Curb Your Authoritarianism? The 2016 Conventional Wisdom Thread (Elections, Part 6)

Poor guy:

Kristol isn’t exactly Mr. Popular here in Cleveland. He spent the first several months of the GOP primary adamantly predicting Trump’s imminent demise, and the last desperate weeks trying to recruit a conservative independent to run against him. (His pick, an obscure lawyer-pundit, didn’t take the bait.) On the light rail trail to downtown on Monday morning, he said, a fellow commuter looked him straight in the eye and told him: “You don’t turn me on.”

“I was polite and didn’t tell him I was sick of people like him,” Kristol said. He gets it, he said; he knew he wasn’t going to be greeted here with “adulation” and “flower petals.”

But that doesn’t mean he’s without fans. Here came one now! A man in a dapper suit pulled Kristol by the arm and thanked him for coming and for being true to himself. Then he went to get in line with everyone else.

“The Democratic county executive now likes me,” Kristol exclaimed, playfully rolling his eyes. “Is there any other way to get into this thing?”

An old friend of a friend, a former Republican fundraiser, spotted Kristol and reached to shake his hand.

“What are you doing here?” Kristol asked.

“Oh, you know, I’m kind of wandering,” the man said.

“Oh, you’re like all of us,” Kristol says. He looked again at the line. “This is getting ridiculous. I’m going to get a Coke.”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/yes-bill-kristol-is-at-the-republican-convention-having-a-terrible-time/2016/07/18/a04232a2-4d18-11e6-aa14-e0c1087f7583_story.html?hpid=hp_hp-top-table-main_kristol-10pm%3Ahomepage%2Fstory

Trump will point out the, like, words that were different from the cribbed passages and, what, did Michelle Obama invent words now? We're not allowed to use words just because other people used them? Rigged system. Sad!

'like, three words'

a fellow commuter looked him straight in the eye and told him: “You don’t turn me on.”

sounds like he missed an obvious neg from a horny pua convention attendee

Melania must have gone to the Joe Biden School of Notetaking

OMG, I'm frickin' Nostradamus.

The Donald Trump campaign on Tuesday denied allegations that Melania Trump plagiarized a Michelle Obama speech on the first night of the Republican National Convention, calling the accusation "just really absurd."

"To think that she would do something like that knowing how scrutinized her speech was going to be last night is just really absurd," Trump's campaign chairman Paul Manafort told CNN's Chris Cuomo on "New Day."

At least one passage in Trump's speech Monday night plagiarized from Obama's address to the Democratic National Convention in 2008.

Side-by-side comparisons of the transcripts show the text in Trump's address following, nearly to the word, the would-be future first lady's own from the first night of the Democratic convention in Denver nearly eight years ago.

Manafort said the words Melania used were not "cribbed" but are common words.

"There's no cribbing of Michelle Obama's speech. These were common words and values. She cares about her family," Manafort said. "To think that she'd be cribbing Michelle Obama's words is crazy."

"And even if she did steal those words, she only stole the best words, and used them better and more beautifully."

You assume just because I'm holding the knife that's currently being thrust into this man's chest that I'm stabbing him. Which is just really absurd.

did y'all pay attention to the paranoid racist garbage that was going on last night because that wasn't very cute

Manafort said the words Melania used were not "cribbed" but are common words.

Plagiarism is so common at the grade 6 level, especially when it comes to Wikipedia. I call out four or five kids every year on it, just confining myself to really blatant stuff. "Tell me what 'perspicacity' means, C-level language student." Actually, it's less individual words than the way words are put together that makes it obvious. If I checked and followed up on everything diligently, that's all I'd ever do.

Anyway, look forward to the common-words defense. "C'mon, teach--'and,' 'the,' 'said,' I use those words all the time!"

guess this billionaire doesn't own TurnItIn.com

I'm waiting for the defense that Michelle Obama heard Melania's speech, then jumped in her time machine and took the speech with her back to 2008.

This is a level of stupidity I just cannot fathom. Manafort is absolutely right about the level of scrutiny Melania's speech was likely to receive. So...how was this allowed to happen? Who was responsible? It really almost seems intentional. To what end, who can say. Maybe Melania's cannier than we assumed and is trying to save us all?

"America should not have to suffer through the nightmare I experience in bed every night."

"To think that she would do something like that knowing how scrutinized her speech was going to be last night is just really absurd," Trump's campaign chairman Paul Manafort told CNN's Chris Cuomo on "New Day."

Is there a word for this kind of phallacy? Denying something blatantly obvious by saying she didn't do it, because it would be too blatantly obvious?

"So...how was this allowed to happen? Who was responsible? It really almost seems intentional."

by many accounts Trump barely has any campaign staffers.

"phallacy"

haha

lol oops

I'd think that someone on the Trump campaign would have been assigned specifically to AVOID sounding anything like Michelle's speech.

But that would be, like, clever.

Trump right now is asking someone to tell him what plagiarism is and not listening to the answer

I never ever never check Twitter, but I just looked at Michelle Obama's account. Nothing about last night. Not a new observation, but that really brings it home. Would Trump as president ever be able to hold himself in check, especially if he felt like the injured party? It'd be non-stop cleaning up of Twitter messes. (He claims he'd stay off if elected; he's proved so manageable to date.)

was kinda on and off twitter last night but sounds like they are off to a smashing start

this is the best

I almost feel like this was a trap set by the Trump campaign to minimize discussion of the insane alarmism and fascist rhetoric that had happened earlier in the night.

― based stress reduction (crüt), Tuesday, July 19, 2016 7:35 AM (2 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

naw being ridiculous is much worse for a politician than being blood thirsty

Every bit of air time spent saying Melania did not copy the speech is air time that Trump and the GOP are reacting, rather than controlling the conversation. Taking time to deny it and explain it away means that they are losing the media cycle. You can bemoan that this is the state of the discourse just now, but it is the world in which we live. And right now I'm loving this: "New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie (R), a staunch Trump ally, defended the campaign Tuesday, saying that '93 percent of the speech is completely different than Michelle Obama’s speech.'" So, 7% is a nothingburger, but if it were 9% or 12%, well then, maybe you'd have something. But it's only a trifling 7% so shut up.

i have a sense that melania doesn't give a fuck about any of this and that she is in existential danger of not caring about anything at all.

Sounds like Christie's cribbing his numbers from the roll call vote yesterday:

Seven states needed to submit signatures from a majority of their delegates in order to force a roll call vote. Nine states did so, but the chair said three states had withdrawn their requests. Manafort said there were actually four that withdrew.

http://www.rollcall.com/news/politics/anti-trump-republicans-call-roll-call-vote

Melania was there to be a lightning rod the media's attention regardless of what she said.

Most of all I like the idea of Bill Kristol talking some tech guy into uploading "the newest draft" onto the teleprompter, Iago-style, right before she spoke.

I'm guessing like 90% of the 93% of the speech that is completely different than Michelle Obama's speech was cribbed from sources we haven't tracked down yet.

https://twitter.com/danmericacnn/status/755379238312693760
https://twitter.com/phil_mattingly/status/755371223413121024

Philip Bump ‏@pbump 17m17 minutes ago
“She’s comfortable that the words she used are words that were personal to her.” - Manafort on Melania

the best part is how the plagiarized material is sheer boilerplate. their team couldn't find another way to get her to say she was raised to respect others? or that she believes the nation's kids should be taught to work hard and reach for their dreams?

lol trump camp has no plan

Sam Stein ‏@samsteinhp 1h1 hour ago
Manafort: Melania did not plagiarize

Christie: Sure she plagiarized. But just 7% of the speech

Priebus: I’d fire the speech writer.

I will have the best words, believe me.

Re that Dan Merica tweet, I think the relevant maxim is not to interrupt your opponent when he's in the process of making a mistake.

lol

i'm a fan of melania tbh

between the plagiarism and the rickroll there cant really be any doubt that its sabotage no

― lag∞n, Tuesday, July 19, 2016 1:33 AM (8 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

standing by this btw

I'm going to submit a few existing books whose words are personal to me for publication under my name. I guess that's kosher now in our brave new world.

melania "pierre menard" trump

I bet it's Peter thiel behind all this

hes innovating

speech prob written by a bot

maybe kenneth goldsmith was hired to be the speechwriter

Gideon Resnick ‏@GideonResnick
Ben Carson's spin on the Melania plagiarism situation: It shows "we share the same values."

The absurdity quotient is so high at this point that I almost expect reality to melt like an old filmstrip any day now.

the obvious course of action is to make a fall guy out of some scrub which means trump will prob not do that

I have a feeling the media spin on the convention was all set to be, "Wow, Trump pulled off a pretty okay convention after all the handwringing" but now the amateur hour narrative will continue.

There are lots of poems that express my values and feelings. But I didn't write them.

Robert Costa ‏@costareports 2m2 minutes ago
Trumpland quickly turned from ebullient to dark after the convention ended Monday and cable went big on plagiarism. https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/republican-national-convention-scrutiny-of-melania-trumps-speech-follows-plagiarism-allegations/2016/07/19/3efc4208-4da4-11e6-a7d8-13d06b37f256_story.html

ha of course they thought they were doing good

Benghazi, e-mails, plagiarism, it never stops:

The Trump campaign now says any allegations of plagiarism are "crazy" — and that any attacks Melania has received are the result of her criticizing presumptive Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton.

"Once again, this is an example of when a woman threatens Hillary Clinton, she seeks to demean her and take her down," Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort said in an early Tuesday morning interview with CNN.

http://www.vox.com/2016/7/19/12222276/melania-trump-plagarism-clinton-rnc