So is Murdoch quietly dumping Trump as ‘bad for business’?
I doubt if the toxic geyser that is Fox News will follow suit as it would be bad for business, but I wonder if they’ll switch from hyping Trump as well as denigrating Clinton to 24/7 Hillary monstering?
Is that why she looks uncomfortable in his presence?
I guess it would be nice to have a campaign infrastructure and support of your party if you’re going to try and execute all that - across fifty states.
Opsy!
Trump has never been one to let finances get in the way of his ego.
Oh, Donald. It must hurt to know you’re losing against yourself.
Eww… that’s what it looks like after you finger Trump 
Appropriately, he ordered “Extra-Thin Skin”.
Finally a good reason for all that facial recognition technology. 
Trump is more blatant but none of their candidates (who had any chance of winning the primary) are anything especially different than Trump. If the Republicans wanted to nominate a non-Clown Party candidate, they should have realized how close they came in 2012 to something like the absurdity they have in 2016.
Maybe they didn’t care, maybe they didn’t see the precipice, or maybe they didn’t think they could do anything about the corner they got themselves into. I don’t think there’s anyway they didn’t see the precipice.
A third of the vote or 1% of it, Trump, Cruz, Rubio, and Kasich are all logical consequence of their strategy.
Trump is, in effect, a Republican with Tourette’s, unable to stop himself from saying aloud what other Republicans are all thinking but refrain from saying in public.
They’d have to start with not having a Clown-Party base.
We know how they got the Clown Party base though. that-ted-rall-comic.png
Oh God, where have those fingers been?!?
Ever since the Republicans committed themselves to serving big business and big bank account above and beyond all other causes, they’ve struggled to find a viable electoral strategy.
They’ve duped evangelical Christians, the working class, racists, and other groups into supporting them at various times. Unfortunately, none of those groups’ priorities line up exactly with the ultra rich.
1% of the population isn’t a win in a real democracy, so you need a posse.
Currently, the ultra rich are being asked to rely on angry racists and hopeless blue collar types willing to overlook Trump’s hate.
I doubt many of them will experience a crisis of conscience over this, but surely some are concerned about the branding consequences over the long term…
Maybe the republicans will start a push for preferential voting.
The Republican party has always been about business from its creation. But in the beginning the main thing that businesses felt threatened by was slavery. Which was difficult for free labor to compete against, both because of labor costs and the fact that big plantations with lots of slaves tended to gobble up all the available investment capital. But they have stopped caring much about anything other than the finance “industry” and huge multinationals…
Predicted Donald Trump press conference (sometime mid-August):
"Hey, folks. Thanks for coming. Hi, Rudy, good to see you. Golf Tuesday, my place.
"So, you’ve seen the polls. I’ve seen the polls. Not pretty. But I don’t care about polls. My fans don’t like answering poll questions, you know? And no matter what polls say, they’re gonna come out and vote Trump. They always do.
"But here’s the problem. The DNC hate me. The RNC hate me. Paul Ryan, the man denounced me. John McCain, not a nice guy. They’re all working against me, they have the system rigged. And my people have solid evidence – SOLID – that the voting machines are rigged. Russia can hack them, you know. So we’ve run the numbers, my best people are on this, and they say there’s no way I can win this thing. Not with the RNC rigging it all and the machines all junked up. It’s impossible.
"Now, I’m a businessman. I make good deals. I make solid investments. And I’ve gotta tell you, this President thing is turning out to be a bad deal. I’m self-funding this thing, remember? And it’s a bad deal for me to throw my money at an impossible goal.
"So until the RNC will work with me to assure I get treated well, I’m done with pouring cash into this thing. They can put someone else up to run, or nobody, I don’t care. Hillary can run all alone, one party, you know, like they do in Communist countries. She’ll win, and it’ll be a bogus, fake election, just like I knew it would be. And my followers will still be there, doing whatever I want.
“No questions, see you on the golf course.”
Wall Street Journal plumps for Wall Street insider? I am shocked.
If you read what Putin actually said, it was diplomat speak. He said, politely, that Trump was very intelligent, but that the election was for the American people to decide.
Out of Kremlin-speak, he said “I’m not going to bad mouth someone who may be the next US President and looks softer on Crimea than HRC, but it’s your decision, you abide by the consequences.” It was hardly an endorsement. For one thing, Oceania is always at war with Eurasia, and HRC is more likely to ensure that continues.
So…what is needed is a vaccine to cause all Republican politicians to do just that? Or has it already happened and it just worked better in Trump’s case?
