Is Donald Trump preparing us for the release of a very naughty tape?

Suspected Trump/Russia connections

Donald Trump has spent much of this year attacking mainstream (non-Murdoch) news media outlets, calling them “fake news.” The term apparently means real news that isn’t flattering to Trump. This can be seen as a strategy to influence us not to believe what we see, hear and read, unless it comes from a pro-Trump media outlet like Fox News. But now Trump seems to have taken his propaganda strategy one step further: he is saying that the Access Hollywood” tape released in October 16, in which Trump tells host Billy Bush that he likes to “just start kissing women” and “grab them by the pu*sy. You can do anything” is not authentic. What’s going on?

DCCC releases Thanksgiving dinner table talking points

Thanksgiving dinner table: calm before the storm

The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC), the official arm of the Democratic Party seeking to elect Democrats to the House of Representatives, has released its annual “Know Your Stuffing” Thanksgiving dinner table talking points. This year’s DCCC guide, sent by email to supporters and available in .pdf format, is billed as a “guide to surviving Thanksgiving with your Republican family.” The DCCC guide, which has a friendly graphical format, has been kept simple, covering just four topics, in the form of suggested Democratic responses to the following political statements expected by Republicans around the Thanksgiving dinner table this Thursday:

Democratic Congresswoman hammers GOP Tax Scam

Rep. Suzan DelBene (D-WA)

If you want to see how to conduct a hard-hitting line of questioning, look no further than the House Ways and Means Committee‘s November 6 hearing on the markup of the Republicans’ wildly misnamed “Tax Cuts and Jobs Act.” The Democrats have already termed the Republicans’ bill the “GOP Tax Scam” for its central elements of cutting taxes for wealthy individuals and corporations, adding well over a trillion dollars to the national debt, and trying to make up for some of the shortfall by taking away important deductions for middle and lower income Americans, including home mortgages, medical expenses, state and local taxes, student loans, and teacher classroom expenses. Corporations, however, would not have to give up these or comparable deductions under the GOP Tax Scam. At last week’s hearing, Democratic Congresswoman Suzan DelBene of Washington took this theme one step further, by calmly asking a series of simple questions to Tom Barthold, the Chief of Staff of the Joint Committee on Taxation. As seen here in the video and in the transcript below, DelBene’s questions cut to the heart of the GOP Tax Scam’s fundamental unfairness:

Democrats attack “GOP tax scam”

Democratic House Leader Nancy Pelosi with another recent messaging effort

It is very rare for the Democratic Party to come up with a phrase, and have members hammer it home in unison. Thus, it’s noteworthy that leading Democrats are doing just that regarding the Republican U.S. Senate and U.S. House tax bills released over the past week. The Democrats are using the phrase “GOP Tax Scam” to attack these plans. Here is a sampling of those Democratic attacks on Twitter:

Messaging guru George Lakoff asks: Why are you a Democrat?

Democratic Donkey

Dr. George Lakoff, retired professor of cognitive science and linguistics at the University of California at Berkeley and a communications guru for Democrats, asks this week’s key question: “Why are you a Democrat?” Lakoff’s question can be found at his blog, and on his Twitter feed:

Lakoff’s question comes at a crucial time for Democrats.

Republican Senators sending mixed messages

Sen. John McCain at a recent hearing.

It was big news on Tuesday when Republican U.S. Senator Jeff Flake of Arizona took to the Senate floor to announce that he would not run for re-election, and to attack Donald Trump and fellow Republicans for enabling the Trump administration’s “flagrant disregard for truth or decency” and a “regular and casual undermining of our democratic norms.” Just hours later, however, Flake joined all but two of his Republican colleagues to strike down a new rule from the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) that would have allowed class action lawsuits against financial institutions for predatory and deceptive business practices. This juxtaposition between words and deeds among Republican Senators is sending a mixed message to Americans.

The great Republican hoodwink

Donald Trump on the golf course, again

Donald Trump‘s approval numbers — as low as 32 percent — are the worst ever for a president at this point in his term. Likewise,  Trump’s handling of the hurricanes this season dropped 20 points to just 44 percent after Hurricane Maria devastated Puerto Rico and, instead of focusing on helping the people there (who are Americans), Trump took to the golf course and then criticized them. What’s amazing, though, is that Trump’s approval among Republicans is quite high. Why the disconnect?

Instead of getting distracted, drive the narrative

 

Puerto Rico devastation from Hurricane Maria

Back in February 2011, we published Messaging Maxim #1: Go On Offense. Perhaps some folks need a refresher course. In that post, we wrote, “If you’re fighting a political battle on the other side’s rhetorical turf, you’ve already lost.” At the time, such advice was referring to phony cultural issues like “Ground Zero Mosque” and “is President Obama a Muslim?” that Republicans had ginned up and repeated everywhere they could (see Messaging Maxim #2: Rinse and Repeat). With their herd mentality, the mainstream media then picked up these issues and focused their broadcasts, cablecasts and column space on them.

Fast forward to today. Donald Trump and the Republicans are doing the same thing again, and it’s working. Currently, the phony cultural issues are: “Kneeling NFL Players” and “Harvey Weinstein.” To those, you can add, “NBC and CNN Licenses.” By next week, expect different cultural issues.

Right wing Twitter bots posing as attractive women

Orange-helping fembots

If you search Twitter for “John Kelly” (White House Chief of Staff) to find out the latest on rumors of his possible resignation, you may stumble upon tweet after tweet indicating “John Kelly Reveals Why He Didn’t Wear a US Flag Pin During Confirmation.” Here’s an example:

https://twitter.com/ellastrs/status/916311433704591360

Checking out some of these tweets, you will find that nearly every one was posted by an attractive-looking white woman, according to their profiles. Moreover, many such profiles were nearly identical, often indicating “Wife,” “Mom,” “Animal Lover,” “Patriot,” “Middle Class Trump Supporter,” etc. And even more creepy is that, besides the tweet about Kelly and the flag pin, many of these accounts have identical tweets down the line, in the same order, including “Lying Liberal Media is 92% Negative Against President Trump,” “RNC Chairwoman RIPS Michelle Obama’s Claim GOP is ‘ALL WHITE MEN,’” “BREAKING: Senate Intel Committee BLASTS Media for FAKE Russia News,” and the like. Furthermore, many of the posted stories come from “reportsecret.com.” When you search for that outlet, you get a 404 Error. Other links go to truthfeednews.com, which does exist, and it is some conservative publication. Their Kelly post didn’t criticize Kelly directly, but it did say this:

Ever since Barack Obama’s disastrous presidency, the American flag has been under an all-out assault.

NFL athletes routinely disrespect our flag, as do Hollywood celebrities, far-left denizens, and Democrat politicians.

In fact, many Democrat politicians make a point of choosing to not wear an American flag pin on their jackets, a subtle snub to our country and to those who are patriotic.

Here are a few more examples of the profiles found and some of the tweets in question:

Now is not too soon to talk about gun violence

The Knotted Gun

The shootings by Stephen Paddock in Las Vegas on Sunday night were the deadliest in modern U.S. history. 59 people are now dead, with over 500 injured. And yet, on Monday, Trump White House spokesperson Sarah Huckabee Sanders, asked if Donald Trump was now discussing whether new gun laws are needed, replied that “it would be premature for us to discuss policy” so soon after the killings. Sanders’ reply is similar to what many conservatives and the National Rifle Association say when confronted with mass shootings of civilians involving semiautomatic or, in this case, automatic, weapons. They are wrong for a couple of major reasons: