FRIDAY, JULY 8, 2016
Today’s Good News And The Bad News
By Our Local Political Junkie We’ll Call Cincy Dave
FIRST, THE BAD NEWS FOR HILLARY: If Hillary thought the email issue was over, following the F.B.I. report and the Director’s testimony before an “emergency” Republican-led House committee yesterday, she is sadly mistaken. As expected, they are not giving up. Their newest ploy is to try to have her security clearance revoked. Candidates for president traditionally receive security briefings to help them keep away from making statements that will damage relations with other countries or compromise ongoing negotiations and operations with friends and foes. Of course, Republicans aren’t really worried about security issues, but just see another chance to damage their opponent, in the hopes of saving their own jobs. Anyway, it is all political theatre because Congress does not have any authority over security clearances or security briefings as that is solely in the hands of the executive branch and the Muslim-Kenyan-Socialist-Dictator that is head of that branch of government just might have a different opinion. Almost as bad for Hillary, the State Department has renewed their investigation of her email server but that probably won’t be as much in the public eye, unless the Republicans can find a way to make it so. Either way, expect to be hearing about the email server for the rest of the campaign.
THE BAD NEWS FOR TRUMP TODAY IS that the furor over the anti-Semitic photo of Hillary that he put out almost a week ago is not going away easily. His clumsy efforts to explain it away have not helped, and now his Jewish son-in-law has written an op-ed insisting that Trump is not an anti-Semite and invoking the memories of his holocaust survivor grandparents to back that up. Unfortunately, the son-in-law’s cousins, who share the same grandparents, disagree, and are furious over his defense of Trump, the use of their grandparents’ memory and Trump’s use of the photo. This is an issue that could have died very quickly and quietly if Trump would have simply deleted the photo as soon as possible and apologized profusely to all of his Jewish friends and others. But apologies are not in the Trumpster’s bag of tricks. He would rather keep on insisting that he is right about this and everyone else is wrong, thereby keeping it alive and keeping the words “anti-Semitic” and “Trump” associated in news articles for much longer than necessary.
IN OTHER BAD NEWS, Trump met with over 200 House and Senate Republicans yesterday to try to create some party unity. Things did not go well for Trump. Many of them spoke out against his incendiary comments about Hispanics and also his praise for Saddam. Trump wasted a lot of his and their time re-fighting primary battles and trying to settle old scores. Some reports said that he even called a few of them “losers,” one of his favorite taunts. Now that’s a way to create some party unity. We would imagine that more than a few of them would like to adopt a slogan from the last election – PUMA
TRUMP DID MANAGE TO TALK TED CRUZ INTO SPEAKING AT THE CONVENTION. This could turn out to be a good thing – or not. It is well known that they hate each other, but Cruz sees an opening to begin his 2020 campaign right away, without even waiting until after election day. He will surely use the speaking opportunity to promote himself more than the Donald. Expect the damning of faint praise for Trump, if any, but a rousing endorsement of all things ultra-conservative, and by extension, himself.
TODAY, AND THIS WEEKEND, we will all be waiting to see how the candidates attempt to exploit the recent Cops vs. Black Men and Black Men vs. Cops murders in Louisiana, Minnesota and Dallas. The spin should be interesting, and we will be paying close attention to see which one can get the most traction from these tragedies because, if politicians are anything besides liars, they are opportunists.
