The "Idiot" is causing White Suburbanites to Flee.El Duce Dunce Donald Trump’s death spiral. The Question is does he even know?. Does he even care?

Donald Trump’s North Carolina death spiral: Even white suburbanites flee the “idiot”
Only strong anti-Clinton sentiment is keeping Trump afloat in North Carolina's heavily Republican suburbs

Republished with permission of the Author Simon Maloy and Salon Magazine in which the Article first appeared.



North Carolina should be a hotly contested swing state. In 2008, Barack Obama turned North Carolina into the leading edge of the Democratic resurgence in the South, narrowly snatching the state from John McCain thanks to a surge in black voter turnout. Mitt Romney managed to claw the state back into the Republican column in 2012 by juicing rural and suburban turnout enough to overcome the Democratic advantage in the cities. At the start of the 2016 election cycle, the state was expected to be one of the most hard-fought battlegrounds.


And up until a few weeks ago, the Tar Heel State was indeed a toss-up: depending on which polling model and aggregator you choose to believe, Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton were running about even in mid-September in North Carolina, with Trump probably enjoying a slight edge. But after two bad debate performances, the release of the “grab them by the pussy” tape, and an ever-growing number of sexual assault allegations, Trump looks to be fading. All the recent North Carolina polling puts Hillary Clinton up by low- to mid-single digits. As of this writing, FiveThirtyEight gives Trump less than a 3-in-10 shot of winning the state.

I went down to North Carolina this past weekend to see Trump speak to his supporters and break a malfunctioning teleprompter at a rally in Charlotte. Then I headed southeast to the wealthy suburbs of Union County to chat up some voters and get their impressions of the 2016 race and the Trump candidacy. What I found was a mix of voters who are either having a lot of difficulty backing the Republican nominee or are voting Trump primarily because they can’t abide by the idea of another Clinton presidency.

Union County is an area of North Carolina where Republican presidential candidates should expect to do well. It’s a populous county (the state’s ninth-largest, per themost recent estimates), and it’s whiter, wealthier and more highly educated than the state as a whole. In 2012, Mitt Romney put up one of his biggest statewide victories in Union County, beating Barack Obama by more than 28,000 votes. Walking through the Union County suburbs of Indian Trail and Weddington, however, I ran into a number of voters who would have been open to voting Republican this cycle, but are having a lot of trouble convincing themselves to vote for Trump.

“I’m actually considering a third-party candidate,” said Keith Garbrick, a 36-year-old civil engineer who has voted Republican his entire life but is now leaning strongly towards Libertarian nominee Gary Johnson. “It’s difficult to see a leader that’s as careless with his words and with his actions,” he said in explaining his resistance to Trump. “It just seems to be the complete opposite of what I would expect out of the Republican Party.” When I asked if he would have been more amenable to voting for Trump before all the allegations of sexual assault starting coming out, Garbrick said yes. “It wasn’t the best candidate we could have put forward, but I think it was one that was tolerable,” he said.

The sexual assault allegations against Trump also influenced Tommy Crawford, a 57-year-old transportation worker I spoke to at a coffee shop in Indian Trail. A self-identified independent who voted for Obama twice, Crawford said he is still undecided but lately has begun leaning towards Clinton. I asked him why, and he said that while he had once been open to the idea of backing Trump, “the accusations towards women, and the bus — the video with the bus, I think that was it.” That sentiment, Crawford added, was common among his friends and associates. “The people I know are more and more now leaning towards Hillary because of the last few weeks,” he said.

“I just think Trump — he doesn’t know what he’s doing, and he’s an idiot,” said Eric Schafer, a 26-year-old nonprofit employee who voted Republican in the last two presidential elections and supported John Kasich in the Republican primaries. “I feel like if he’s elected, we’re going to have some sort of war.” Still, Schafer said he was open to giving Trump a chance to make his case, and for him the question would ultimately come down to economics versus morality. “I don’t know if Trump’s going to be best for the world, but I think he’s going to be best economically for some people that I hang out with and myself,” he explained. “But I don’t know if his morality is going to be aligned with what I want.”

For a Republican trying to win North Carolina in 2016, voter reactions like these are not at all what you want to hear. After eight years of Democratic rule in the White House, a GOP candidate should, in theory, have a good shot at pulling together solid Republicans and persuadable independents into a pretty strong coalition. But few of the Union County Trump voters I talked to had much enthusiasm for the nominee. They were more animated by a desire to keep Hillary Clinton out of the White House.

“She is crooked, she is a criminal, she is just not a good person, she’s a mean, mean person, whereas he’ll make some change,” Terry McDonald, a 45-year-old hospitality industry employee told me when I asked him why he supported Trump. “He may not be the best candidate, but he’s all we got.” Jori, a Trump-supporting supermarket employee in Weddington, told me that Trump “doesn’t really try to cover up the fact that he’s an idiot, as far as the remarks he makes about women.” But she added, “Hillary, she’s no better, she’s just as bad.”

Kerry Scialabba, a 45-year-old stay-at-home mom, also planned to vote Trump, but with reservations. “I don’t know that I’m totally in for Trump, but I am totally opposed to Hillary Clinton,” she said. Her concerns were Trump’s “quick mouth” and the sexual assault allegations. “I’m hoping that if he did that, he’ll learn from this and move forward and make amends for what he’s done,” she said. “It wouldn’t change my vote in the election because I feel like we’re looking at the country as a whole and where we need to go, and he’s going to be the right person between the two of them.”

I had many variations of this same conversation with lots of voters in a county that should be fertile ground for a Republican presidential nominee. They either can’t quite come around to backing Trump, or they’re convincing themselves that he’s the lesser evil. Right now, it seems like the best thing Trump has going for him in North Carolina is the fact that he’s running against Hillary Clinton.

The "Idiot" is causing White Suburbanites to Flee.El duce Dunce Donald Trump’s death spiral

Donald Trump’s North Carolina death spiral: Even white suburbanites flee the “idiot”
Only strong anti-Clinton sentiment is keeping Trump afloat in North Carolina's heavily Republican suburbs

Republished with permission of the Author Simon Maloy and Salon Magazine in which the Article first appeared.



North Carolina should be a hotly contested swing state. In 2008, Barack Obama turned North Carolina into the leading edge of the Democratic resurgence in the South, narrowly snatching the state from John McCain thanks to a surge in black voter turnout. Mitt Romney managed to claw the state back into the Republican column in 2012 by juicing rural and suburban turnout enough to overcome the Democratic advantage in the cities. At the start of the 2016 election cycle, the state was expected to be one of the most hard-fought battlegrounds.


And up until a few weeks ago, the Tar Heel State was indeed a toss-up: depending on which polling model and aggregator you choose to believe, Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton were running about even in mid-September in North Carolina, with Trump probably enjoying a slight edge. But after two bad debate performances, the release of the “grab them by the pussy” tape, and an ever-growing number of sexual assault allegations, Trump looks to be fading. All the recent North Carolina polling puts Hillary Clinton up by low- to mid-single digits. As of this writing, FiveThirtyEight gives Trump less than a 3-in-10 shot of winning the state.

I went down to North Carolina this past weekend to see Trump speak to his supporters and break a malfunctioning teleprompter at a rally in Charlotte. Then I headed southeast to the wealthy suburbs of Union County to chat up some voters and get their impressions of the 2016 race and the Trump candidacy. What I found was a mix of voters who are either having a lot of difficulty backing the Republican nominee or are voting Trump primarily because they can’t abide by the idea of another Clinton presidency.

Union County is an area of North Carolina where Republican presidential candidates should expect to do well. It’s a populous county (the state’s ninth-largest, per themost recent estimates), and it’s whiter, wealthier and more highly educated than the state as a whole. In 2012, Mitt Romney put up one of his biggest statewide victories in Union County, beating Barack Obama by more than 28,000 votes. Walking through the Union County suburbs of Indian Trail and Weddington, however, I ran into a number of voters who would have been open to voting Republican this cycle, but are having a lot of trouble convincing themselves to vote for Trump.

“I’m actually considering a third-party candidate,” said Keith Garbrick, a 36-year-old civil engineer who has voted Republican his entire life but is now leaning strongly towards Libertarian nominee Gary Johnson. “It’s difficult to see a leader that’s as careless with his words and with his actions,” he said in explaining his resistance to Trump. “It just seems to be the complete opposite of what I would expect out of the Republican Party.” When I asked if he would have been more amenable to voting for Trump before all the allegations of sexual assault starting coming out, Garbrick said yes. “It wasn’t the best candidate we could have put forward, but I think it was one that was tolerable,” he said.

The sexual assault allegations against Trump also influenced Tommy Crawford, a 57-year-old transportation worker I spoke to at a coffee shop in Indian Trail. A self-identified independent who voted for Obama twice, Crawford said he is still undecided but lately has begun leaning towards Clinton. I asked him why, and he said that while he had once been open to the idea of backing Trump, “the accusations towards women, and the bus — the video with the bus, I think that was it.” That sentiment, Crawford added, was common among his friends and associates. “The people I know are more and more now leaning towards Hillary because of the last few weeks,” he said.

“I just think Trump — he doesn’t know what he’s doing, and he’s an idiot,” said Eric Schafer, a 26-year-old nonprofit employee who voted Republican in the last two presidential elections and supported John Kasich in the Republican primaries. “I feel like if he’s elected, we’re going to have some sort of war.” Still, Schafer said he was open to giving Trump a chance to make his case, and for him the question would ultimately come down to economics versus morality. “I don’t know if Trump’s going to be best for the world, but I think he’s going to be best economically for some people that I hang out with and myself,” he explained. “But I don’t know if his morality is going to be aligned with what I want.”

For a Republican trying to win North Carolina in 2016, voter reactions like these are not at all what you want to hear. After eight years of Democratic rule in the White House, a GOP candidate should, in theory, have a good shot at pulling together solid Republicans and persuadable independents into a pretty strong coalition. But few of the Union County Trump voters I talked to had much enthusiasm for the nominee. They were more animated by a desire to keep Hillary Clinton out of the White House.

“She is crooked, she is a criminal, she is just not a good person, she’s a mean, mean person, whereas he’ll make some change,” Terry McDonald, a 45-year-old hospitality industry employee told me when I asked him why he supported Trump. “He may not be the best candidate, but he’s all we got.” Jori, a Trump-supporting supermarket employee in Weddington, told me that Trump “doesn’t really try to cover up the fact that he’s an idiot, as far as the remarks he makes about women.” But she added, “Hillary, she’s no better, she’s just as bad.”

Kerry Scialabba, a 45-year-old stay-at-home mom, also planned to vote Trump, but with reservations. “I don’t know that I’m totally in for Trump, but I am totally opposed to Hillary Clinton,” she said. Her concerns were Trump’s “quick mouth” and the sexual assault allegations. “I’m hoping that if he did that, he’ll learn from this and move forward and make amends for what he’s done,” she said. “It wouldn’t change my vote in the election because I feel like we’re looking at the country as a whole and where we need to go, and he’s going to be the right person between the two of them.”

I had many variations of this same conversation with lots of voters in a county that should be fertile ground for a Republican presidential nominee. They either can’t quite come around to backing Trump, or they’re convincing themselves that he’s the lesser evil. Right now, it seems like the best thing Trump has going for him in North Carolina is the fact that he’s running against Hillary Clinton.

Donald Trump Tax Troll Tower Tramp:Donald Trump’s no good, very bad week: “Economic genius” revealed as tax scammer who lost $916 million in a boom market.First he was "smart" for avoiding taxes. Now we find out how he does it -- by losing bazillions on bad investments

Donald Trump’s no good, very bad week: “Economic genius” revealed as tax scammer who lost $916 million in a boom market.First he was "smart" for avoiding taxes. Now we find out how he does it -- by losing bazillions on bad investments
Donald Trump, pictured on Nov. 20, 1990. (Credit: AP/Mark Lennihan)


According to focus groups, the exchange in last Monday’s campaign debate between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump that really offended people of all political stripes was not Trump’s revolting attitudes about women, although that was plenty offensive. It was the “taxes comment.” The Washington Post’s report on its focus group of undecided voters in North Carolina had this headline: “When Trump said that not paying taxes ‘makes me smart,’ undecided voters in N.C. gasped”:


“That’s offensive. I pay taxes,” said Townley, 52, a program ­director for a local council of governments.

“Another person would be in jail for that,” said Jamilla Hawkins, 33, who was sitting beside him in the Crescent conference room at the Embassy Suites in this city of 150,000 near Raleigh.

Pollster Frank Luntz’s dial-o-meter focus group also showed a sharp plunge for Trump when the tax discussion came up. After the debate Trump even denied saying it, which was ridiculous since more than 80 million people watched him do it.

Clinton was correct when she said that what little we knew from the few of Trump’s tax returns previously made public for various reasons was that he often pays little or no federal taxes. Over the weekend, the New York Times published a bombshell article featuring Trump’s 1995 tax returns from several states, which had been delivered anonymously to the paper. It not only showed that Trump had paid no federal income tax that year but that he had claimed nearly a billion dollars in losses.Tax experts told the Times that could mean he wrote off $50 million per year ever since. This certainly lends credibility to the speculation that he has refused to release his returns for that reason — because he has rarely or never paid even a nickel in federal income tax. Obviously, if he wants to end that speculation and prove everyone wrong, he could simply release the returns.

The Times had asked Trump for comment, so he undoubtedly knew this story was going to break before he took the stage at his Saturday night rally in Pennsylvania, where he proceeded to deliver one of his most unhinged rants in many months. Trump accused Hillary Clinton of being unfaithful to her husband and performed an imitation of her fainting spell to illustrate that she’s weak, saying, “She’s supposed to fight all these different things and she can’t make it 15 feet to her car.” (He must have skipped the chapter on Franklin D. Roosevelt in high school history class.) Between his disastrous debate performance and this news,which cuts to the heart of his main argument for the presidency, Trump ended a very bad week with a very, very bad night.

His surrogates were rattled as well. On Sunday morning they sent out their big guns, the people reportedly closest to Trump at the moment, former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani and New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie. The two of them put on performances that would be career-enders if they hadn’t already ended them by taking on the roles of Trump majordomos. They both made the rounds to declare that Trump is a “genius,” with Christie declaring that the tax revelation is “a very good story” for Trump because it shows him as the comeback kid. Giuliani compared Trump to Winston Churchill and Steve Jobs, saying that like them, “He had some failures and then he built an empire.” He asked the fundamental question: “Don’t you think a man who has this kind of economic genius is a lot better for the United States than a woman?”

The idea that a man whose business has gone bankrupt four times, who has stiffed thousands of small business owners, who has been sued all over the country for fraud, who used his charity as a slush fund and who now has been revealed to have reported to the government that he lost more than $915 million — in a year in which the stock market gained 37 percent! — is an economic genius could only be true in Bizarro World.

Trump himself tweeted, “I know our complex tax laws better than anyone who has ever run for president and am the only one who can fix them.” In fact, Trump’s tax plan is standard-issue GOP Club for Growth trickle-down. It’s the most conventional aspect of his entire platform. And the fact that he’s a card-carrying member of the 1 percent means that he’s proposed a tax plan that will benefit him and his family “big league.” He would drastically cut corporate taxes, reduce the top rates and eliminate the estate tax, providing a windfall for his children. And then there’s this little noticed provision, via the Washington Post’s Wonkblog:

Trump’s plan would dramatically reduce taxes on what is known in tax circles as “pass-through” entities, which do not pay corporate income taxes, but whose owners are taxed at individual rates on their share of profits. Those entities are the most common structure for small businesses and increasingly popular for larger ones as well. They are also a cornerstone of the Trump Organization. On his 2015 presidential financial disclosure report, Trump listed holdings of more than 200 limited liability corporations, which is a form of pass-through.

This is unusual. Recent GOP nominees have simply proposed reducing the top tax rate, which would effectively lower the pass-through rate. Mitt Romney wanted to lower it to 28 percent, John McCain picked 35 percent and George W. Bush proposed 33 percent. Trump wants to lower that rate to 15 percent. I’ll leave it to the experts to sort out why he thinks that’s a good idea, but suffice to say it’s clear that he would personally benefit from it.

It should be pointed out that Hillary Clinton, by contrast, has proposed a tax plan that would create a new top bracket of 43.6 percent and a minimum tax rate of 30 percent for anyone making more than $1 million. She would also raise the estate tax. None of this benefits her or her family. In fact, one of he most glaring differences between these two wealthy candidates is that Bill and Hillary Clinton go out of their way to pay substantially more in taxes than is necessary. They can afford it, certainly. They are reportedly worth more than $100 million. But it does show a very different philosophy than Donald Trump, whose alleged $10 billion fortune is vastly larger. He apparently feels that paying no taxes makes him smarter than all of us dumb citizens who do.

If you think Trump is a genius for gaming the system so that he never has to pay federal income tax, that’s your prerogative. But please don’t ever say another word about “makers and takers” or the 47 percent again. We taxpayers have been carrying Donald Trump for 30 years while he was living in his golden palace. He’s the biggest welfare queen in the world.