Squirrel-Hair on Freedom-Hater-care: "I like the mandate"

It's all here: the inconsistency of position, the incoherence, the clumsy articulation, the nearly immediate lapse into braggadocio, the complete absence of policy specifics:

Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump told CNN’s Anderson Cooper he likes the mandate established by President Barack Obama’s Affordable Care Act that everyone must have insurance or pay a fine.

Cooper asked Trump during a town hall forum on Thursday night  “If Obamacare is repealed and there’s no mandate for everybody to have insurance, what’s to — why would [an] insurance company … insure somebody who has a pre-existing condition?”

Trump responded, “Well, I like the mandate. OK. So here’s where I’m a little bit different. I don’t want people dying on the streets, and I say this all the time. And I say this — look, I did five speeches, maybe six speeches today. We had a lot of rallies. We had of thousands and thousands of people. I mean, we get big crowds.”

Trump added, “Every time I talk about this I get standing ovations. The Republican people, they’re wonderful people. They don’t want people dying on the streets. Sometimes they’ll say Donald Trump wants single payer because there’s a group of people — as good as these plans are and by the way your insurance will go way down, you’ll have better plans, you’ll get your own doctor, which Obama lied.”

 

Oh, and his tinfoil hat is on:

At a campaign event in Bluffton, South Carolina Wednesday morning, Trump was slamming the George W. Bush administration’s decision to invade Iraq when he casually mentioned that there are “secret papers” that might show that “the Saudis” were actually responsible for the attacks on 9/11:

It wasn’t the Iraqis that knocked down the World Trade Center, we went after Iraq, we decimated the country, Iran’s taking over, okay. But it wasn’t the Iraqis, you will find out who really knocked down the World Trade Center, ‘cuz they have papers in there that are very secret, you may find it’s the Saudis, okay? But you will find out.

Although 15 of the 19 terrorists were Saudi nationals, no evidence has ever been presented that the government of Saudi Arabia was behind the attacks of 9/11.

And with regard to the Iraq invasion, who's doing the lying?

For months, Donald Trump has claimed that he opposed the Iraq War before the invasion began — as an example of his great judgment on foreign policy issues.

But in a 2002 interview with Howard Stern, Donald Trump said he supported an Iraq invasion.

In the interview, which took place on Sept. 11, 2002, Stern asked Trump directly if he was for invading Iraq. 

“Yeah, I guess so,” Trump responded. “I wish the first time it was done correctly.”

Trump has repeatedly claimed that he was against the Iraq War before it began, despite no evidence of him publicly stating this position. On Meet the Press, Trump said there weren’t many articles about his opposition because he wasn’t a politician at the time.

“Well, I did it in 2003, I said it before that,” Trump said of his opposition to invading Iraq. “Don’t forget, I wasn’t a politician. So people didn’t write everything I said. I was a businessperson. I was, as they say, a world-class businessperson. I built a great company, I employed thousands of people. So I’m not a politician. But if you look at 2003, there are articles. If you look in 2004, there are articles.”

Trump’s comments on Stern are more in line with what he wrote in his 2000 book, The America We Deserve, where he advocated for a “principled and tough” policy toward “outlaw” states like Iraq.

“We still don’t know what Iraq is up to or whether it has the material to build nuclear weapons. I’m no warmonger,” Trump wrote. “But the fact is, if we decide a strike against Iraq is necessary, it is madness not to carry the mission to its conclusion. When we don’t, we have the worst of all worlds: Iraq remains a threat, and now has more incentive than ever to attack us.”

And all you Squirrel-Hair-bots, do you really understand the dynamics beyond your own blind zeal?

According to the Fox poll, Sanders leads Trump 53-48 and Clinton leads him 47-42. The NBC/WSJ poll also has Trump losing to both Democrats. He loses to Clinton 50-40 and Sanders by more than that. 

Ted Cruz does better than Trump in both polls, running basically even with Clinton. Rubio does better than Cruz in the Fox News poll, beating Clinton 48-44. The NBC/WSJ poll does appear to have tested Rubio (who was in third place among Republicans) against a Democrat.

Some of Trump supporters may not be put off much by the tycoon’s electability problem manifested by these polls. A goodly number of them apparently are moderates, independents, or Democrats. But anyone frightened by the prospect of a President Hillary Clinton or a President Bernie Sanders should also be frightened by the prospect of Donald Trump as the GOP nominee.

This is the moment to back away from the Kool-Aid.