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from the why-do-we-let-him-get-away-wiht-this-behavior dept.
Alexander Burns and Maggie Haberman write in The New York Times that, with his enormous online platform of six million followers, Donald Trump has used Twitter to badger and humiliate those who have dared cross him during the presidential race, latching on to their vulnerabilities, mocking their physical characteristics, personality quirks and, sometimes, their professional setbacks. Trump has made statements that have later been exposed as false or deceptive — only after they have ricocheted across the Internet.
For example, Cheri Jacobus, a Republican political strategist, did not think she had done anything out of the ordinary: On a cable television show, she criticized Donald J. Trump for skipping a debate in Iowa in late January and described him as a "bad debater." Trump took to Twitter, repeatedly branding Jacobus as a disappointed job seeker who had begged to work for his campaign and had been rejected. "We said no and she went hostile," Trump wrote. "A real dummy!" Trump's campaign manager told the same story on MSNBC's "Morning Joe." For days, Trump's followers replied to his posts with demeaning, often sexually charged insults aimed at Jacobus, including several with altered, vulgar photographs of her face.
It is not just that Trump has a skill for zeroing in on an individual's soft spot and hammering at it. It is that he sets a tone of aggression against the person, and his supporters echo and amplify it. Jacobus sent a cease-and-desist letter to Trump and his top aide, citing electronic messages that showed the Trump campaign had courted her and not the other way around. "I have been trashed and ruined on Twitter," Jacobus says adding that Trump's lawyers had responded to her letter, but that they had not yet reached a resolution.
This week, Trump sent out a menacing message on Twitter about the Ricketts family, a wealthy clan of Republican political donors, after it was reported that Marlene Ricketts donated $3 million to a group opposed to Trump's candidacy. "They better be careful," Trump wrote of the family, "they have a lot to hide!" "It's a little surreal when Donald Trump threatens your mom," Marlene Ricketts's son, Tom, later told reporters.
"At what point does it cross the line into something that's defamatory and might be actionable?" says Parry Aftab, a lawyer who leads the Internet safety group WiredSafety. "At what point does it cross the line into encouraging violence against groups and individuals?"
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Azuma Hazuki on Monday February 29 2016, @04:16AM
Donald Trump is 50 years of the Southern Strategy made manifest; he is a walking representation of the GOP's collective karma for the past half-century. The system is working entirely as it should, by its own rules; the elite are finding out that if you make people stupid for two generations, they will vote for someone just as stupid as them who talks a good game.
Being honest with you, Trump is the least awful of the Republicans. He's a slimy, cynical, narcissistic greedhead, but one thing he is not is a Dominionist. I'm still voting Sanders, but I do hope Trump takes the GOP nomination...or better, runs Independent and breaks the GOP base over his knee with the sound of a thousand supernovae.
Anyone else think we should be funding an Independent run for Trump? :D
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 29 2016, @04:41AM
Being honest with you, Trump is the least awful of the Republicans
Kasich
(Score: 2) by CirclesInSand on Monday February 29 2016, @11:37AM
Rand Paul.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 29 2016, @12:43PM
Rand Paul is an isolationist in foreign policy like his dad. Does not work for the USA, the world's superpower.
(Score: 2) by CirclesInSand on Monday February 29 2016, @07:13PM
Isolationist refers to government forcing no association with foreign parties. Japan was isolation before they allowed the Dutch into Nagasaki, for example. The USA is isolationist wrt to it's Cuba and former Iranian trade policies.
Non interventionist means not going to war to interfere with the internal affairs of other countries. Let them work their own shit out, for better or worse for them.
Ron Paul is non-interventionist. The people accusing him of being isolationist are the actual isolationists with their siege-like trade policies, which is probably where they managed to hear that 5 syllable word, when it was correctly being applied to them. Too bad they didn't learn the meaning too.