Today is the birthday of Ivanka Trump, Woman of the People, celebrated for her simultaneous embrace of $138 J.C. Penny dresses made in China, and a favorite artist whose paintings sell for up to $19 million. She’s the one her dad ogles and says if she wasn’t his daughter, he might date her. He also says "many people are saying" she should be a cabinet member.
There are 81 days left until the presidential election.
Yesterday, Donald Trump held two fundraisers in and around Charlotte. Both were organized by Ed Broyhill, whose family was, for two generations, the Bush family of North Carolina. In the way of such people, Ed has given up making a living doing anything. He is an “investor.”
The fundraisers, which bundled cash for the RNC, Trump campaign, and the NCGOP Honduran Flag Fund, charged a top ticket price of $50,000, and made $1.5 million- less than the $2 million haul they predicted.
Trump- who just replaced his NC field chief just ahead of the latter’s being sued for threatening to kneecap a campaign worker with his pistol during a drive across South Carolina- also announced an $850,000 TV ad buy for NC TV stations.
Governor Pat McCrory warmed up the crowd again with HB2 and transgender jokes at the Westin Hotel dinner, and was followed by Rudy Giuliani, whom Joe Biden has preserved in history’s amber as “a noun, a verb, and ‘9/11’”.
Conservatives have mocked President Obama for a decade over his use of teleprompters, as though reading a prepared text without having to look down is somehow less skilled than just reading the text from the podium. Oddly, they celebrate when Donald Trump does this. It shows he can be disciplined and presidential, they insist.
Trump’s Charlotte speech last night was a teleprompter version.
In his use, prepared speeches- even in transcript- are lifeless corpses on a dissecting table. Everyone- reader and hearer- knows Trump is simply reading something set out in front of him by minders who have managed to capture his attention span.
Last night, Trump mentioned Hillary Clinton 21 times, and never once called her “Crooked”. He did, however, call her "one of the greatest liars of all time, a woman who "never tells the truth."
He then assured his restive listeners, "But one thing I can promise you is this: I will always tell you the truth. I will never tell you something I do not believe."
No one has noticed how baldly Trump steals from Jimmy Carter's 1976 promise, "I'll never tell a lie. I'll never make a misleading statement. I'll never betray the confidence that any of you had in me."
The tee shirt vendors outside the Charlotte Convention Center. “Hillary for Prison” and “Smokin’ Babes for Trump” did a brisk custom among Trump's law-and-order and family values supporters.
“Sometimes in the heat of debate and speaking on a multitude of issues, you don’t choose the right words or you say the wrong thing,” he told the rally.
The crowd paused, waiting for the punch line, then began chanting, “Trump! Trump! Trump!”
Then Trump added, “I have done that. And, believe it or not, I regret it. I do regret it. Particularly where it may have caused personal pain.”
The crowd fell silent. They didn’t know what they were supposed to think.
“Too much is at stake for us to be consumed by these issues,” he told “the unusually subdued crowd at the Charlotte convention center," according to The Guardian.
“As you know I am not a politician,” he added, to initial cheers. “I have never wanted to learn the language of the insiders, and I’ve never been politically correct – it takes far too much time, and can often make it more difficult to achieve total victory.”
"The rally, which began with a long tribute to victims of flooding in Louisiana, was also unusual for relying entirely on a teleprompter. Previously the campaign’s use of prepared remarks has mostly tended to be reserved for formal policy addresses, rather than standard stump speeches at rallies," The Guardian reported.
"Often stiff, the sight of Trump reading out lines rather than ad-libbing seemed to perplex a crowd not used to hearing him saying phrases such as: 'I’ve travelled all across this country laying out my bold and modern agenda for change.'"
The crowd also fell silent after Trump explained his new “I’ll trade you your civil liberties at home for not being killed by Muslims” plan:
“Those who believe in oppressing women, gays, Hispanics, African-Americans and people of different faiths are not welcome to join our country.”
"If African-American voters give Donald Trump a chance … the result for them will be amazing,” said Trump. “What do you have to lose by trying something new?”
This is an update of his June 15-16 plea, “Ask the gays! Who’s your friend?”
With recent polls show Trump getting 0% of the black vote in Ohio and Pennsylvania, the NC GOP is doing its part to lower the number of votes he needs to carry the state. 55% of Charlotte voters cast their ballots in early voting; the Republican-controlled county elections board just reduced early voting hours by almost 10%.
History will record Trump’s Charlotte speech as the last hurrah of the Russian political consultant Paul Manafort, who resigned this morning as Trump’s campaign chair. Trump has gone through three in as many months, which does not seem to connect at all with his supporters' mantra that he can get things done because he is a brilliant businessman and only hires the best.
For his part, Trump is in Louisiana today with his stable-mucker, Mike Pence. They plan to skip some stones across the flood waters and blame upriver illegals for flushing all at once.
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