Your Official Publication of Record For The Conservative Agenda

THURSDAY, AUGUST 18, 2016
Today’s Good News And Bad News
From Our Local Political Junkie We’ll Call “Cincy Dave”

TRUMP’S NEW CAMPAIGN MANAGER
The big news today is that the New Manager for DJT’s presidential campaign, if you still want to call it that, is Stephen Bannon, the head of Breitbart News, a web-base site that dishes out rumors, racism and conspiracy theories galore as well as anti-establishment stories. To Bannon/Brietbart, nearly every Republican who isn’t a right-wing crazy is a RINO. Trump’s selection of Bannon signals that he does not want to listen to his party or anyone else who has an ounce of actual political experience, and he will follow his own worst instincts. Expect things to get a lot uglier from now on. Mudslinging is probably too nice a word for what is about to happen. If establishment Republicans were panicking before, they should be suicidal now. Their worst fears are much more likely to come true – that Trump will not only lose big, but he will drag the entire party down with him, losing the Senate, and possibly the House. With the Senate in Democrat hands, Hillary will be able to flip the Supreme Court for a generation or more, appointing young, progressive judges as the older ones resign and die off.

The hiring of Bannon fits right in with Trump’s stated philosophy of management– in 2007 he told CNBC that “you should never hire people who are smarter than you. You have to keep great people around you. You always have to be on top of them. And you have to be smarter than they are. I hear so many times, ‘Oh, I want my people to be smarter than I am.’ It’s a lot of crap. You want to be smarter than your people, if possible.” Well, now he has a staff that knows even less than he does about politics and how to run a campaign, so he is the smartest guy in the room.

It’s going to take a miracle to change anything for Trump. Something like a Hillary indictment, a major health issue or unexpected scandal, although unlikely, is still possible. Fox News and the right wing talkers are working on all of these but nothing has gained much traction so far.

TRUMP AVOIDED 25 MILLION IN TAXES ON HIS BANKRUPT CASINO
According to the NYT, Trump’s friend, Chris Christie, helped him avoid paying 25 million of the 30 million in taxes he owed to the State of New Jersey, after Christie became Governor. Trump has boasted of his success in lowering his tax burden as a businessman, declaring last year in an interview on Fox News that only “a stupid person, a really stupid person, is paying a lot of taxes.” All stupid, really stupid taxpayers should pay attention to this one.

TRUMP GETS FIRST CLASSIFIED BRIEFING
DJT received his first Classified briefing at the FBI Field Office in Manhattan yesterday. Governor Chris Christie and Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn were also supposed to attend. Trump’s friend Vladimir might be very interested in what he found out. Hopefully, the FBI and CIA didn’t tell him everything.

MANAFORT MAY BE IN SERIOUS TROUBLE
Trump’s recently demoted Campaign Chairman, Paul Manafort, faces real trouble over his helping a pro-Russian political party in Ukraine secretly route at least $2.2 million to two prominent Washington lobbying firms. The project was structured in ways that obscured the foreign party’s efforts to influence U.S. policy. The revelation was described to the AP by people directly knowledgeable about the effort. … Under federal law, U.S. lobbyists must tell the Justice Department if they represent foreign leaders or their political parties. A violation is a felony and can result in up to five years in prison and a fine of up to $250,000.”

HERE ARE TODAY’S MEANINGLESS POLLS
All of these are swing states except Indiana, which can best be described as Alabama with Indianapolis and a couple of Chicago suburbs thrown in. As we noted before, Hillary is so confident in winning Colorado and Virginia that she has pulled most of her resources out of them.