost inevitably would if facing a sundered Republican Party, Trump and his supporters would be able to lay all the blame on the elite coup-plotters.