The latest losers in Election '16 are all the conservative pundits who promised us Trump would pivot to the general election after his rise in the primary. I said that would never happen and lo and behold I was right.
On the heels of his campaign’s worst week yet, Donald Trump suggested that it is his temperament that “has gotten me here” and said he has no plans to change it.
“I think that my temperament has gotten me here,” Trump said in a Tuesday morning interview on Fox Business Network. “I’ve always had a good temperament and it’s gotten me here. We beat a lot of people in the primaries and now we have one person left, and we’re actually doing pretty well there, but we’ll see how it all comes out.”
Trump’s poll numbers have sagged in recent days after he spent much of last week feuding with the Gold Star family of a fallen Muslim soldier and with prominent lawmakers in his own party. After initially refusing to endorse House Speaker Paul Ryan and Sens. John McCain and Kelly Ayotte in their respective primary races, Trump offered an about-face and voiced his support for all three. By then, the intense scrutiny — combined with Clinton’s bump from a well-received Democratic National Convention — had taken their toll on Trump’s campaign.
But while a wave of recent public polls have shown Trump trailing Hillary Clinton by double digits, the Manhattan billionaire said his campaign’s internal polling paints a rosier picture. Asked by Fox Business host Maria Bartiromo what his campaign needs to do to escape from the polling hole it has sunk into, Trump said his campaign needs only “steadiness” and for him to continue “just doing what I’m doing.”
As he often does, Trump pointed to the size of the crowds at his rallies as evidence that his campaign is successfully reaching voters.
“I certainly don’t think it’s appropriate to start changing all of a sudden when you’ve been winning,” he said. “I mean I’ve beaten many people, and now we’re down to one. And we’ll see how it all works out, but I think it’s going to work out well.”
Apparently whichever Republican campaign strategist wrote up the memo on Trump's "reboot" on Monday forgot to give a copy to Trump himself. Reality never mattered to this election, only the perception of reality.
Donald Trump said a lot of different things last week so we polled to what share of his supporters bought into each of them:
-69% of Trump voters think that if Hillary Clinton wins the election it will be because it was rigged, to only 16% who think it would be because she got more vote than Trump. More specifically 40% of Trump voters think that ACORN (which hasn't existed in years) will steal the election for Clinton. That shows the long staying power of GOP conspiracy theories.
-48% of Trump voters think that Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton deserve the blame for Humayun Khan's death to 16% who absolve them and 36% who aren't sure one way or the other (Obama was in the Illinois Legislature when it happened.) Showing the extent to which Trump supporters buy into everything he says, 40% say his comments about the Khans last week were appropriate to only 22% who will grant that they were inappropriate. And 39% of Trump voters say they view the Khan family negatively, to just 11% who have a positive opinion of them.
-Even though Trump ended up admitting it didn't exist 47% of his voters say they saw the video of Iran collecting 400 million dollars from the United States to only 46% who say they didn't see the video. Showing the extent to which the ideas Trump floats and the coverage they get can overshadow the facts, even 25% of Clinton voters claim to have seen the nonexistent video.
-Trump said last week that Hillary Clinton is the devil, and 41% of Trump voters say they think she is indeed the devil to 42% who disagree with that sentiment and 17% who aren't sure one way or the other.
We've been writing for almost a year that there's a cult like aspect to Trump's supporters, where they'll go along with anything he says. Trump made some of his most outlandish claims and statements yet last week, but we continue to find that few in his support base disavow them.
Trump voters are so massively divorced from reality that when he loses in a landslide they're not going to accept it for a second. If you thought America was in bad shape in 2016, wait until 2017.
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