"It's Everybody Else's Fault!"

Guess where that comes from:

The Washington Post reports:

“I don’t take responsibility at all.” That’s what President Trump said this month when asked whether he takes responsibility for the slow rollout of testing that public health officials say handicapped the country’s ability to protect Americans from the coronavirus.

But Trump’s desire to not take responsibility could also be extrapolated to the coronavirus crisis in general. Trump has thrown blame in nearly a dozen different directions for the virus’s spread and different aspects of the response to it.

He really does blame -- or wants us to blame -- everyone but him for his regime's inept response to the pandemic.

But his ratings are beating everyone. Says he.

And did anyone expect anything different?

(The WaPo article is behind a paywall, which is why I don't have more extensive quotes.)

The Real Americans

A sobering post from Tom Sullivan at Hullabaloo, one how Trump has landed the working class vote:

Don't go looking to Matt Taibbi for hope this Labor Day. Taibbi's jaundiced eye is particularly yellow in his examination of the cult surrounding the acting president. "The average American likes meat, sports, money, porn, cars, cartoons, and shopping," he writes at Rolling Stone. Democrats need to worry their 2020 pitch is relentlessly negative about all that.

What makes MAGA cultists love their hero is not his absent appeals to their better selves. Rather, Trumpism means never having to say you're sorry for being like him:

Ronald Reagan once took working-class voters away from Democrats by offering permission to be proud of the flag. Trump offers permission to occupy the statistical American mean: out of shape, suffering from gas, poorly read, anti-intellectual, treasuring things above meaning, and hiding an awful credit history.

It's a pretty depressing picture, and veers awfully close to stereotype, but then, Trump himself is a stereotype. (Stray thought: Considering his notable lack of success as a "businessman", is it any wonder that his administration is occupied by losers?)

However, there's a bit of uplift at the end:

Meanwhile, 94-year-old Jimmy Carter is back to building homes for Habitat for Humanity after hip surgery in the spring. The former president and his wife Rosalynn Carter head to Nashville, Tennessee in October to help build 21 new homes.

In MAGA America, because people are not selling merchandise emblazoned with his face or rude taunts, that makes Carter a loser. But in Jackson Mississippi, Habitat and $1,000 a month, no strings attached from a local guaranteed-income pilot project — Springboard to Opportunities — are transforming Cheryl Gray's life:

Gray’s relationship with money changed dramatically. She used to want to put her children in the hottest clothes to prove that she was providing for them, but now saw the value of visiting the clearance racks. She paid off $4,000 in credit card debt. She found an $11-an-hour teaching job at a preschool and another part-time job, so she could save more money. As her new bank account grew from zero to $1,000 to $2,000, she began looking to leave the projects.

And she's sending $60 a week for her children's tutoring.

Sullivan notes that "You won't hear that celebrated at a Trump rally."

The irony is palpable: Cheryl Gray is the icon, so beloved of conservatives, of the American lifting herself by her bootstraps -- she's the real American the right has worshipped -- until Trump. But Sullivan's right: you won't hear them cheering her on any time soon, or Carter, for that matter.

Maybe that stray thought wasn't so stray after all: Trump's cultists are really just a bunch of losers.

He's Come Undone

Ladies and gentement, the President of the United States, unraveling before your very eyes:

Delivering a lengthy, highly-scripted, highly-political, and highly-ad-libbed anti-immigrant and anti-immigration speech from the White House, President Trump late Thursday afternoon blamed immigrants for illegal drug abuse that leads to death of U.S. citizens while falsely claiming Democrats will allow caravan migrants entering the country to vote.

It's not like the "illegal immigrants voting" thing is new -- he's just ramped it up a few notches. (After all, that's why he lost the popular vote -- all those millions of people voting illegally.) And of course, he's repeated it enough that his cultists will take it as Gospel. (On that note, watch out for "incidents" at the polls on election day.)

This one's really hard to excerpt, so click through and read it -- it's not very long, but it's broken up, and there are tweets mixed in. The bottom line is that he's panicking over the midterms, and immigrants have always been his favorite bogey-man.

White House staffers and President Donald Trump’s inner circle are gearing up for an onslaught of Democratic investigations as polls continue to show that the Republican Party may take a beating at the polls in next Tuesday’s midterms.

According to a report at the Daily Beast, even President Trump is starting to understand that he is going to be under increasing pressure after the midterms despite publically claiming that GOP will pick up more seats in what he calls a “red wave.”

“He’s definitely more spooked than he was before,” said one senior White House official. “Several of us are expecting to spend more time [testifying] on the Hill soon.”

If the Democrats do take back the House, in spite of all the election rigging going on in Republican states, watch for him to try to invalidate the election. After all, that's what his friends Putin, Duterte, Kim, etc. would do.

Digby elaborates on what is the most chilling part of Trump's speech:

"[If] they want to throw rocks at our military, our military fights back," Trump said during a press conference at the White House. "We're going to consider it -- and I told them, 'consider that a rifle.' When they throw rocks like they did at the Mexico military and police, I say 'consider it a rifle.'"

He's setting the stage for our military to commit war crimes. But then, it won't be a first.

Footnote: As a backgrounder, read this.

Today in Disgusting People: Usurper Edition

Memorial Day tweet from Fearless Leader:

Happy Memorial Day! Those who died for our great country would be very happy and proud at how well our country is doing today. Best economy in decades, lowest unemployment numbers for Blacks and Hispanics EVER (& women in 18years), rebuilding our Military and so much more. Nice!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 28, 2018

Somehow, it's all about him.

I can hardly wait to see what he comes up with for Independence Day.

Via Joe.My.God., who has some of the reactions. (Hint: They're not real supportive.)

MAGA

Just reminding Trump who's boss:

The Kremlin has underlined that the planned meeting between Russian President Vladimir Putin and U.S. President Donald Trump, will have to hinge on Putin’s busy schedule.

It gets worse:

My god. "Trump has told aides to come up with possible concessions to offer as bargaining chips in his planned meeting next week with Putin" pic.twitter.com/agsHiBGxzD

— Natasha Bertrand (@NatashaBertrand) June 29, 2017

Uh, Donald? You want to make America great again? That's not the way to do it.

Via Balloon Juice.

No Surprises Here (Update, Update 2)

Somebody looks a little stressed.

Well, Trumpcare, a/k/a "Repeal and Replace," is dead in the water, at least for the next fifteen minutes, which is how long it will take Trump's base to forget about it. Trump, of course, is blaming everyone else, but mostly the Democrats:

Trump accused Democrats of not being "civilized" but said when they become civilized and decided to work with Republicans to come up with a new health care plan he will be open to it.

Click through to check out all the lies in his statement -- it comes out to about one per sentence

Digby nails it:

The upshot is that the great negotiator couldn't even get his own party to agree to a bill they all ran on. He made the ultimate miscalculation by backing the Freedom Caucus, notorious nihilist back-stabbers whose seats are entirely safe instead of the moderates who would be primaried from the right for voting against the bill and opening up the seat to a Democrat. They were the ones who needed his protection but he's too dumb to know that.

The White House finally realized that a vote on this bill was worse than no vote at all and they defaulted to Trump's preferred strategy which is to just keep ragging on the hated black guy which he knows his voters love more than anything.

The man has no business being in government at any level.

Update: The headline at Crooks and Liars says it all:

Trump Blames Democrats For Not Repealing Their Own Healthcare Bill

Update 2: Looks like someone was a little overconfident:

A thought: Y'know, if Trump and the Republicans (sounds like a garage band for losers) hadn't made such a circus out of this, it wouldn't have been such a major black eye.

Loser! Sad.

It seems there's record turn-out in Nevada on the last day of early voting:

More than 57,000 Clark County voters had cast ballots as of 10 p.m. Friday, the final day of early voting in Nevada.

That number would likely increase into the night, said Dan Kulin, a county spokesman.

“This is the largest single-day, early voting turnout that we’ve seen,” Kulin said. The previous record was set in 2012, when 48,095 voted on the final day of early voting in the county, according to Nevada Secretary of State records.

A handful of polling locations were scheduled to close at 7 p.m., and others were open until 8 p.m. or 9 p.m. depending on location. But closing time didn’t mean a voting cutoff — people still in line when polls closed “will still be able to vote,” Kulin said Friday, and as of 10 p.m. a handful of valley locations still had long lines.

“The last day of early voting is typically the busiest,” Kulin said.

That's pretty normal -- I mean, if people are already in line, stay open until they've been taken care of.

Not according to The Hairpiece:




There's video here, which WaPo doesn't want me to embed for some reason.