He published an essay that he did not write (Seth Abramovitch wrote it) in The Hollywood Reporter.
About that New Deal.
Bernie tied in Iowa after starting 30 points down; as I write this, it looks like he's going to win New Hampshire, and that's not just, or even mainly, because Vermont is a neighbor state.
[Sanders and Trump both coasted to easy victories in New Hampshire.]
Rather it's because he is putting on the table something we've never seen before: the idea that America could be more like a Western European democracy, quasi-socialist (we're that already, of course, with Social Security, Medicare and farm subsidies) where you pay more in taxes, but you get more: free health care and free college.
I call this his "New Deal," and we haven't really had one of those since FDR's.
But that's what it is — a platform that says the old deal just hasn't been working for a long time, and we need something else for the half of America that is desperate.
We haven't seen a true leftist since FDR, so many millions are coming out of the woodwork to vote for Bernie Sanders; he is the Occupy movement now come to life in the political arena.
These are people who have sat out for a long time because the Democrats became a corporatist, center-right party and the Republicans became radically right (and, of course, just plain nuts in many ways).
. . . .
About Hillary.
And poor, poor Hillary Clinton.
I mean she just is such a Charlie Brown figure.
I could see the nomination slipping away from her again.
I don't know why everyone just wants to beat up on her.
If you are threatened by Hillary Clinton, you were molested by a real estate lady, I used to say.
There is no other explanation because she is just not that threatening.
I actually like Hillary.
I think she is unfairly demonized and has been for her entire career.
I personally don't think she is dishonest.
And yet the hatred for her is just amazing — the hatred on the right and the abandonment on the left.
She's particularly hard to watch as a candidate.
(That laugh.)
Yes, the hard truth is that Hillary Clinton is a terrible campaigner who is living in a different era.
I've told my audience, who are overwhelmingly for Bernie: If you're on a plane and they don't have your first choice — the fish — eat the chicken!
That's Hillary; no one is exactly excited, but that's not all her fault.
She's been around forever, so people tend to take her good points — her accomplishments, her deep knowledge of policy — for granted, and she's been demonized more than anyone ever by the right wing.
If Bernie doesn't get the nomination, really, eat the chicken.
. . . .
About Trump, Hillary, and "political correctness."
Americans have been choking on political correctness and overly careful politicians for the last generation or two and are sick of it.
Remember Mitt Romney?
He used to say in stump speeches that he loves Michigan because "the trees are the right height."
The trees are the right height?
Hillary Clinton is still playing that kind of politician, the one who never upsets anybody, who always says the thing that no one can quite attack, so she comes off in this new era as inauthentic and just unappetizing to watch.
. . . .
About Obama
Yet somehow Obama, even with the Republicans saying no to everything he proposed (including things that used to be their own ideas), still managed to get a lot done.
He stopped the country from falling into a depression when it easily could have.
"No Drama" Obama was exactly what the country needed in that nervous time right after the banks collapsed in 2008.
And he is the first black president.
I always called him the Jackie Robinson of American politics because Jackie Robinson, as the first black baseball player, had to be perfect.
Obama never took the bait, not once.
His personal life, private life — always above reproach.
And you know they were looking for something.
America is in so much of a better place than it was when Obama took office, and history will record that.
If it was in a worse place or he had been caught in a scandal, all those people who were — whether they admitted it or not — not thrilled about a black person being president would have ammunition.
He gave them none.
As far as his second term, he looked more like a free bird than a lame duck to me, just going down the list of stupid things:
Gay marriage?
Let's cross that off our list.
And let's open up Cuba.
He visited a prison and started talking about ending the drug war.
This is important stuff and will be remembered as such.
. . . .
Democrats and gun control.
When Democrats talk about guns, they should understand that they don't actually belong to a party that's anti-gun.
They belong to a party that wants to get rid of a couple of hundred out of more than 3,000 guns available in this country.
There would still be nuts who go out and shoot places up — they just would have to reload a little more.
I own guns.
I just don't love them.
We live in a country where people love guns.
I call them "ammosexuals": the people who polish them and take pictures with them and go on dates with them to Chipotle.
This is sick.
Do you know in the last five years, people have been giving their babies gun names?
Like Trigger, Pistol, Shooter and Remington?
I'm not joking about this.
Liberals don't do this.
They don't name their kids Prius and Juicer.
"This is my son, Kale."
. . . .
About Muslims, immigration, refugees, etc.
Let's get clear on something: I absolutely don't believe that we should ban all Muslims coming into this country.
One, we need Muslims in the fight against Islamic terrorism.
Two, it's not American.
It's just un-American to do that, and it sacrifices who we are, and we can't do that.
But let's not kid ourselves: A certain percentage of them will be radicalized.
The more Muslims in your country, the more that is a possibility.
America has the best record of any country as far as assimilating Muslims.
American Muslims can leave the religion if they want, come out of the closet if they are gay, marry outside of their religion.
If you're a Muslim woman in America, you can choose to wear a headscarf or not.
You can argue with your husband.
But these are not privileges that the majority of the world's Muslims have.
Forty countries in the world have some version of Sharia law.
I just don't understand how liberals who fought the battle for civil rights in the '60s, fought against apartheid in the '80s, can then just simply ignore Sharia law in 40 countries.
Apartheid was only in one.
I am not anti-Muslim and never have been: I am anti-bad ideas.
Killing cartoonists and apostates, these are terrible ideas and practices, and it would be lovely to think that they were confined only to terrorists.
They unfortunately are not.
Not to be an "I told ya so," but when the Syrian refugee crisis happened, I said, "Certainly our hearts go out to these refugees, but the answer can't be to empty Syria and every other country in the Middle East where people live under repressive conditions and bring them all to Europe."
Now Sweden is sending 80,000 refugees back and German Chancellor Angela Merkel is saying, "Hey, when we said you could come here, we didn't mean permanently."
Rather than letting them settle in Germany, these millions of young Muslim men, how about let's train them to go back and fight for their own country?
That’s another one of my issues — the soft bigotry of low expectations.
How come Saudi Arabia didn't take in any Syrian refugees?
I would think they’d fit in there a little more than in Cologne.
Why don't they fight their own battles?
Why are Muslim armies so useless against ISIS? ISIS isn't 10 feet tall.
There are 20,000 or 30,000 of them.
The countries surrounding ISIS have armies totaling 5 million people.
So why do we have to be the ones leading the fight?
Or be in the fight at all?
So no, Donald Trump is not right — but he will win the election if the American people have to choose between his demagoguery and a party that won't even say the words "Islamic terrorism."
I think the Democrats could lose on that issue alone, especially if there's another attack.
This about the Trump lawsuit is humbug.
Trump sued me for $5 million in 2013, when Obama was running for re-election and Trump was all about his birth certificate.
So he finally gets the birth certificate and Trump says, "Well, now I want to see his college records."
Which was so racist to begin with, the idea being, "Black guy … in college? Right."
But this is hysterical.
So I offered Trump $5 million if he could prove that he was not the son of his mother and an orange-haired orangutan.
And this idiot goes into court to get the $5 million from me.
He brings his birth certificate in as if it was going to say "orangutan" on it or as if it's even possible for a human and an orangutan to have a child.
I had to pay legal bills to fight this thing, and lawyers are not cheap.
Of course, once the judge looked at it, he went, "Get the f— out of my courtroom," and that was the end of that.
. . . .
The danger on the right.
As for Trump, I think he'd make a great guest, too — just obviously for very different reasons.
I must admit there's a little bit of the serial killer and the detective going on between us.
"We're not so different, you and I."
I am the first to say that political correctness is a curse — that's why I called my old show Politically Incorrect — and so I harbor a hint of admiration for Trump, absolutely.
I don't think he's the worst — I think Ted Cruz is the worst.
Donald Trump can be talked to.
Go here for a better look at this.
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