El Duce The KKK Duke Donald Trump by The Bard of Bat Yam, Poet Laureate of Zion

At Trump rallies he vomit spurs hate and rants,
Xenophobes puke back pro El Duce Don-Duke chants,
His base master race base,
All wears Wonder Bread face,
They’re the GOP’s white racist elephants


No discouraging words are allowed,
From Trump protesters found in the crowd,
Don goads each supporter,
To beat up and give no quarter,
To shout down naysayers… decibels loud!


To define the Trump push back… full gist,
If you defy him, his mobs will get pissed,
The ‘tude of his minions,
All dissenting opinions,
Will be squelched with chokehold and clenched fist!


There now is a candidate Trump
Who loves to talk hate from the stump,
Dressed to the nines, yet uncouth,
Exhumes Dolf’s Hitler youth,
Trash like Trump belongs in city dump!


Young school kids frequent their playground haunt,
Trump’s hate speech is the ‘tude they flaunt,
At Muslim classmates they’ll snort,
Forewarn Trump will deport,
Instill fear, sneer, jeer, torment and taunt!



The pro-Trump voter is recalcitrant,
A gun nut, cross burner and miscreant,
He’s sycophantic and manic,
Never Muslim, Black, Star of David Jew or Hispanic,
The GOP’s hardliner, white elephant!


At RNC, too few righties may rant,
“Our frontrunner is too arrogant!
Either make Trump stand down,
Or run Don out of town,
We have to curb our elephant!”


Will the RNC ever pay heed?
Understand Trump is the demon seed,
To be truthful, fully,
That bastard’s a bully,
The apex of hate, hubris, greed!


In muddy bigotry, chump Trump is mired,
Re his supporters, there’s no brain required,
If yahoos get their way,
On Election Day,
It’ll be far too late to shout, “YOU’RE FIRED!”


Trump’s hate speeches stir up the panic,
Of folks: Muslim, Star of David Jew, Black and Hispanic,
Though Don speaks the unthinkable,
That xenophobe ain’t unsinkable,
Clinton or Sanders could prove him Titanic!

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.

Mein Trumpf: El Duce in Trumpville's Donald Trump's Banana Republic

There are lots of issues to discuss regarding last night’s second presidential debate in St. Louis.

We could talk about the fact that Hillary Clinton was at the top of her game, delivering a solid debate performance, even as her opponent waded deeply into the political sewer.

We could talk about the fact that Donald Trump publicly upbraided his running mate Mike Pence on a question about Syria in order to take the side of Vladimir Putin (and Syrian strongman/butcher Bashar al-Assad).

We could talk about the fact that Trump said Captain Humayun Khan would be alive if Trump had been president — as he once again lied about his support for the war in Iraq.

We could talk about the fact that almost every word out of his mouth was untrue; that he dredged up every right-wing conspiracy theory that finds home in the conservative fever swamp; and that he had three women who have accused Bill Clinton of sexual impropriety as guests at the debate.



Donald Trump’s ‘you’d be in jail’ jab widely condemned

‘‘Winning candidates don’t threaten to put opponents in jail,” said Trump supporter Ari Fleischer.
All you need to know about the town hall debate that wasn’t.

Finally, we could talk about how this debate — solely because of the presence of Donald Trump — was an appalling spectacle that degraded and debased our democratic system.

All of that is secondary to the fact that Donald Trump said Hillary Clinton would be in jail if he were president.

It’s secondary to the fact Trump said that if he became president he would “instruct my attorney general to get a special prosecutor to look into your situation, because there’s never been so many lies, so much deception.”

When you are threatening to investigate and then jail your political opponent in a presidential debate you have crossed an exceptionally dangerous line.

This is Trump saying that the director of the FBI and the US attorney general are corrupt because they cleared Clinton of any wrongdoing in the investigation of her emails. This is Trump saying that he will order his attorney general and the Department of Justice to investigate and jail the runner-up in the presidential election. This is Trump suggesting that if he becomes president he would simply throw people in prison, because he “alone” determines that they are guilty of a crime. This is an abrogation of the rule of law in America and a fundamental violation of the democratic norms that allow for the peaceful turnover of power from one political party to the other.

And you know the absolute worst part about this? When Trump said it, his partisans in the crowd cheered. This is banana republic territory. This is what fascism in America looks like.

Ignore everything else that happened Sunday night. Ignore the lies; the exaggerations; the grossness of Trump calling bragging about sexual assault “locker room talk.” This is the headline.

Yet, what is perhaps more remarkable is that this was not the only thing we were talking about after the debate. The initial talking head reaction to the Clinton-Trump showdown practically ignored Trump’s comments or treated it as just another talking point in the debate. Some of Trump’s enablers/surrogates said he was joking — as if throwing a political rival in jail could ever be considered humorous.

This is precisely how undemocratic behavior gets normalized: by a pliant news corps that doesn’t understand a threat to democracy when they see it and that treats political debates like they are nothing more than electoral theater.

Frankly, I don’t care if Trump’s debate performance played badly with suburban female voters. I don’t care if Clinton seemed defensive and Trump was aggressive. I don’t care if Trump quieted the calls from Republican politicians to step down from the ticket.

What I do care about — and frankly what all of us should care about — are the implications of a presidential candidate openly, in a presidential debate, threatening to investigate and imprison his opponent.

Donald Trump is a clear and present danger to our democracy. He’s a man with a dangerously authoritarian mindset. He’s a man with no respect for and no knowledge of the basic political norms and values that guide our 240-year experiment in democracy.

There’s nothing else for us to discuss after Sunday night’s debate.