October 9, 2016

"And as usual, Donald Trump drags all his Acme dynamite to the center of the stage and blows it up so that no one can pay attention to anything bad about Hillary. "

Said Maureen Dowd, on "Fox News Sunday" today, when Chris Wallace asks her how much damage Hillary Clinton will suffer from the leaked speeches she gave to Wall Street insiders.

But quite aside from Donald Trump and his distracting, self-destructive high-jinks. The pro-Wall Street stuff in the speeches isn't going to hurt her now. As Dowd put it:
I think it would have been lethal during the primaries, but now not so much because, you know, in many ways, she is the GOP candidate. She's the one who cuddles up to hedge funds, and she's the shill of Wall Street. So, it's only what we already knew.
She is the GOP candidate. 

ALSO: From the same panel discussion, I was struck by a negative reference to Abraham Lincoln. It's from Chris Wallace:
[T]here was also a passage in one of her big money speeches in which Clinton invokes Lincoln fighting for the 13th Amendment to abolish slavery and saying, you need both a public and a private position.  This goes to the core, as I was talking to Maureen, about what people don't trust about this woman.  
She's like Lincoln?

51 comments:

Original Mike said...

"She is the GOP candidate."

Dowd is showing her age (or her bias). It's the Democrats who have been the big-monied party for quite some time now.

Big Mike said...

She is the GOP candidate.

Not hardly likely! We of the GOP don't believe that a President should be above the law.

Original Mike said...

At least Fox News Sunday talked about the Hillary revelations. MTP was a disgace.

Anonymous said...

It doesn't matter what she said in the speeches anyway ... it is all a Russian plot. I heard Mook say so himself on the TV. Nothing to see here ... Squirrel!!!

Give 'em the old Razzle Dazzle, razzle dazzle me. It's sooo catchy.

Sprezzatura said...

My thoughts too.

Those leaks make her look like a middle of the road incrementalist tactician and manager.

In these threads April keeps blowing a gasket by referencing the Simpson Bowles report. As if that's a bad thing.

I know we're know that the Berners want communism and everything for free. So, I guess the idea is that they're going to turn off their brains so that they can join the T train.

Original Mike said...

"It doesn't matter what she said in the speeches anyway ... it is all a Russian plot. "

I wish Wallace had been quicker on his feet. Podesta made the inference, which seems to be their primary defense, that this came from the Russians and you can't trust that it's accurate. Wallace had Podesta right there; he should have asked Podesta directly if he was claiming that the emails are forgeries.

Original Mike said...

They are Podesta's emails they hacked, after all. Make him deny that they are real.

buwaya said...

The Wall Street = Republicans is not correct.
Main Street = Republicans was always the core.
Wall Street was for most of US economic history an appurtenance to Main Street, or to, for instance, the likes of Caterpillar Inc., in Peoria.
Caterpillar Inc. and Peoria are now de trop, as far as Wall Street is concerned.
Only recently has finance, concentrated in immense firms, been a power in themselves, money disassociated nearly entirely from what its function is. The degree of money concentrated in this way, independent of the actual goods&service economy, is a new thing. Much was written against "finance capital" in the past and it was mostly full of hooey. But we arent really dealing with "finance capital" now.
Wall Street is mostly dependent on government policy and regulation for its basic interests. The rest of everyone else is irrelevant, therefore they are a natural part of the party of government, government for its own sake.

rehajm said...

Dowd is showing her age (or her bias). It's the Democrats who have been the big-monied party for quite some time now.

Yes, though when was it ever true Dems weren't for big money except in a political sound bite from Obama or a Soros Production®? The Clintons firmly believe in political elitism and their intellectual superiority and make no apologies for taking their leftie inferiors for granted.

Inequality is dead as a political meme.

Bill Peschel said...

Hillary talks about regulating the bankers publicly to win popular support, but in private tells the not to worry to maintain their financial support.

Lincoln talked about preserving the union even if the slaves weren't to be freed publicly to maintain popular support for the coming war, but later pushed for his Emancipation Proclamation, but in private despised slavery and longed for its eradication.

These are not the same things.

Joe Biden, America's Putin said...

This time it wasn't Donald - it was the dutiful Clinton media, but the result is the same. No one is talking about Clinton corruption or about how she wants to cut social security - nope.

Wince said...

Trump still has the opportunity to be the Road Runner in this one. It will be difficult with the Clinton and media forces arrayed against him, with all their dynamite dragged "center stage".

But if this controversy passes as words uttered 11 years ago, for which he can apologize, Hillary will then have a few weeks of explaining to do.

And thus the media intensity on Trump right now to preempt that, and now the Lincolnesque trianglulation meme just in case it fails.

"Senator Clinton, you are no Abraham Lincoln."

Lucien said...

Acme dynamite is right. rump keeps letting spontaneous tactics undermine his strategy. Not that the Access Hollywood leak is something he did during the campaign, but couldn't he handle it more adroitly?

I get that his immediate push-back against every smear has been beneficial over the course of the primary and general campaigns, but he shouldn't be a slave to it.

Lucien said...

By the way, over at Slate in a story about Juanita Broaddrick Daniel Politi quotes Slate's Michelle Goldberg "The cases of [Paula] Jones, [Kathleen] Willey, and Broaddrick have been very thoroughly investigated and endlessly chewed over. No evidence against Bill Clinton was ever found . . ."

I guess Politi and Goldberg think that the victims' testimony doesn't count as evidence.
(They're just bimbos, anyway, and someone dragged a hundred dollar bill through a trailer park.)

ddh said...

I don't think Chris Wallace was making a negative reference to Lincoln. He was making a negative reference to Clinton's comparison of Lincoln's strategy on the 13th amendment to her support for today's humdrum legislative agenda. Passing the 13th amendment more than justifies some executive duplicity, but the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act or whatever her administration will burp up?

Sprezzatura said...

After the last debate these threads were full of suggestions for attacks that DJT missed.

So, how about sharing your brilliance before this time?

I'll start:

1)name all the Rs who have jumped ship and say that they are the GOPe which is the enemy of normal Americans.

2)talk about how HRC likes to help her husband rape women.

Any other ideas?

n.n said...

Clinton is the 1% candidate, foreign and domestic; but also the female chauvinist, selective exclusion, progressive war, trickle-up poverty, class diversity, anti-native, emigration reform, green blight, scientific mystic, and abortion rites candidate of Choice.

MacMacConnell said...

But, Clinton is the Wylie Coyote foreign policy expert.

holdfast said...

So, do we assume that someone at Wikileaks leaked the impending publication of the leaked Podesta emails to the Clinton campaign, and so they pulled the trigger on the Trump tape early?

It makes sense to me, since I'd think that they would have wanted to drop these in a couple of weeks when Trump would have no chance to recover.

I'd also note that NBC had this tape for 11 years. It wasn't relevant when Trump was their employee, making them lots of money on The Apprentice. It wasn't relevant when he was running for the GOP Primary, when releasing it might have helped the GOP select a non-clown candidate. It's only relevant when it looks like Trump might actually have a shot at defeating Hillary Clinton. Thanks impartial journalists!

exiledonmainstreet, green-eyed devil said...

It's the Democrats who have been the big-monied party for quite some time now.

10/9/16, 2:05 PM

I'm sure Dowd is quite aware of that. She's a Manhattanite working for the NY Times. Don't tell me she knows no wealthy Wall Street Democrats.

holdfast said...

“If everybody’s watching, you know, all of the backroom discussions and the deals, you know, then people get a little nervous, to say the least. So you need both a public and a private position,” Mrs. Clinton said in an April 2013 address. “You just have to sort of figure out how to — getting back to that word, ‘balance’ - how to balance the public and the private efforts that are necessary to be successful, politically, and that’s not just a comment about today.”

I know that the Trump tape is explosive and media-friendly, but if a GOP candidate had said this, wouldn't it me getting just a little more airplay?

Yancey Ward said...

If the Clinton campaign is smart, she won't bring up the Trump comments herself and it will have been communicated to the moderators and the "random" audience members to not do so either. Let Trump bring it up. I don't see an upside for Clinton to raise this issue since it would be the height of hypocrisy, and everybody knows this. The video and audio speak for themselves as it is- why undermine that?

If Trump is lucky, Clinton will go there first right at the begining, at that point he is being given the open opportunity to, first apologize again, then counterattack, but he can't spend all his time doing this, and it can't be him recounting things he has heard Bill Clinton say- it needs to be narrowly focused on the rape allegations and the behavior already proven beyond any real doubt. After that, he needs to focus relentlessly on the need for change, both economically and on foreign policy. He needs to highlighter over and over that he is the true outsider running to clean house in Washington, and he needs to explicitly point out that it is the insiders in both parties who are trying to drive him out of the race- that is the only way to benefit from the defections of the Republican senators and House members who abandoned him this weekend.

Will it work? I don't know- my instincts still tell me that the video/audio are killing since it really only needs to cost him 2 or 3% of the vote he would have otherwise gotten in November. If things go badly for him tonight, he may well withdraw. He really needs a big win tonight, no two ways about it.

Yancey Ward said...

Also, when he apologizes again, he should make it a point of saying that he didn't spend the majority of his adult life trying to be uncontroversial and boring to other people like a career politician does- that a great deal of his career was designed in one way or another to shock and entertain other people, and that some of those choices were inappropriate, and he can't change the past, but then he didn't plan until late in his life to run for office either.

Darrell said...

Yeah. Donald did that. Eleven years ago for the pussy talk, and twenty years ago for the taxes. Unless you can prove to me that Trump is using a time machine and doing those things now, Dowd's column is nonsense. The Media has been on a 24/7 witch hunt against Trump--probably the largest in history.

Paul said...

I find it strange NBC didn’t think their Trump Tapes were that big a deal while paying him 7 figures/episode for 10 years. Why now?

Oh, yea, November elections.

Sprezzatura said...

I don't see why DJT doesn't go all out. Most folks (incl DJT) realize that things appear to be on a path that ends w/ HRC winning. So, something needs to change. A ho-hum debate doesn't change anything. And, even if there wasn't a good argument suggesting that he needs to do something that will reorient the race, DJT loves insulting people, so it'd be psychologically fun and satisfying.

OTOH, at some point if you know you're on track to lose, maybe you don't want to go down in flames because that could be bad for business after the election. OTOOH, if your business is going to be selling media and stuff to con rubes, maybe doing a Hannity show thingy makes sense.

320Busdriver said...

Since 2001, Bill and Hillary together have generated 154m in income giving "for profit" speeches. 50M or 1/3 was earned by Bill while Hillary was SOS.

43% of total was earned outside of the USA.


15% of the total was paid by financial firms
Of the 23 systemically important banks in the West, 12 have paid the Clintons on a for profit basis. 12 appearances at Goldman Sachs and 10 at UBS.

The foundation boasted of revenues of 338M in 2014 with assets rising to 440M. 64% of 2014 revenue was spent on projects. 181M of the cumulative Foundation revenues were raised from foreign governments. Source; the economist

The grifters have been busy enriching themselves at the expense of the citizenry.

Clyde said...

Some old Democrat historian compared Obama to Lincoln before he was elected. I guess now every Democrat presidential candidate gets to be Lincoln for 15 minutes, just like every Republican gets to be Hitler.

Gospace said...

And just how did Trump bring this particular piece of Acme Dynamite to the stage? He didn't. The MSM outfit that EMPLOYED HIM has had the dynamite for years, and sat on it, until they could use it to help the Democrat candidate. Then they detonated it.

And then the talking heads focus 10 year old evidence of his crudeness as if it were serious, which it isn't, and ignore her law breaking as if were unimportant and without consequence. Well, apparently Democrats can break the law without consequence. With help from the MSM.

Anonymous said...

@320BusDriver

Be good to mama and she'll be good to you ... its the Chicago way.

The Razzle Dazzle won't end until Nov. 9. In fact, we are still in the middle act.

Carol said...

Yeah Lincoln freed the slaves, but he was also an old railroad lawyer who gave away a big chunk of land in the West in order to get the transcontinental railroad built.

So there's that.

Bleach Drinkers Curing Coronavirus Together said...

She's like Lincoln?

Well, Lincoln might have been gay, after all.

Is that what you mean?

MH said...

Trump should say that he has private and public position on cursing that he is changing. Apologize and promise to place a curse jar in the White House. Then he should ask why cursing is worse then the Secretary of Defense having private and public positions on taking money from foreign governments and banking lobbyist.

Anonymous said...

I can't believe I am saying this ... but Glenn Greenwald is doing God's work. And hats off to Minka for skipping the party, whatever the reason. I hope Joe did too.

Give 'em the old razzle dazzle
Razzle Dazzle 'em
Give 'em an act with lots of flash in it
And the reaction will be passionate

Mountain Maven said...

He lost me whe he moderated the debate. Too much like his dad.

exiledonmainstreet, green-eyed devil said...

Glenn Greenwald, huh? This election is making for strange bedfellows.

Bedfellows - can I still say that? Or is it homophobic?

Joe Biden, America's Putin said...

Clyde - 3:33 - LOL

Joe Biden, America's Putin said...

320Busdriver - @3:32

Also - The Clinton Foundation only donates 10 cents of every dollar to actual charity. 90% of the "charity" isn't charity at all. 90% covers payroll and perks.

Darrell said...

I would like to hear the history of the Billy Bush tape. My guess is that it was in Bush's possession and the Bush family talked him into releasing it so that they could maintain a relationship with the Globalists. Now lots of Lefties are calling for Billy Bush to be fired and black balled from future employment. The Bush family never learns. The Left eats all enemies after they get what they want or you cease to be useful to their needs. Althouse should keep that in mind.

John henry said...

I am not going to read Dowd. I read all I ever need to of her years ago and just find her tiresome.

I think she has her clever Acme Dynamite analogy backwards. Trump is not the coyote. Trump is the roadrunner.

The Demmies, the neverTrumpers and others who see their ricebowl threatened keep coming up with these diabolical "gotchas" like the Acme dynamite, the rockets, exploding cigars, anvils and so on.

Two weeks ago it was his taxes. That blew up in their faces so spectacularly that at least some people are speculating that Trump sent them, anonymously, to the NYT himself. Some of the deep thinkers thought NIGUYSOB! but it turnes out that most people wonder "If Trump didn't have any income, why should he have to pay income tax?" and/or "He was $1,000,000,000 in the hole 20 years ago and now he is worth $9B (or $3B if you prefer). That's one Hell of a comeback"

Or Miss Getaway Car. He, allegedly called her fat. A woman who is paid strictly for her appearance, a "beauty queen" gains 60# and that is not a problem? Trump should have fired her and that would have been the end to it but he didn't. People are hearing Peggy Lee in the background "Is that all there is?"

Go Donald "Road Runner" Trump. You've survived all the gimmicks thrown over the past year. They've got nothing.

John Henry

John henry said...

Also, April, The Clinto Foundation is ONLY, chartered and exempted for the purpose of running a Clinton Library in Little Rock. All of it's other activities are illegal under its current IRS charter.

Also look up Ranbaxy Corp. They are the Indian pharmaco that the Clintons use to supply AIDS drugs in Africa. The drugs are contaminated and have no active ingredients.

http://fortune.com/2013/05/15/dirty-medicine/?iid=sr-link1

Read the whole thing but here's a taste:

Ranbaxy executives didn’t care, says Kathy Spreen, and made little effort to conceal it. In a conference call with a dozen company executives, one brushed aside her fears about the quality of the AIDS medicine Ranbaxy was supplying for Africa. “Who cares?” he said, according to Spreen. “It’s just blacks dying.”

John Henry

Michael K said...

The Demmies, the neverTrumpers and others who see their ricebowl threatened keep coming up with these diabolical "gotchas" like the Acme dynamite, the rockets, exploding cigars, anvils and so on.

Trumpis the only guy crazy enough to take on the Deep State and the Ruling Class since Don Quixote.He will be destroyed although some of it, like the fake "13 year old rape" may blow up in their faces. The Obama judge with the ABC network connection may keep the ball rolling for a while but she could end up disbarred. Of course, if Hillary wins all bets are off.

Then it will take a Guillotine.

Unknown said...

Don't mind going on record prior to the debate. Trump is a damned fool (note to media: cut that portion out and refer to it as the sum total of my comment)
if he doesn't forget about any further apology and go directly at Hillary with his biggest guns blazing. I remember Romney taking a whipping from Crowley in the hope that the Democrats had done their worst. Trump should hold nothing back and blow the doors off.

The DNC has enough stuff polished and ready to go to make any Trump apology look like he is being foolish. (note to media: I just said "Trump apology is foolish" - close enough) If the Clintons can buy the FBI, they can buy whatever folks they need to do whatever they need to do to win.

The Republican establishment is showing the same courage they showed in standing up to the Democrats in Congress. No surprise. I am starting to believe that I would rather have honest lying Democrats in charge than hypocritical, lying Republican cowards.

Sprezzatura said...

For the record, I predicted, in this thread, that DJT was primed to go all out.

Even so, I didn't see this press conference coming.

Sprezzatura said...

Was the logistics and planning of this press conference what's been goin on while DJT was stuck in T Tower?

I guess that counts as debate prep.

Anywho, I guess we can now watch old clips where DJT says HRC had been attacked re this stuff and Paula is unattractive.

Sprezzatura said...

I'm sure the folks here who fussed that DJT was too nice last time are thrilled.

Good for you!

Bleach Drinkers Curing Coronavirus Together said...

Wow. That Intercept story really shows how pathetic the press is. They get played like fiddles.

Imagine an HRC strategy that involved engaging America as much as it does engaging the media. They really do think that managing the fifth estate is all there is to this job.

I feel embarrassed to live in a country where the major party candidate and likely winner feels that she can skate away like this.

With a press-government-banking relationship as incestuous as theirs everyone else MUST become bedfellows. There are only two beds and one's already occupied by Hillary, her goons in the media, and the banks. And no one else would want to be in that!

tim in vermont said...

Corruption is great fun when you feel like the corrupt person is on your side, but rot rots and rots and soon the power is going to go to the people who are best at manipulating a corrupt state. That's where we are now, that's why the Clintons are headed back to power. Who will inherit the corrupted IRS, FBI, FEC, after Hillary? We don't know, but we do know that there will be very few checks on their power.

Bleach Drinkers Curing Coronavirus Together said...

I hate Glenn Greenwald and think he's a douchebag but OTOH absolutely appreciate the service he's doing as the pretty much the only journo willing to exert any pressure in keeping HRC honest. An interesting row he got into in the comments illustrates the idiotic emptiness of her supporters:

Glenn Greenwald ↪ Del Berton
Oct. 9 2016, 3:28 p.m.
"Hey Glenn, the anal fumes you inhale going down on your boy friend have addled what’s left in your mind…."

From a Clinton-supporting progressive who – as he spews rank bigotry like this – will be the first to explain that Trump must be stopped because he’s a bigot.

As for Putin hating Clinton, see...

Michael Fitzgerald said...

The only ones blowing up anything are democrat propagandists and their subjects. The blow-up isn't the point, it's the smoke screen and diversion they really want, to distract from Crooked Hillary's latest revelations of lying to the American people, conspiring with Wall Street executives, and suggesting the assassination of a meddlesome journalist leaking damaging facts, among other unsavory utterances.

geoffb said...

"CLINTON: You just have to sort of figure out how to -- getting back to that word, "balance" -- how to balance the public and the private efforts that are necessary to be successful, politically, and that's not just a comment about today. That, I think, has probably been true for all of our history, and if you saw the Spielberg movie, Lincoln, and how he was maneuvering and working to get the 13th Amendment passed, and he called one of my favorite predecessors, Secretary Seward, who had been the governor and senator from New York, ran against Lincoln for president, and he told Seward, I need your help to get this done.

And Seward called some of his lobbyist friends who knew how to make a deal, and they just kept going at it. I mean, politics is like sausage being made. It is unsavory, and it always has been that way, but we usually end up where we need to be.

But if everybody's watching, you know, all of the back room discussions and the deals, you know, then people get a little nervous, to say the least. So, you need both a public and a private position. And finally, I think -- I believe in evidence-based decision making. I want to know what the facts are. I mean, it's like when you guys go into some kind of a deal, you know, are you going to do that development or not, are you going to do that renovation or not, you know, you look at the numbers. You try to figure out what's going to work and what's not going to work.

[Clinton Speech For National Multi-Housing Council, 4/24/13]"


The analogy doesn't scan and the speech reads like watching blood sausage being made.