Category: 2016 election

Will Trump fire Mueller?

I think Trump wants to fire Mueller and stop his investigation. Here’s a column from CNN.   The tweets by Trump and his lawyer are trial balloons to see what the reaction would be.

If Trump fired Mueller (or more accurately had the Justice Department do it), I think:

  1. Democrats and some member of the media will complain.  They can do nothing.
  2. Trump is more popular than Republicans in Congress among Republican voters.  I expect Republican “leaders” like McConnell and Ryan to do nothing.  They don’t want to alienate their voters.  Some Congressional Republicans will speak up (like Graham already has) but they won’t be able to do anything.

So, Trump can fire Mueller and there will be no immediate consequences.  At some point, through some investigation, we will get to the bottom of this.  Trump can’t hide the truth forever.  It must be bad if firing Mueller is a better option for him then letting Mueller find out the truth.  Sad!

Stormy

I’m sending out the hit song “Stormy” from 1968 to Stormy Daniels.

The Trump camp’s story just gets more and more implausible.  Are we really supposed to believe Michael Cohen paid Stormy Daniels on his own?  Are we supposed to believe Trump knew nothing about this when one of his organization’s lawyers was involved the arbitration case against Daniels?  The truth will eventually get out and I expect it to be: Trump had an affair with Daniels and paid her to keep quiet.

Here’s a good analysis by Chris Cillizza of CNN including commentary by Jeffrey Toobin.

There are two reasons why the Trump camp isn’t admitting everything:

  1. There are other women who could file cases against Trump.  You really didn’t think this was an isolated situation, did you?
  2. This may be a violation of election laws.

Sad!

Stormy Daniels

I think Trump would still have won the 2016 election even if we knew about Stormy Daniels before the voting.  Trump voters knew he was a liar, a bigot, was accused of attacking women, supported the birther movement, was in the “Access Hollywood video”, etc.  They still voted for him.  If they could overlook all of the other stuff, they could overlook Stormy Daniels.  This does need to be investigated to see if any election laws were violated.  The stories Trump’s lawyer has spread are ridiculous and at some point, I think we’ll hear the truth.  In this era of the Internet, everything becomes public eventually.

Yes, I know Hillary Clinton had the private email server.  She should have closed the Clinton Foundation before she became Secretary of State.  She supported Bill Clinton against his accusers – some or probably all told the truth. Still her moral failings are much smaller than Trump’s.  Sad!

How much did Russian interference affect the 2016 election?

We’ll never know how much Russian meddling affected the 2016 election.  It’s hard to quantify.

Here’s a column from 538 which thinks that other things caused the outcome more than Russia.

Here’s a contrary view from a column on CNN .  The author states that Trump’s margins in the states that put him over the top was so small that Russian meddling made the difference.

Russia must have thought their activities made a difference because they continue to use social media to support Trump.  Sad!

Trump still doesn’t believe Russia interfered in the 2016 election.

Trump is not convinced that Russia meddled in the election even through all intelligence executives believe it.

There are two issues:

  1. Did Russia interfere in the 2016 election?  There appears to be no doubt about that unless you’re a Trump supporter.
  2. Did Trump win because of Russian interference?  I would never say that.  We have no idea how many voters were swayed by Russian propaganda.  Trump was elected.  That’s a fact.  No matter what we find out about Russian activities and any possible cooperation from the Trump campaign, he still won.

Here’s an explanation of ways Russia has attacked our elections.

Trump’s attitude makes it hard to prevent future Russian interference. Sad!

 

Trump keeps lying about the 2016 election

Trump keeps telling lies about the 2016 election which was over a year ago.

  • The Electoral College map favors the Democrats

This is not true.  In two of the last five elections, the Democrat has won the popular vote but lost the Electoral College vote.  Democrats are concentrated in urban areas and blue state.  Clinton won California by millions of votes.  Trump won Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin by fewer than 50,000 votes in each state.  That’s why he won the election.  His campaign does deserve credit for thinking they could win in those states when most people considered them solidly Democratic.

  • There were three to five million illegal votes and Trump would have won the popular vote without them

This is a lie and he has presented no evidence to support his claim.  The amount of voter fraud is extremely small.

  • Trump won an electoral college landslide

It was not a landslide.  In fact, his percentage was 46th out of 58 elections.

And of course, he denies there was Russian interference.  We’ll never know how much that influenced the election.  He certainly may have won without Russian help but it can’t be proven one way or the other.  The fact that he won should be enough but Trump has to lie to make his win seem even better.  Sad!