1/ Trump cut off stimulus talks. It's almost as if he has a political death wish and will take down Republicans with him.
His campaign people are staring mutely at the screens of their phones, stunned and depressed.
Stepien was just on with the pollsters. Ooops. Blindsided.
2/ The desperation is growing in the campaign. They've watched the tracker. They see how badly they've bled out since the debate and his manic behavior since diagnosed.
The stunts aren't moving the numbers. Even the base is fading. Seniors fading. Noncollege whites fading.
3/ What happens next? Well, a lot of places are about to end rent and mortgage forebearance. The COVID bounce is coming.
There is no vaccine. There is no scalable therapy. (What Trump got at Walter Reed was bespoke and expensive.)
More pain is coming because he has failed.
4/ He has failed in every meaningful way and COVID will be his grim legacy. The Trump reality distortion field is cracked and broken; if he's *lucky* history will brutalize him as a clown, a joke, a man without the intelligence to govern either the nation or himself.
5/ The more likely course of history will paint him forever as corrupt, mentally ill, and a wannabe authoritarian without a single redeeming quality.
He will be seen as the first anti-American President, a man who reduced our nation at home and abroad.
6/ His elected enablers will lose, if not this cycle then next. Some will try to wash off Trumpism, but it's a combination of septic muck, stripper glitter, and authoritarian nationalism. "Donald Who?" will rise from their lips daily.
*They* were just being loyal to the party.
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The @charliekirk11 bit about black pilots is a racist lie.
Every pilot, white, black, and otherwise, is required to get the same minimum number of hours of training.
Everyone, no exceptions, must all pass written and practical tests under the Airman Certification Standards.
I’ve just checked the FARs (The regs for all aviation matters) and sure enough…there's *nothing* in Part 61 training rules about DEI. There's no DEI in the FAR. (Nor in Parts 91, 135, 141)
I’m happy to have a FAR-off with these idiots. Mine’s already tabbed. (Pilot joke)
By the time a pilot is in a jet carrying passengers they’ve had over 1,500 hours in the air and earned:
Private Pilot
Instrument Pilot
Complex and high performance rating
Multiengine rating
Commercial Pilot
Airline Transport Pilot
1/ I wrote a piece calling the House GOP a failed state last Friday:
It wasn't just a flippant comment.
I was thinking about this last night, and the commonality of the MAGA GOP to the legislative bodies in failed states is deeper than I first thought.tinyurl.com/4ft8yjcx
2/ A few things that sprang to mind: Obviously, leadership instability is the big one in the news. Weak or nonexistent governance; beyond getting the cash, few care to actually govern or lead. Corruption is rampant. (Stock trading is just the tip.)
3/ Power struggles replace policy, ideology, and leadership. QED everything. Radical factions; Gaetz is the Robespierre of this Reign of Bubba Terror, but the accommodation of radical factions is a through line in failed states. Lack of public trust.
1/ Great coverage on @Morning_Joe of the tidal wave of terrible polls showing @realdonaldtrump is political poison.
As Joe pointed out, it has always been thus; losses or vast underperformance since 2017, on years and off.
For the base, though...
@Morning_Joe @realDonaldTrump 2/ ...the profound power they yield over the GOP means whether Trump is the nominee and kills their majorities or whether he goes and kills their majorities is all of a piece.
There. Is. No. Escape.
#ETTD is eternal and unerring.
@Morning_Joe @realDonaldTrump 3/ The "Good Republican" will be as shattered as the "Good German" myth when this is over. The "Good Republicans" whisper in the dark how much they hate Trump. The tell reporters *every* *single* *day* that *they're* not like the base. *They're* "just trying to steer the ship."
1/ Given the new NYT/Sienna poll, I'd just like to remind you one more time that spending money to defeat Trump in the primary is burning through donor resources that will be desperately needed in the general election.
In this, there are three schools of thought, all wrong.
2/ The first school of thought is that Ron DeSantis can be magically elevated to surpass Trump. There's a LOT of Republican (and some Dem-leaning) donor money trying to make this point.
If DeSantis wasn't in the lower quartile of warmth, connection, personality, humanity...
3/ ...you might almost squint and see the case. However, we learned in 2016 that "being a conservative governor" vs Trump is worth exactly nothing. As we speak, the ocean of donor money DeSantis took in is now Jeff Roe's slush fund.
1/ So there's a mistake that covers both instrument flying and politics.
It's called "chasing the needles."
That's what you're seeing now with the DeSantis campaign.
2/ In instrument flying you use a display that shows you how high or low you are relative to the glideslope and how far left or right of the runway you are.
A stable approach means you fly the glideslope down to the airfield. If you get off the glideslope or localizer...
3/ ...there's both a temptation and a tendency to "chase the needles" to make it work and get on track. This is a bad thing.
DeSantis is recalibrating, trying to reset, rebrand, redo the last disastrous months. His campaign is chasing the needles.
1/ For the army of butthurt MAGA But Muh Free Speech bleating over my critique of this absurd "X" rebranding...
A. Stanning every Elon decision is just silly; stanning THIS decision is absurd. As @karaswisher notes, this idea a "hold my beer" moment.
@karaswisher 2/ Desperate rebrands are inherently a weak strategy when it's the product itself that needs the upgrade. Elon has worked diligently to make this site less fun, interesting, and easy to use.
We'll leave motive out of it for now.
But ad rev has...
@karaswisher 3/ ...crashed. It's a smoking crater. The $8 program flopped, and as the usual credit card expiration cycle runs, it'll drop off the cliff even more.
The qualitative decisions to elevate garbage low-quality accounts wasn't "free speech."