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Trump Never Stops Insulting His Cult Followers

Trump Never Stops Insulting His Cult Followers

Supporters of Donald Trump often complain about the "liberal elites" who have disrespected them. It is a feeling of cultural grievance that their idol constantly exploits, both to enrich himself with their donations and to defend himself against his critics.

Whenever Trump finds himself under pressure — in a courtroom, an impeachment or an election — he tells those credulous followers that it is not he but they who are the true targets of the Democrats, the "deep state," the media, the Republicans in Name Only, the Biden White House or whomever. That was how he responded to the first impeachment brought against him in 2019 and that is how he answered the huge $83 million jury verdict delivered against him this week in the E. Jean Carroll defamation case.

Trump makes this demagogic argument in full confidence that the MAGA cult will believe him — and with certainty that they will never realize how deeply he is insulting them.

"In reality they're not after me, they're after you. I'm just in the way," he tweeted when Congress first voted to impeach him. But did that make any sense? It wasn't the MAGA voters who attempted to extort the president of Ukraine, attempting to trade American weaponry for his own political gain (and to frame a political opponent with a phony prosecution).

Surely most of Trump's fans would never consider such a brazen blackmail scheme. Unlike him, they don't have to worry about being impeached or prosecuted; they have neither the motive nor the opportunity to perpetrate the offenses that Trump repeatedly commits.

In the wake of the Carroll jury award, the former president's most devoted associates have adopted the same argument, adding their own frantic spin. Steve Bannon, the convicted fraudster pardoned by Trump in order to keep his mouth shut, and Matt Schlapp, the right-wing activist repeatedly accused of homosexual assault, declared that the verdict foreshadows "the end of America."

On the "War Room" online broadcast hosed by Bannon, Schlapp echoed Trump's baseless insistence that the Carroll lawsuit is a "very coordinated thing" and the product of a "weaponized government" — when in fact it is simply a civil lawsuit brought by an aggrieved citizen. But Schlapp went still further, warning the MAGA audience that the judgment against Trump in favor of the woman he assaulted would portend their own ruin.

What the verdict proves, according to Schlapp and Bannon, is that the government "doesn't just intend to destroy your career and cancel you on social media, they mean to impoverish you and destroy any opportunity you have in the future. ... If these things continue to stand, all of this unconstitutional illegal activity, we've got nothing left, Steve. I mean it's run to the mountains, run to the catacombs time. ... This $83 million — this is just the beginning. All of us will be paraded down this gangplank. We won't have our resources, we won't have our homes, we won't have our livelihood."

Schlapp's panic is perhaps understandable, as he faces pressure to resign the chairmanship of the Conservative Political Action Committee -- a juicy grift -- because of sexual assault accusations that resemble Trump's offenses. And Bannon no doubt feels a twinge of sympathy as he faces continued prosecution by New York state authorities for the "border wall" scam that led to his federal pardon. (Three others involved in that racket went to prison, including a disabled veteran.)

But why would a normal person put any credence in such hysterical rants? There was nothing "illegal" or "unconstitutional" in Carroll's courageous effort to hold Trump accountable for assault, which resulted in a flood of personal abuse against her that included hundreds of death threats. More to the point, only an infinitesimal fraction of Americans has any reason to worry about being held responsible for an aggravated sexual assault - because unlike Trump, few have ever been accused of rape or assault, let alone by dozens of women.

It is remarkable indeed how many of our fellow citizens are willing to be implicated in the sociopathic conduct of the former president, who tells them every day that they are just like him.

Reprinted with permission from Creators.

The Summer Of 'Barbie' Couldn't Come Too Soon

The Summer Of 'Barbie' Couldn't Come Too Soon

Every summer has an obsession. The best ones are inconsequential.

Way back in 2013, we were "arguing" over Robin Thicke's song Blurred Lines, also featuring Pharrell Williams. The song came under attack for allegedly reinforcing rape myths. The suspect line — "I know you want it" — was oft repeated. Frankly, that sounded to me like an observation, accurate or not, but hardly forced sex.

Rolling Stone laughed it off. "Thanks to its lascivious, Pharrell-spun hook," the magazine smirked, "it held the whole world in its slightly skeevy grasp all summer long."

This summer the talk is of Barbie. Finding any controversy over the renewed fascination with the 64-year-old Mattel doll will be quite a stretch. The inspiration is Greta Gerwig's upcoming movie Barbie, about what happens when the doll enters the human world. Due perhaps to the lack of anything else that's fun, bubblegum Barbie pink is now everywhere, even on the cover of Businessweek.

Now I haven't seen the movie. But it should be a happy trip in Gerwig's imaginative hands. And Ken is with her.

Though I don't know much about Barbie the movie, I know a whole lot about Barbie the doll, having been handed an early version some years back. I recall being intimidated by the "mature" figure, particularly her generous bazoom and freakishly tiny waist. Up until then, our dolls took the form of babies or young children. Suddenly we went from roller skates to pink Corvettes. Mattel reproportioned Barbie a few years later to reflect the human female a bit more realistically.

The Barbie wardrobe was always flashy. There's Barbie in slinky cocktail dresses. There's Barbie the foxy stewardess from the Pan Am days. Even Barbie Rodeo Cowgirl! had a come-on look, with her low-slung bell bottoms and cropped red sparkly vest.

I recall an eight-year-old who came to visit carrying her "box of Barbies." It was a shoebox containing heads, legs, naked torsos and tiny hip boots made of gold Mylar. The young visitor saw nothing macabre about the contents. I think she planned to assemble a whole Barbie — or most of a Barbie — as the afternoon went on.

An aunt in Houston, fearful of leaving her house, would sit all day at her sewing machine and make spectacular sun dresses for my cousin's Barbie. Nowadays, home seamstresses and foreign sweatshops alike churn out Barbie outfits.

The French took to the doll but not to the American brash styling. And so, some years ago, a French fashion designer created tailored tweed suits for Barbie.

As an international phenomenon, Barbie was not free of controversy. In 1994, Kuwait's College of Sharia and Islamic Studies supported a fatwa against the she-devil doll, joining Iran's ayatollahs, who had long banned her.

In 1998, sensitive souls in Puerto Rico objected to the Puerto Rican Barbie as too Anglo. This took Mattel by surprise. The toymaker had proudly presented one of the dolls, in a traditional white ruffled dress, to the wife of the Puerto Rican governor. Whatever. Come Christmas, Puerto Rican Barbies flew off the store shelves in San Juan and environs.

This summer's Barbiecore craze has spawned parties for which grownup women dress in the pink spandex and platform shoes covered in glitter. Has anyone found a pink Corvette?

In a 1977 interview, Barbie's creator Ruth Handler explained why she felt girls should have a sexy doll with puckered lips and thick eyeliner: "Every little girl needed a doll through which to project herself into her dream of her future." If she says so.

Anyhow, it's nice to color our world pink, if just for a few summer weeks.

Follow Froma Harrop on Twitter @FromaHarrop. She can be reached at fharrop@gmail.com. To find out more about Froma Harrop and read features by other Creators writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators webpage at www.creators.com.

Reprinted with permission from Creators.

Supreme Court

How To Achieve Diversity Without Affirmative Action

I've never been a huge fan of affirmative action. There's something about objective standards — however arbitrary they may be — that gives kids from working-class backgrounds a fair chance to succeed against those who were to the manor born. The American dream story has been told many times over by good test takers like me without a dime to spare. By comparison, there's something about giving extra points to someone because of what group they happen to belong to that strikes many fair-minded people as unfair. Give points for overcoming obstacles or personal accomplishments, that I understand, but not simply for race alone.

The problem is that diversity is a compelling objective not only for a university classroom but also for our society as a whole. It is critical when I teach a criminal law class that I have students participating in the discussion who understand issues from different perspectives; it does change the educational experience. And it is critical that we educate and train lawyers who will serve all communities in our society.

I'm not trying to reargue the Supreme Court case. That conclusion has been coming for a long time. It has been state law in California since 1996. We have learned to live with it in our state university system, and so will you. What I'm arguing is that diversity is still just as important as it has always been, and the challenge is how to achieve it without resorting to race-conscious admissions and/or endless lawsuits. Especially not endless lawsuits.

What has happened in California is instructive. In the immediate aftermath of Proposition 209, banning affirmative action in public education, the number of Blacks and Hispanics at the most selective schools in the state system literally tanked. That's true.

But as my friend Erwin Chemerinsky, the Dean of the University of California Berkeley Law School, one of the jewels of the system, told me on my podcast, many of the schools in the system, including his, then developed new programs and approaches to achieve diversity without race-conscious admissions. They did it with broad outreach and aggressive recruitment, involving both faculty and alumni, without in any way lowering their standards. They did it by relying on a whole host of factors to define excellence rather than simply applying a straight numerical formula. They did it without lowering the ultimate quality of the class.

Is it easy? Absolutely not. But even apart from this decision, and not necessarily because of it, many universities have been moving away from reliance on standardized test scores and ranking systems that are based on them because, among other things, of the cultural biases that are inherent in them. Again, I'm the first to admit to being of two minds about the move toward more subjective admissions. I hope it will help to build more diverse classes, including some kids who may not be as skilled at test taking, without sacrificing those who may not have the connections to check enough other boxes (like alumni connections or donor potential or, as one former admissions dean used to call it, the "glitter factor") that otherwise command attention.

What happens next, unfortunately, is likely to be another round of lawsuits as the post-affirmative action world "shakes out." Is it OK to take account of the obstacles applicants have overcome? Almost certainly yes, so long as those obstacles are not solely defined in racial terms. Is it OK to take account of economic hardships? It should be, as long as the hardships are not measured solely by ZIP codes that are race-based. And so the challenges will go. Admissions officials should be given broad deference in fashioning admissions systems, but sadly much litigation should be expected, and in the short run, at least, the danger is that admissions officials will be afraid to be bold when they most need to be.

To find out more about Susan Estrich and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.

Reprinted with permission from Creators.

‘Are You Liberal Or Are You Conservative?’

‘Are You Liberal Or Are You Conservative?’

About 20 years ago, when the syndicate that represents this column was preparing to pitch it to newspaper editors, I was called in for a meeting with the sales staff and somebody asked me this question:

“Are you liberal or are you conservative?”

I said, “Yes.”

I wasn’t trying to be a wise guy. OK, maybe a little. But I was also trying to convey my impatience with our bipolar political discourse, with the idea that I was required to pick a team. I was trying to preserve for myself the right to think a thing through and come to my own conclusion regardless of ideological branding.

But at the same time, I knew what I was being asked. When they said, “Are you liberal or are you conservative?” those words had concrete meaning, embodied real political concepts.

But that is no longer the case — at least where the latter term is concerned.

Once upon a time, when a person identified as conservative, you knew the ideas he or she meant to convey — low taxes, small government, resistance to social change. But a word that once encoded a definite set of values and beliefs now seems utterly bereft of internal cohesion, less a name for an ideology than for a mood: surly, nasty and put-upon.

They don’t like the rest of us. Nor do they seem to like each other all that much, feuding with a bitterness and constancy that would make even the Hatfields and McCoys tell them to tone it down. Yes, ideology still gets lip service, but its importance has become secondary, if that.

How else to explain that people who once considered Christian faith their foundation stone have coalesced behind a candidate who can’t name a Bible verse? Or that people who once valued a grown-up, clear-eyed approach to foreign policy support candidates who want to “carpet bomb” the Middle East and pull out of NATO? Or that people who once decried “a culture of victimization” now whine all day about how they are victims of biased media, bullying gays and political correctness?

How to explain that people who once vowed to safeguard American moral decency from the nefarious irreverence of liberals — think President Bush chastising “The Simpsons” in the era of “family values” — now put forth candidates who tell penis jokes?

A few days ago New York Times, columnist David Brooks professed to be excited by this act of self-immolation — “This is a wonderful moment to be a conservative,” he gushed — because after this debacle, conservatives will be able to reinvent themselves, unencumbered by “existing mental categories and presuppositions.” Like when a comic book or movie franchise gets re-booted, I suppose. One had the sense of a man desperately painting lipstick on a pig.

The right is rotting from within, putrefying on its own grievance and rage. It seems bereft of core values and beliefs unless you count its determination to always oppose anything the left supports, up to and including motherhood and sunshine. That’s as close to principle as conservatives come these days.

Given the way they have spurned their party’s 2012 election “autopsy” report, which called for greater inclusion and a gentler tone, one wonders if these folks are capable of, or even interested in, the reinvention Brooks predicts. Conservatives do not need to be “liberal-lite” — no ideology has a monopoly on good ideas. On the other hand, when your base is the Ku Klux Klan, Ted Nugent and people sucker-punching strangers at rallies, it’s a sign that a little self-reflection is overdue.

“Are you liberal or are you conservative?”

I had a smart aleck answer 20 years ago. But it occurs to me that if they asked that now, I’d have to request clarification. My worldview hasn’t changed.

But I no longer have any idea what “conservative” means.

(Leonard Pitts is a columnist for The Miami Herald, 1 Herald Plaza, Miami, Fla., 33132. Readers may contact him via e-mail at lpitts@miamiherald.com.)

(c) 2016 THE MIAMI HERALD DISTRIBUTED BY TRIBUNE CONTENT AGENCY, LLC.

Photo: Republican U.S. presidential candidate Texas Senator Ted Cruz waves as he arrives to speak at the 2016 Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) at National Harbor, Maryland March 4, 2016. REUTERS/Joshua Roberts