Trump Cards, Con't

So we've reached the point of this insane election season where a presidential candidate is now actively promising to use the power of the executive to prosecute and imprison his political opponent if elected, even though Clinton has been exonerated by said Justice Department.  But that's just a technicality, see...

On Monday night in Ohio, Trump unveiled his plan for clearing this hurdle. The GOP nominee decried the conspiracy between the FBI and Justice Department to “whitewash” Clinton’s use of a private email server, saying, “They certainly cannot be trusted to quickly or impartially investigate Hillary Clinton’s crimes.” 

Thus, Trump demanded an “expedited investigation by a special prosecutor” into his rivals misdeeds. “The Clintons made the State Department into the same kind of pay-to-play operation as the Arkansas government was,” the mogul declared. 

Granted, Trump’s proposal doesn’t actually “make sense.” Only the Justice Department has the power to appoint a special prosecutor. If Trump is elected, he could, presumably, appoint an attorney general willing to appoint such a prosecutor — but at that point, why wouldn’t Trump just let Attorney General Chris Christie carry out the witch hunt himself? 

Nonetheless, the special-prosecutor plan appears to be a central part of Trump’s agenda going forward. After cancelling a series of campaign events on Monday — including a marquee speech on immigration policy — Trump released a revised schedule on Tuesday morning. On the docket: A speech in Austin that aims “to draw national attention to his call for border security as well as the need for a Special Prosecutor to investigate Hillary Clinton’s bought and paid for State Department.”

At this point, if you're somehow still on the fence over your 2016 presidential vote, and somehow Donald Trump vowing to send Hillary to prison is the one thing you needed to hear from him in order to secure your vote, then yeah, you have much bigger personal problems to deal with.

Meanwhile in Trump outreach to voters of color, we have something something Soft Bigotry of Low Expectations.

Standing before a vastly white crowd in Ohio on Monday evening, Donald Trump made a passionate pitch to African American and Hispanic voters, whom he described as living in poverty in neighborhoods that are more dangerous than war zones. 

"What do you have to lose?" Trump asked again and again. 

It's a question that Trump first posed to African American voters during a rally in North Carolina on Thursday. He then repeated it at a rally in Michigan on Friday evening and Virginia on Saturday night. In Ohio on Monday, Trump expanded his pitch to include Hispanics. 

"Our government has totally failed our African American friends, our Hispanic friends and the people of our country. Period," Trump said in Akron, Ohio, straying from the prepared remarks the campaign provided to reporters. "The Democrats have failed completely in the inner cities. For those hurting the most who have been failed and failed by their politician — year after year, failure after failure, worse numbers after worse numbers. Poverty. Rejection. Horrible education. No housing, no homes, no ownership. Crime at levels that nobody has seen. You can go to war zones in countries that we are fighting and it's safer than living in some of our inner cities that are run by the Democrats. And I ask you this, I ask you this — crime, all of the problems — to the African Americans, who I employ so many, so many people, to the Hispanics, tremendous people: What the hell do you have to lose? Give me a chance. I'll straighten it out. I'll straighten it out. What do you have to lose?" 

The mostly white crowd cheered and then started chanting: "Trump! Trump! Trump! Trump!"

Dear stupid black and brown people, why the hell won't you vote for me?  Your buddy, Don.

Still, it's nice that we've reached the desperate phase of the Trump campaign.   Another 11 weeks of raw, brutal misogyny and overt racism should be good for the country, right?