If the DNC rigs it for Hillary, Trump will win

Note: An earlier version of this essay was originally written in response to comments by Hillary-supporting friends on Facebook.

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I do not believe Hillary is more electable than Bernie. She has the worst unfavorables of any candidate in history except for Trump himself. She does not have the support of independents, which now make up 43% of the electorate. Where Bernie fills stadiums, Hillary can't fill a high school gymnasium. And she is under FBI investigation! Is there any historical precedent for a major political party nominating a candidate for president who is under FBI investigation?? It certainly has not happened in my lifetime, nor in any history I can think of.

All the polls have consistently shown throughout this yearlong primary that Bernie beats Trump by much wider margins than Hillary, and some polls show her losing to Trump. 538 might say to ignore the polls, but 538 has been consistently wrong about both Bernie and Trump. They never predicted either candidate would get this far. There's also other research showing that April and May head to head matchups in primaries IS predictive of what happens in the election.

This article explains other reasons why I believe Hillary is not a competitive candidate against Trump. Bernie has stayed away from many issues that Trump will not only bring up but have a field day with.

  • Trump will attack Hillary on the emails -- and there is a there there. She used a hackable private server and deleted over 30,000 emails on it before handing it over, then misled investigators about it. While past secretaries of state have used their own email address, none have used their own server. Hillary did this to avoid FOIA requests, which makes one wonder, what was in those emails she deleted? The FBI does have copies of all the emails from other servers and backup in the cloud, so maybe sometime soon we will find out.
  • Trump will attack her on the Clinton Foundation. Research from Peter Schweizer of the Stanford University's Hoover Institution documents a pattern of behavior in which Hillary as secretary of state took large sums of money either in speaking fees or to the foundation from dictatorships and oligarchs around the world, then approved lucrative arms deals or intervened to get governments to approve contracts to exploit vast tracts of natural resources. While circumstantial, this raises serious questions of judgment.
  • Trump will also dredge back up all of Bill's affairs with a twist -- pointing out how Hillary pilloried the women involved, in order to attack her credentials as a feminist. Hillary called Monica Lewinsky a "narcissistic loony tune," and that is one of the milder things she is accused of. Is any of it true? Who knows, but Trump will make the most of it, and people will believe it. Trump will also bring up Hillary's defense of a child rapist in Arkansas. Yes she was just doing her job, but the fact is that a child rapist went free.

Weakest link

Hillary is the weakest Democratic candidate in a generation, yet the DNC is insisting on ramming her through the primaries, even if they have to cheat and disenfranchise Bernie voters to do it. She's not likely to win. Yet somehow if she does lose to Trump, Sanders supporters will be to blame? I don't buy that for a minute.

I am personally not sure how I am going to vote if Bernie does not get the nomination. At the beginning of this process, I was for Hillary, but when Bernie entered the race, I liked his policies better and switched support. However, I had always planned to vote for Hillary if he didn't get the nomination.

Now I am not so sure. The DNC and Hillary herself could not possibly be doing more to tell Bernie supporters to go to hell. For me It started with the Greenpeace video. She was so aggressive with that young activist who was simply asking a question. At a subsequent event when she got a similar question from a different activist, she screamed at the activist to "Shut up!" right before a campaign aide physically assaulted her.

Hillary said that Greenpeace and the Bernie campaign were "lying" about her fossil fuel donations. They are not lying. It's all in the public record, which anyone can go look up. After that, Hillary told young people to "do their research." These young people ARE doing their research -- much more than Hillary seems to think.

Then she stood up in New York and took credit for the state passing a $15 minimum wage -- only a few weeks after she had repeatedly come out against it in debates. This is Bernie's issue -- he is the one who has been marching on picket lines with fast food workers. Does Hillary really think we don't have internet access to see these things?

Then Hillary and her campaign henchman David Brock -- a man who wrote a book smearing Anita Hill as "a little but nutty, a little bit slutty" -- announced they are spending $1 million to hire online trolls to attack Bernie supporters. These trolls began posting pornography, including child pornography, in Bernie groups, then reporting the groups to Facebook, and got several of his largest groups shut down for several hours. Screenshots of a member of "Bros 4 Hillary" taking credit for this surfaced while many commenters joined in and a few urged him to remove the post "for the security of the group."

How can any of us who battled fake profiles and other online trolls for the meat and circus industries can support a candidate who would use this astroturf tactic, straight out of the playbook of Rick Berman, I honestly do not understand.

Rigging the nomination?

Then there are all the questions about election fraud and voter suppression.

  • In New York, 120,000 people were removed from the rolls in Bernie's hometown of Brooklyn by an election official who just happened to sell her uninhabitable condo to the daughter of a Hillary superdelegate for $6.6 million over its market value.
  • In Massachusetts there were reports of residents at homes for the developmentally disabled being taken out to "vote for Hillary then go for ice cream."
  • In Wyoming there were reports of precincts voting for Bernie, until hundreds of absentee votes poured in for Hillary and switched the vote.
  • In multiple states, there have been many reports of people who registered as Democrats checking their registration to find they had been switched to Independent, Republican, or dropped from the rolls altogether. Some of these were lifetime Democrats. Maybe some of this can be chalked up to official incompetence, but this has not happened on this scale in past elections.

Then there are the exit polls. In other countries, the United States uses exit polls to determine whether election fraud is occurring. If they are outside a 2 to 3% margin of error, we strongly suspect election fraud. But this year pretty much every single Democratic primary vote has been outside that margin of error -- up to 12 points outside it -- and in Hillary's favor in all but one case. Meanwhile the Republican exit polls have tracked almost perfectly.

And then there is the Nevada debacle. This is a lot more than spitefulness. This started weeks ago to give the chair of the state party absolute authority to bring up motions, pass motions, decide on who gets delegate credentials and who doesn't, and decide the rules of the convention, none of which had to be approved by the delegates on the floor. This is completely uncharacteristic of caucus conventions, in which the delegates are seated, vote on the rules, then the vote is counted. And it started when Bernie won the county caucuses because Hillary supporters didn't show up.

Bernie supporters understand that if there are more votes for Hillary, she will get more delegates. That's called democracy. But when dozens of delegates are not allowed into the state convention even though they were in line on time, and when the chair unilaterally strips 64 Bernie delegates of their credentials midway through the convention, that is not a fair process. When the chair sets her own temporary rules, then makes the rules permanent even though the vote from the floor was against that motion, that is not fair. When the Bernie delegates collect hundreds of signatures on a petition to use the normal Robert's rules of order, but are not allowed to even submit the signatures, that is not fair either. That is a rigged system.

Perhaps all the other examples of possible election fraud above can be dismissed as circumstantial evidence -- though that is an awful lot of circumstantial evidence to dismiss. But the Nevada state convention was openly rigged and stolen. There is no other word to describe it. It's all on video, and hundreds of Nevada delegates were there to witness it firsthand. Even some Hillary delegates were ripping up their ballots and condemning the process.

It's on them

How can I vote for a candidate who would allow the open theft of an election?? Why is Hillary not saying anything about this? I am certainly not going to vote for Trump. But how can I support a candidate who has to cheat and rig their way into the nomination? How can I support one who hires online trolls for an astroturf campaign? How can I support someone who tells Greenpeace they are lying and young people to go do research?

Hillary and the DNC have completely and utterly alienated Bernie supporters. This was not our doing. This was their doing. If the Democratic Party insists on rigging and cheating to nominate the weakest candidate in a generation, and that candidate loses, that is not on Bernie supporters. That is on them.

This isn't a matter of "Let's show the DNC." This is a matter of conscience. How can I support someone who would slap me directly in the face with these undemocratic practices not once but many times over?? And what kind of president would a candidate like that make?

Thankfully there still is time for the Democratic Party to do not just the right thing, but also the thing that would get them the presidency, which is to nominate Bernie. Unlike Hillary, he does have the support of independents, he has high favorability ratings, he has been consistent in his positions for the past 40 years -- and he is not under FBI investigation. Bernie cancels out Trump's only strength in this election, which is that he does not depend on billionaires for funding because Bernie does not either. I strongly believe Bernie would win against Trump.

I have very little faith the Democratic Party will do the right thing for the party or the country. But I will keep pushing for that anyway. What other choice do I have? Either of the other two candidates is unconscionable.

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I decided some years back that voting third party was a Very Bad Idea. I'm rethinking that decision. I'm well aware that, with plurality victories in effect everywhere, voting third party would be "throwing my vote away", but I'm not so sure that isn't happening anyway.

If I do vote third party, it'll be Jill Stein; the Green Party seems like the natural place for someone like me, who considers the global ecocide which we are wreaking to be far and above the most important issue.

I wonder if the unaffiliated voters will ever wake up and demand ranked-choice voting, and the elimination of state-financed primaries.

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whyvee's picture

That is the exact quote from my hair stylist that I visited this last Saturday. She is in her late twenties and not very politically aware; in the past we have only briefly talked about politics. I live in the red part of my state, and though I expect everyone here to be a Trump supporter my stylist said there was no way she would vote for Trump. When I complained about the candidates (HRC and Trump) the first thing she said was that Hillary is a liar. She also said one of her friends from South Africa contacted her and asked if she was not embarrassed about our country's candidates. She told him she was terribly embarrassed. If the DNC shoves HRC down our throats I think that the shit storm that ensues will be destructive in ways we cannot even imagine.

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whyvee's picture

meaning....Bernie.

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Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal's picture

from far-right to far left and in a lot of places in between.

Almost nobody thinks Hillary is trustworthy. Almost everybody looks at her and sees a liar.

Black people (especially over 45) and some white Democrats over 50 appear to be the exceptions to this rule. But if you ask the American people, almost everybody thinks Hillary is a liar.

http://elections.huffingtonpost.com/pollster/hillary-clinton-favorable-r...

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"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha

"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver

http://news.nationalpost.com/full-comment/rex-murphy-hillary-clintons-lo...

If DWS/DNC/DLC/Third Way nominate Clintons ( it's always the two of them) we get President Trump.

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importer's picture

out about Bill Clinton's friendship with a convicted pedophile, his many trips on this person's private jet to his personal orgy island. That will all look good in the fall. One of Bill's women is telling all about how he is a sex addict who needs to assault women, not just bed them, that he bragged years ago that he had slept with at least 2000 women. She goes on to tell of Hillary's role in terrorizing Bill's conquests to keep them quiet. There are further allegations that Hillary is a coke-head and that Bill's brother, Roger was her supplier for years.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2584309/Bill-Clinton-identified-...

Gucifer, the guy who hacked Hillary's server and has been extradited to this country to testify says that while he was thumbing through Hillary's emails, there were as many as 14 other hackers from all over the world going through them at the same time. Add to that, Russia is mulling over releasing 20,000 of Hillary's emails that they have!

If Putin decided to release 20K emails from Hillary's private server, and any of them contained emails not previously turned over to the FBI, that would be the clincher. Even if Obama and Lynch were able to suppress an indictment, the leaks from the spy agencies would cook her goose. I don't think they would let this one go.

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wilderness voice's picture

by coming out with pre-emptive hit pieces on Trump:

Rowanne Brewer Lane, the woman featured in the opening anecdote in Saturday's New York Times article about Donald Trump's treatment of women, says the piece was "very upsetting" and objected to the way her relationship was portrayed by the Times.

Brewer Lane appeared on "Fox and Friends" Monday morning to refute much of what the article said about her experience with the presumed GOP nominee.

"I did not have a negative experience with Donald Trump," Brewer Lane told Fox News, and, she added, "I don't appreciate" the Times "making it look like...I was saying it was a negative experience, because it was not."

Listening to radio news the other day they wasted no time slamming Trump also. They must be really scared of him.

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importer's picture

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Bisbonian's picture

Well organized, and comprehensive. I only saw one little place where I would make a correction,

just happened to sell her uninhabitable condo to the daughter of a Hillary superdelegate for $6.6 million, (over its market value.)

The sale was for $6.6 million, and it had some market value to begin with, if only for the valuable lot it sat on.

I think I will be referencing your post a lot in the coming months.

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"I’m a human being, first and foremost, and as such I’m for whoever and whatever benefits humanity as a whole.” —Malcolm X

importer's picture

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ccbohio's picture

Thank you both. I will make a note of that.

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lotlizard's picture

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Bill Clinton and Madeleine (not that) Albright were instrumental in preventing the UN from ending the Hutu-Tutsi genocide that killed three quarters of a million people in Rwanda. A new article in salon.com revisits this tragedy when the west turned their back on pleas for help because there was "no strategic importance" in stopping it. Just another "place in hell" reserved for two U.S. political monsters who should never again get control of the levers of political power, for the sake of humanity.

http://www.salon.com/2016/05/16/forgotten_scandal_how_the_u_s_prevented_...

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ZimInSeattle's picture

thread yesterday, the DNC/DLC/Third Way cabal would very much prefer Trump as president to Bernie. Bernie is the only threat to the establishment status quo. As always, it's all about the money and power. I will be voting for Stein or writing Bernie in. #NeverHillary

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"Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable." - JFK | "The more I see of the moneyed peoples, the more I understand the guillotine." - G. B. Shaw Bernie/Tulsi 2020

Damnit Janet's picture

"pointing out how Hillary pilloried the women involved, in order to attack her credentials as a feminist -"

She is a huge reason I wouldn't have a thing to do with feminism in the 90s.

How she attacked women who stayed at home. She attacked women who stood up to her and her husband.

But she does like attacking women and children and she cackles with glee over torture and drones.

The simple fact that it's Trump or Hillary is a national shame. I guess next time we will have Bundy/Zimmerman vs Cher/Cat Whisperer Dude. Because Freedom and Choice.

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"Love One Another" ~ George Harrison

Haikukitty's picture

over our current presumed options. I assume you are talking about Jackson Galaxy?

First of all, President Galaxy is an awesome sounding name. Secondly, if you put Cher as the VP instead, I would trust Jackson to be a better President than either Trump or Clinton. Third - CATS IN THE WHITE HOUSE.

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Damnit Janet's picture

I wrote that before coffee intake then I left house and wondered if people thought I might be being mean to the Cat Whisperer Dude LOL I wasn't.

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"Love One Another" ~ George Harrison

Outsourcing Is Treason's picture

There's a lot of unprovable allegations about the rigging of the NY primary but one thing is undeniable: the deadline for registering as a Democrat to vote in it was October 9, 2015, and Hillary's bff Debbie Wasserman-Schultz, knowing this, scheduled the first Democratic Primary debate for October 13, 2015. The fix was in from the start.

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"Please clap." -- Jeb Bush

Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal's picture

of voter registration data being changed against people's will & without their knowledge, followed by their right to vote being denied on that basis. I'm not sure how that can be treated as anything but voter suppression.

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"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha

"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver

Outsourcing Is Treason's picture

my bad

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"Please clap." -- Jeb Bush

The DNC rigging it for Hill is a given. It's been rigged from two years before the primaries even began. But there may be another wrinkle that will be such a stupid blunder on Trump's part, his campaign will crash and burn: The Palin factor. Should The Donald reward early supporter Palin with the VEEP position, all bets are off. Imagine the Grifter-in-Chief with the Grifter-VEEP-in-Chief ticket. Stupid times two!

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Lookout's picture

Politician turned reality TV star runs with reality TV star turned politician. Almost a palindrome, and most certainly moronic!

Here's some other peas in a pod!
Trumps and Clintons_1_0.png

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“Until justice rolls down like water and righteousness like a mighty stream.”

lunachickie's picture

so if that's been the plan all along, here's Trump's LOSE THE ELECTION strategy.

Should The Donald reward early supporter Palin with the VEEP position, all bets are off.

I wonder how long they can put all this shit off? I note the cries for Bernie to GET OUT have ramped up again, which is....honest to God, I don't know why they waste their breath/ink/bandwidth, he's not getting out of the race before the convention.

That's an eternity from now, in political news cycle time. You gotta love the flop-sweat starting to puddle under the DNC gang...

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pswaterspirit's picture

He is as stupid as people want to paint him. I actually went to hear him speak in Lyndon, WA. My cousin was interested in going and I wanted the first hand experience.

My impression is he is actually far smarter than he gets credit for. He neatly tied the experience of losing our entire lumber industry in a Bill Clinton trade deal to the current plight of the coal miners.

He also talked about how the federal government seems to be backing the oil trains and export facilities that will endanger the very last of our sustainable industries fish, oysters and clams. He thought that was wrong.

He went on to talk about the forest fire last summer in the North Cascades. How the lack of thinning of forests that were planted for harvest and then changed to roadless wilderness again by Bill Clinton made the fire very diffacult to fight. There are now many square miles of charcoal 30% of it could have provided many jobs and not harmed the woods. Had that happened the fires would not have been as destructive.

I live in the Northwest and among the hats I wear is managing the forests left in land trust by my grandfather, who was a minor timber baron, for conservation. He retired and sold his mill in the 70s but retained all the timber land he acquired including a 600 acre old growth forest that has never been cut. This was not news to me.

It was rather surprising Donald Trump could speak on it with knowledge or even knew that these problems existed. It makes him a formidable opponent.

He is a risk taker. His behavior shows he is rather addicted to it. That could certainly be his down fall or ours should he become president.

We live in interesting times for sure.

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that Thom Hartmann said he thought it would be bad about Trump and women but turned out to be a good article about Trump and how he mentored women to become great entrepreneurs.

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A couple reasons, one, he knows she's a grifter. Two, when she was VP candidate, he only took her to a pizza joint for dinner. Remember that picture through the window of him using a knife and fork to eat a thin slice of pizza.

Three, she has only been on his plane one time that I know of and that was when she endorsed him. I don't think he could stand her being on the plane all the time.

Four, Ivanka would never allow it. I think Ivanka is a very smart and caring woman. In fact, I like her much better than Chelsea.

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importer's picture

I don't think he could abide Sarah Palin for more than a minute and a half, but he would use her to get to her supporters.

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lunachickie's picture

(she said, putting on her Big Fat Catty Bitch face); they all share the same plastic surgeon!

Well, except for Melania Trump, who apparently won't need to visit one for a good decade or so from now, if ever...

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And his first wife was well liked and pretty good at business.

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importer's picture

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Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal's picture

Applause.

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"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha

"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver

GreyWolf's picture

Applause.

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#NeverHillary #NeverTrump #BernieOrJill

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Beware the bullshit factories.

Borkrom's picture

Please remember all the instances, corruption and drama associated with the nomination process when you vote in November. Do not let others influence you to make a decision between the lesser of two evils- vote with your heart.

It leaves a bad taste in my mouth and seals the deal for me- I will not vote for Clinton- ever. Do not care if it creates 4 years of terrible times, but guess what the republic, my family and you will survive it. These last 30 years nothing has really been done, in many instances we have taken steps backwards, so I can deal with 4 more bad years to elect someone that will try to represent my liberal values and agenda starting in 2020.

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ZimInSeattle's picture

we are at. Two nominee's with negative favorability ratings for the first time ever, one chosen fair and square, the other, not so much. Voting the lesser evil only delays the greater evil. And there really isn't that much difference between the two. #BernieOrJill

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"Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable." - JFK | "The more I see of the moneyed peoples, the more I understand the guillotine." - G. B. Shaw Bernie/Tulsi 2020

earthling1's picture

Handing over our sovereignty to a bunch of damned lawyers is why I will vote for Trump.
Sure the SC is important, but not not enough to give multinational corporations a stranglehold on our court system.

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Neither Russia nor China is our enemy.
Neither Iran nor Venezuela are threatening America.
Cuba is a dead horse, stop beating it.

ccbohio's picture

Very interesting point, and one most people don't consider. Thanks.

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elenacarlena's picture

for Trump. You think he will represent our interests? Ha.

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earthling1's picture

After all, Trump leveraged his daddy's money through real estate. I'm fairly sure he lost money in the "Great Bush Crash" of 2008. .I don't believe there is any love lost between Trump and the Wall St banksters. They certainly are not supporting him.
Plus, has stated he would veto the TPP and renegotiate NAFTA and CAFTA. And Bring back jobs to America .
Can we believe him? I don't know. But, can we believe anything Clinton says?
The one thing about Trump is his ego. It's as big as Mt.Hood. He does not like appearing badly to his adoring followers. I'm beginning to believe public opinion will greatly affect a Trump presidentency. IMHO

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Neither Russia nor China is our enemy.
Neither Iran nor Venezuela are threatening America.
Cuba is a dead horse, stop beating it.

elenacarlena's picture

article, http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-election-trump-banks-idUSKCN0Y900J

If he does what he says there, he will be the darling of Wall Street.

I don't believe a word he says. He still has his clothing made in China and he still uses undocumented immigrants to build his buildings.

I think his ego is big enough to think his adoring followers will think he can do no wrong no matter what - remember his "I could go shoot somebody in the street" comment? I think he's just pandering to win the election. He's a lot like Hill in that regard - either of them will say whatever depending on what they think people want them to say, it will have no bearing on their presidency. Once in office, he'll do whatever he wants, figure the dumb losers who support him will have short memories and he can pander again to get a second term in office. If he doesn't start WWIII during his first term. YMMV.

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going off the charts? (And is this a tacit example of getting the grift done before the convention-so even if she loses she "wins" big bucks?) Succinct comment from the piece:
"...And the specialty on the dinner menu at the $100,000 a plate fundraising dinner is..."Quid pro quo""

http://blogs.wsj.com/washwire/2016/05/13/hillary-clinton-hosts-100000-a-...

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