For his first act as the presumptive Republican nominee, Donald J. Trump strode on stage, extended his arms and conducted the crowd through a chorus of “Take Me Home, Country Roads.”
“We need to put our miners back to work!” he shouted Thursday to the crowd of more than 12,000 in the sunken, cavernous concrete Civic Center here. Hundreds of miners invited by the campaign to sit behind his podium rose in an extended standing ovation.
Mr. Trump spent extended riffs going after Hillary Clinton, repeatedly referencing her comments about wanting to put the coal industry out of business (her campaign says she misspoke). He called the Clinton Foundation “disgusting,” referred to the investigation into her emails as secretary of state and Bill Clinton’s role in creating the North American Free Trade Agreement, and made a thinly veiled joke about Mr. Clinton’s infidelities.
“The Clinton administration, of which Hillary was definitely a part,” Mr. Trump said, continuing, “she was a part of almost everything. Almost, I say, not everything. Almost.”
He paused for a beat, as the crowd grew into a mix of laughter and cheers.
“Terrible,” Mr. Trump said, a wry joking tone in his voice. “I didn’t think the people of West Virginia thought about that. You should be ashamed of yourselves. Terrible, terrible people.”
…
Mr. Trump even donned a hard hat after receiving the endorsement of the West Virginia Coal Association, miming using a pick and shovel, before taking it off and risking his carefully crafted hair.
“You know you’re not allowed to hair spray anymore because it affects the ozone,” he said.
He added, in an allusion perhaps to his campaign’s overall slogan: “Hair spray’s not like it used to be. It used to be real good.”
Depending upon how important those speeches are he might just do it. Different promise in every place, the media will be after him for that. But the promises to others won’t be remembered, it’s the promise he made to you, You, that will stick.
Dang this is going to be interesting (as long as none of us actually have to listen to any of this shit).
Unlike the Republicans and our Tories, he has the balls to hold Clinton to previous promises on the environment and suchlike. They aren’t going to sound good in working class industrial constituencies.
There’s an obvious contradiction between the New Left’s environmentalism and internationalism and their core vote’s interests, but inexplicably conservative parties up until now have avoided pointing this out.
“as long as none of us actually have to listen to any of this shit”: it ill becomes an aficionado of rockkrap to refer to country music as “shit”.
“… repeatedly referencing her comments about wanting to put the coal industry out of business”: good for him.
I’ve seen a few articles about how he’s upset groups and you can’t win without the women’s vote or the Hispanic vote etc.
Sure I saw somewhere that US turnout is in the 2/3rds range at best for elections so wonder if capturing a chunk of non-voters can more than offset the groups he’s claimed to have offended, not seen any commentary on it as pundits seem to just assume normal rules will apply.
Anyone who thinks Trump is a goof better look at what he did yesterday and reconsider their opinion. He won West Virginia, probably Ohio and has put Pennsylvania into serious play. He’s also served notice to Democrats in those states of the following: If they are going to support Clinton, they’re going to be answering questions about why they hate the miners in their state.
What has gone unspoken to date is the ever-increasing elephant in the room… namely that if there is going to be a third party run in this election, it won’t be by mounted by the big-talking pussies of the Republican Party establishment, nor will it be staged by the big-talking nebbishes of the conservative movement, it will be by Socialist caucusing with the Democrats Bernie Sanders.
What Trump did yesterday shows Clinton’s weakness, and don’t think Sanders isn’t aware of it.
I suspect Trump will win with either Sanders in or out of the race, but with Sanders in Hillary will be lucky to win a third of the electorate.
What is it with the left and miners?
I was brought up in a mining area in the ’60s and not one of our neighbours encouraged us to go “down the pit”, if anything we we exhorted to do anything but.
It’s a dangerous job and the product stinks and causes no end of pollution.
For a while I had responsibility for a small call centre in Doncaster and they all said it was better than mining.
OT. My wife just informed me that the bastards have rejected Boaty MacBoatface in favour of David Attenborough. Can I have my money back?
Trump is a populist. Libertarian supporters of underdog Trump should take note, because that means he will be fascist and/or socialist whenever it gets his poll up.
So promising the miners work like Arthur Scargill is alright now?
“Boaty MacBoatface”: oh for Christ’s sake. It was Boaty McBoatface.
The Economist is really spoilt for choice deciding which statist to back for president this time.
“The Clinton administration, of which Hillary was definitely a part,”- this is the bit I find interesting.
You think you’ve seen attack ads.. but have you seen attack ads featuring the 17 little children that Hillary ordered her third-choice,* third-rate Attorney General pick to burn alive at Waco?
* The first two were rejected for confirmation because both of them were normal heterosexual women who had hired Mexican illegals as nannys- not exactly the best look for the head of ‘Justice’- hence the pick of Reno, who was a closer ‘Friend of Hillary’ and had no such entanglements.
If all the people who’ve said Trump is unelectable were laid end to end…
he’d walk it.
I’ve been saying for a while now, even when the media was still treating him as a clown and C4 was making sneery documentaries poking fun at the gauche Americans, Donald Trump will be the next president of the United States.
He was the only man in the room during those Republican debates. And his enemies tried everything: calling him a clown, calling him sexist, calling him Hitler, spending hundreds of millions of dollars to blacken his name across every mass media outlet in America.
Trump wiped the floor with them. It wasn’t even close.
Not coincidentally, Trump is the only Republican who isn’t afraid of Hillary. And she’s a terrible candidate.
Nobody likes her and she doesn’t have a message other than “I’m a woman!” To people who aren’t geriatric Womyns Studies professors, she’s less appealling than a buzzing strip of flypaper in a cake shop.
Rob said “Unlike the Republicans and our Tories, he has the balls […]”
He could’ve stopped there. That’s it in a nutshell. ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°) Americans (and Brits) are so used to conservative pols being dickless wonders it’s almost shocking to see one who stands up for himself. Trump’s afraid of nobody. He’s like Margaret Thatcher in this sense: he’s not defensive. He’s always joyfully attacking and ridiculing his enemies.
The most charismatic candidate wins presidential elections. That’s why Obama saw off grumpy old man McCain and real-boy-wannabe Romney.
Trump is going to win by a landslide. In retrospect, it’ll be as obvious as Reagan’s victory over Jimmy Carter.
Apologies to Theo BTW, I came here not to mock Caesar, but to praise him. Whatever you think of his politics, right-leaning folks in the UK can learn from his tactics of persuasion.
So promising the miners work like Arthur Scargill is alright now?
Compared to Clinton’s message to miners, which was little more than “Fuck off and die”, and Arthur Scargill promise looks pretty good.
Trump is a populist. Libertarian supporters of underdog Trump should take note, because that means he will be fascist and/or socialist whenever it gets his poll up.
So, after eight years of Barack Obama imitating Robert Mugabe, the thought of Donald Trump imitating Huey Long is supposed to scare me?
Really?
Remember this: Folks aren’t voting for Donald Trump because they want him to fix Washington DC. They are voting for him because they want him to burn that motherfucker to the ground.
To.The.Ground.
What Dennis said….
Take away the super delegates vote and Hillary has a pretty slim lead over Bernie, funny how this is hardly mentioned in discussing her commanding lead
Perhaps we could have a campaign to rename David Attenborough to Boaty McBoatface.
WV has been solidly Republican for 20 years. If Trump is going to spend his time campaigning there, rather than the currently-light-blue states that he actually he needs to win, then Hillary hasn’t got much to worry about. (apart from a third party Sanders run, which is unlikely but would certainly harm her).
DBC Reed
Will you clarify that a Land Value Tax can cure cancer and whether it might hold the key to life, the universe and everything? I think from recollection it was mentioned in ‘Money creation in the modern economy’….
@VP I think you are exaggerating the benefits of LVT but ,regardless of your personal limitations, you are making a sincere attempt to engage with the issues. Perhaps you might stretch yourself a little farther and consider what the current Nobel Laureate for Economics,Angus Deaton, has to say in ‘Housing Land Prices and Growth ‘(2001)” On the asset side the presence of land causes life- cycle savings to be re-allocated away from productive capital towards land. The social optimum in such a model is for land to be nationalised and provided at zero rates. Land markets …are inimical to capital formation. ”
I know you may feel like running to the dorm and hiding under the bed (again) but there are lot of very clever people who have ADVANCED IDEAS (actually very old ideas going back to Leon Walras) and you have to be able to deal with them . I have every confidence you can.