The ‘Never Mind, I Was Being Sarcastic’ Candidacy

August 12, 2016

The 'Never Mind, I Was Being Sarcastic' Candidacy

There are a ton of strong arguments against President Obama's policy on handling ISIS. You can justifiably mock his "jayvee team" comments. You can point to the complaints from Central Command that the White House didn't want to hear the truth about the rise of ISIS. You can ask whether the military that could do enormous numbers of sorties a day in the Iraq War is really doing everything it can against ISIS now. You can ask whether this president chooses not talk talk about ISIS often so that the public will not worry about the threat. You can point out that ISIS is inspiring "lone wolf" attacks on American soil more than al-Qaeda did, and ask why this administration doesn't act like this country is at war. You can point out that there's no point to containment against a state that . . .

rejects peace as a matter of principle; that it hungers for genocide; that its religious views make it constitutionally incapable of certain types of change, even if that change might ensure its survival; and that it considers itself a harbinger of — and headline player in — the imminent end of the world.

You can mock Obama's declaration that ISIS can't win because they "can't produce anything" when they obviously produce American-born mass killers. A Republican candidate really ought to be tearing into the revelation that "Obama believes that the clash is taking place within a single civilization, and that Americans are sometimes collateral damage in this fight between Muslim modernizers and Muslim fundamentalists" because the American president shouldn't think of the citizens as "collateral damage." The Republican candidate needs to emphasize that there's no reason to think Hillary Clinton's approach to the threat will be any different than Obama's.

But the Republican candidate shouldn't be insisting that President Obama is the founder of ISIS, because it's not literally true, it only works as an exaggerated metaphor and it allows his opponents to paint him as unhinged and uninformed.

Hugh Hewitt, interviewing Donald Trump Thursday:

HH: I've got two more questions. Last night, you said the President was the founder of ISIS. I know what you meant. You meant that he created the vacuum, he lost the peace.

DT: No, I meant he's the founder of ISIS. I do. He was the most valuable player. I give him the most valuable player award. I give her, too, by the way, Hillary Clinton.

HH: But he's not sympathetic to them. He hates them. He's trying to kill them.

DT: I don't care. He was the founder. His, the way he got out of Iraq was that that was the founding of ISIS, okay?

Hewitt and Trump go back and forth about the word "founder", and it concludes:

DT: I mean, with his bad policies, that's why ISIS came about.

HH: That's . . .

DT: If he would have done things properly, you wouldn't have had ISIS.

HH: That's true.

DT: Therefore, he was the founder of ISIS.

Duane Patterson, Hugh Hewitt's producer, writing at Hot Air:

Donald not only did not board the life raft Hugh threw him, he deflated it out of spite. He went on several other media outlets throughout the day and held firm on his assertion.

This morning, the world was greeting [sic] with the following tweet from Donald Trump: "Ratings challenged @CNN reports so seriously that I call President Obama (and Clinton) "the founder" of ISIS, & MVP. THEY DON'T GET SARCASM?"

Donald Trump is like Minnesota weather – if you don't like it the way it is, just wait an hour and it'll change completely. As for the sarcasm, sarcasm means saying the opposite thing. So if Mr. Trump was being sarcastic, does that mean he actually is praising Obama and Hillary's role regarding ISIS?

If Trump had a split personality, it would explain a lot.

Trump's Holding a Rally in Connecticut While Conceding New Jersey

Yesterday's Jolt noted that the Trump campaign was still going to put effort into Connecticut. There hasn't been much polling in Connecticut, but as of June Hillary led by seven points. If he's falling behind in places like Ohio and Pennsylvania, it's not clear why he would be doing way better in a state that is more heavily Democratic. But tomorrow night Trump is holding a rally in Fairfield, Connecticut.

It wasn't that long ago that Trump looked a lot more competitive and you could see his path to victory — a path to victory that required winning a whole bunch of swing states that have eluded Republicans for the past two cycles: Ohio, Florida, and Pennsylvania. Lock in North Carolina and keep the rest of the states that voted for McCain and Romney. Yes, winning a state like Iowa or New Hampshire would come in handy; while a couple of once-purple states Virginia and Colorado looked like they were drifting out of reach. There wasn't a lot of room for mistakes, but it was doable. And all of the talk that Trump would win these deep blue states or put them in play — New York, California, Michigan — was wildly optimistic all along.

So is the Trump campaign putting effort into these heavily-Democratic states? The evidence is mixed:

With great fanfare, Trump's campaign opened a New Jersey office on May 3 in Edison, which attracted a crowd of more than 1,000 supporters, according to a local news account.

After two messages left at the number of Trump's New Jersey headquarters were not returned, POLITICO visited the nondescript suburban complex listed as its address.

That office no longer exists.

There were few signs the Trump campaign ever occupied the now-vacant office space — save for several peeled-off Trump campaign stickers visible through the front door.

Trump's latest FEC filing shows the campaign last made a rent payment on May 11 for the Edison property. The campaign vacated the office at least a month ago, according to two employees of the paper company located next door.

If the Trump campaign concluded that competing in New Jersey will require too many resources needed elsewhere, fine. But it further illustrates how much this campaign, and it's over-the-top boasts, ignored reality in order to build enthusiasm. But in the end, reality always wins.

For anyone asking, "Why can't Chris Christie help Trump in New Jersey?" the governor has a 26 percent approval rating in his home state.

Oh, Hey, More Chemical-Weapons Use in Syria, Not That Anyone Cares

Remember how we used to worry about the use of chemical weapons in Syria? Now it's not even big news anymore.

The Syrian American Medical Society — a source as good as any, trying to measure deaths amidst the fog/poison gas cloud of war — calculates there have been 161 poison gas attacks in Syria since December 2012, with 1,491 people killed.

A sentence like this should be a ringing indictment of a much-touted, much-celebrated deal:

There have been dozens of attacks with chlorine gas since Syria officially agreed to give up its weapons stockpile following a 2013 sarin gas assault on a Damascus suburb, rights groups and doctors on the ground said.

Chlorine, mustard gas, sarin, all gradually becoming less and less of a taboo tool of warfare.

The Guardian of all places points out that "the worst human rights catastrophe of our time" stems, in large part, from a West that refused to get involved and let callous, malevolent powers like Iran and Russia do what they wanted, without consequences:

The collapse of the "cessation of hostilities" agreement reached in February by Russia and the U.S. had long been obvious. The only hope of ever getting President Bashar al-Assad's power structure to talks under UN auspices hinged on the notion that the civil war had reached an impasse in which neither the regime nor the rebels could prevail. Russia's open military intervention has in effect upended the diplomatic track. Iran, meanwhile, has capitalised on the absence of any strong western protests against its actions in Syria, whatever the death toll, confident that preserving a legacy-making nuclear deal is paramount for the Obama administration. Add to this equation the fact that Turkey, once a key supporter of Aleppo's rebels, has recently warmed up its relations with Moscow (with the Kurdish factor in mind), and the plight of the city's civilians resembles a long tunnel with no end in sight.

Western policies have failed in Syria, not least because they counted on hopes that Russia would become cooperative rather than aim for the full-blown military victory of its ally Mr Assad. The fate of Aleppo's population hangs in the balance. So does the credibility of western strategies, which have focused solely on Islamic State and done too little to find a way to negotiate an end to the civil war, the worst human rights catastrophe of our time.

I'm so old, I can remember when the Iraq War was allegedly the worst human-rights catastrophe of our time.

ADDENDA: Yes, it's been a while since the last edition of the pop-culture podcast, but the new episode is finally up, with some tales from the convention cities; how I succumbed to the siren's call of Pokémon Go; Mickey's effusive praise for the new Spielberg-style Netflix series Stranger Things; the unexpected twists and turns of SyFy's The Magicians, and the joys of food you find at state fairs in the summer. For all the problems in this country, we can still deep-fry anything.