Trump Isn't Trying to Win

Trump isn't trying to win.  That should be obvious by now, considering his habit of insulting the media, women, and other prominent Republicans.  In fact, for someone who claims to be a 'uniter' who gets along well with people, the list of people and organizations he's insulted is quite spectacular.  We can also see that he's not trying to win by the way he actively courts the support of known white supremacists.  And the fact that he's now on his third campaign manager.  And the fact that he has essentially no campaign organization or ground game.  And the fact that he only recently started advertising on TV.

You know what Trump IS doing, though?  He's fundraising.  And where is that fundraising money going?  As we noted, it's not going to pay for field offices, or office staff, or to GOTV (get out the vote) operations.  But some of it is going right into Donald Trump's pocket, in the form of rent that the Trump campaign is paying Trump Towers for rent in the office space it's using.  The funny thing is, the campaign is now paying more than four times as much for this office space than it was back in April.

Do you know who profits when Trump Towers raises its rent?  Donald Trump.  If he were running a serious campaign where he cared about winning, he could, maybe, let his campaign use that office space FOR FREE.  But instead, he makes the campaign pay AND raises the rent!

I think I've made it pretty clear that I don't support Trump for president.  But if I did, and if I had donated some of my heard-earned money to a campaign where it seems like he's not even trying to win, and pocketing a bigger and bigger share of each donation, I might consider staying home on election day.  Or voting for the other guy woman.

But you know, that's just me.

And Another Thing: Hillary is Much More Honest Than Trump

It's late, I'm supposed to be on vacation, so I'm phoning this one in.  But Robert Mann has an awesome chart, based on data from Politifact:

I Can't Question Trump's Ethics, Because I'm Unable to Find Them

Let's start with the facts about Captain Humayun Khan:

In 2004, Captain Khan was deployed from Germany to Iraq for Operation Iraqi Freedom, despite the fact that his four years of required service had technically been completed. Then on June 8th, four months into his tour of duty, Khan was inspecting soldiers on guard duty when a suspicious vehicle approached the gate of his compound at high speed. Khan ordered his fellow soldiers to stay back, as he took 10 steps toward the car with his arm outstretched. The car then exploded, killing Khan, but its improvised explosive device detonated before it could reach the gates and the nearby mess hall where hundreds of Khan's fellow soldiers were eating breakfast.

There's a word for people who do the kind of things Humayun Khan did: hero.  And anyone who doubts that either has some very good reason to doubt that the above story is true, or they have a very twisted standard for measuring morality.

I can't imagine what it must be like to be the parent of such a hero, and I hope I never find out.  But when your child sacrifices his life for others this way, one thing is beyond dispute: you get to say whatever the hell you want about the people running for president, and everyone else has to shut up and respect it.  Just like when Pat Smith, whose son Sean died in Benghazi in 2012, stood up at the Republican National Convention to tell the world that she blames 'Hillary Clinton personally' for her son's death.  Hillary could have attacked Pat Smith for saying this, and so could the Clinton campaign or other high-profile Democrats.

Only they haven't, you see, because all of them --- including Hillary, especially Hillary --- have at least some amount of integrity, and they understand that Pat Smith gets to say whatever she wants.

Donald Trump, on the other hand, doesn't understand this, because Donald Trump is a man without integrity, honor or ethics.  That's why when Khizr Khan, Captain Khan's father, stood up at the Democratic National Convention to tell the world that Trump has 'sacrificed nothing' and questioned whether Trump had ever read the Constitution, Trump didn't just ignore him.  Instead, he attacked him:

"While I feel deeply for the loss of his son," he added, "Mr. Khan, who has never met me, has no right to stand in front of millions of people and claim I have never read the Constitution, (which is false) and say many other inaccurate things."

Yes, he does, Donald.  That's how it works.  For one thing, he said nothing inaccurate: you really haven't sacrificed anything.  And for another, when your child dies heroically on the field of battle, you can criticize the president, or anyone running for president, however you damn well please.

This initial reaction was bad enough, but Trump being an asshole pandering to assholes, and surrounded, supported and enabled by assholes, has taken things to the inevitable next level:

Amid Donald Trump's ongoing attacks on the family of U.S. Army Captain Humayun Khan, a Muslim-American solider who was killed fighting in Iraq, a number of his supporters latched onto a conspiracy theory that Khan's father is a "Muslim Brotherhood agent" and his son was on an "Islamist mission."

Their evidence for these accusations more or less boils down to: "Trump is awesome and you're a nasty Muslim who said bad things about Trump so you're a terrorist, shut up and go away terrorist."  No, the accusations aren't coming from Trump himself, but they're coming from his close associate Roger Stone, which is the same thing.  Google up the relationship between Trump and Stone, and you'll realize that Stone wouldn't be saying these things without Trump's approval.

I know that 25 years of smears and attacks has a lot of people thinking that Hillary is corrupt, etc.  That's tremendously overblown, but no matter how compromised her ethics may be, at least they're not zero.  That territory is reserved for Trump, Stone, and their white-supremacist, misogynist, Muslim-bashing supporters.