Imagine a group of creatives with the sensibilities of those who created “The Simpsons,” charged by the DNC to create a series of infomercials entitled “The Adventures of Trumpty Dumpty (who had a great fall).” What material would they have to work with? What images? The red tie. The clown car cabinet. Cheating at golf. Bone spurs. Playground Bully. The gangster shakedown. Stormy Daniels. Suckers and losers. Art of the deal. College transcripts. Big Macs. Very Fine People. The beautiful wall. Mugging Zelinsky. Hillbilly goes to Harvard. Horse tranquilizers. Windmill brain damage.
And so on.
The series writes itself. And I think it would stick with the public and expose this guy in a way words are failing us. We need a marriage of narrative with indelible images.
As for advertising, Republicans have provided such a target-rich environment. What’s needed is, yes, money, but also creativity. Recall the effectiveness of the attack on John Kerry on a sail board in Nantucket sound - that still sticks in my head. Democrats could actually have a lot of fun here (they need some). Great piece, Tom.
All those Democratic insiders who are going overboard in their praise of Cory Booker’s 25-hour speech on the Senate floor should ask the man or woman on the street if they can name a single topic Booker raised. Yet, I bet a lot of people remember the swift boating of John Kerry - two decades after it happened.
Tommy Boy, (WTF) you asked me to cite one example. I did and you then you mocked it. Not everyone see the Abraham Accords as dead. See an excerpt from an Atlantic Council article:
"As their fourth anniversary arrives, the good news is that the Abraham Accords remain intact. Despite the Gaza war, none of the signatories have backtracked from their normalization agreements: No ties have been permanently broken, and no country has withdrawn from its commitments or closed its embassy—a powerful diplomatic signal that the relationships are enduring. Ambassadors from Israel, Bahrain, and the UAE continue to play active roles, maintaining diplomatic channels and fulfilling their duties to sustain these historic ties. Trade between the signatory nations continues, fostering economic prosperity, and security and airspace cooperation also remain largely in place".
I don't want to sound rude Tom, but appears to me that, for you, writing articles on Substack is a Contact Sport. I only respond occasionally for kicks. Keep it up. All The Best, Rick
P.S. I knew I was voting for Trump when he first stepped on the escalator June 16, 2015.
No where did I say the Abraham Accords were “dead.” In fact, if you review your comments, you are the one who pronounced their death blaming Biden for killing them.
No, the Abraham Accords aren’t dead. Neither have they achieved their goal of bringing stability to the region. The same Atlantic Council article you cite acknowledges as much: “October 7, 2023, and its implications for all of the signatory countries have shifted the posture from very open and public to very private. People-to-people ties have been limited, public celebrations have been muted, and much of the once-public diplomacy now happens behind closed doors.”
In fact, as Sarah Leah Whitson, the Executive Director of the nonprofit Democracy for the Arab World Now (DAWN), and formerly head of the Middle East and North Africa division at Human Rights Watch, wrote in 2023, “Rather than curbing Israeli abuses, the Accords emboldened successive Israeli governments to further ignore Palestinian rights. In the first year after the Accords, settler violence dramatically increased in the West Bank.”
But the point of my question was this: You trust Trump to negotiate a worldwide deal on tariffs, one that will benefit the U.S. Why? I will give you that at best the Abraham Accords might yet prove to have some benefit; so far, they have done nothing to stabilize the Mideast. And, yet, even with that uncertainty, it is the only agreement Trump has negotiated in more than four years in the White House that you can cite as evidence of his acumen in deal making on behalf of the country.
The question I raise is this: Trump’s policies largely have not served the country well. Record deficits even before the pandemic. A four-year record of seeing the economy lose 3 million jobs. Pulling out of the Iran Treaty that he now wants to renew after his earlier decision opened a path for Iran to develop a large stock of weapons-grade uranium. Turkey with its actions in Syria now pose one of the greatest threats to Israel; yet, Trump already played his losing hand when he caved to Erdogan and agreed to abandon U.S. allies in Syria leaving them to slaughter. He negotiated the U.S. - Canada - Mexico trade deal that he now calls a disaster. He negotiated tariffs and an ag deal with China in his first term that resulted in American farmers seeing a major market erode. He imposed tariffs on steel and aluminum imports in 2018, saw steel and iron mill jobs increase by 3,200 and the rest of the economy lose 75,000 jobs because of the higher prices imposed on other products - such a bad deal, that Trump was backtracking by 2019.
How's it working out? Poorly. Your guy killed it. From the Washington Times. 5/24/2021
"The White House is now dismissing President Trump’s Abraham Accords between Arab states and Israel — after candidate Joseph R. Biden in 2020 effusively praised the deals and took credit for laying the diplomatic groundwork.
The normalization pacts between Israel and a number of Arab states were at the heart of the Trump administration’s Middle East strategy, easing Israel’s economic and diplomatic isolation and building up a regional coalition of allies to confront Iran and its proxies.
Asked by a reporter last week specifically about the status of Mr. Trump’s accords, Jen Psaki, President Biden’s press secretary, responded: “Aside from putting forward a peace proposal that was dead on arrival, we don’t think they did anything constructive, really, to bring an end to the longstanding conflict in the Middle East.”
Even the Times, a strong Trump cheerleader, doesn’t say Biden killed the Accords. The article quotes Psaki say g the peace proposal was a non-starter. That turned out to be true. Psaki said the Accords didn’t do anything to end the Middle East conflict. Unarguably true, as events over the last 1 1/2 years reflect. The Accords had potential, but weren’t strong enough to survive the tests. The Abraham Accords failed by their own measures, not because of Biden, yet it’s the only evidence you can cite of Trump’s negotiating acumen.
Hanson rightly raises concerns about China, then endorses Trump’s policy of withdrawing from global relationships, leaving China to do exactly what frightens Hanson - build its own relationships by undermining the U.S. Hanson raises concerns about Iran's nuclear capabilities, the concerns that drove western allies to negotiate supervision of Iran and restrictions on its nuclear program. That's the treaty Trump withdrew from in his first term and now is scrambling to renew. Aad. Here's the question: Can you name a single agreement Trump has negotiated with a foreign interest that has accrued to the benefit of the U.S.?
It isn't that Trump is rigidly conservative, he is oligophrenic, a sociopath and unfit to serve as President of the United States under any/all circumstances. He needs to be removed from office.
Imagine a group of creatives with the sensibilities of those who created “The Simpsons,” charged by the DNC to create a series of infomercials entitled “The Adventures of Trumpty Dumpty (who had a great fall).” What material would they have to work with? What images? The red tie. The clown car cabinet. Cheating at golf. Bone spurs. Playground Bully. The gangster shakedown. Stormy Daniels. Suckers and losers. Art of the deal. College transcripts. Big Macs. Very Fine People. The beautiful wall. Mugging Zelinsky. Hillbilly goes to Harvard. Horse tranquilizers. Windmill brain damage.
And so on.
The series writes itself. And I think it would stick with the public and expose this guy in a way words are failing us. We need a marriage of narrative with indelible images.
Reality is a hard master. 😪 Be well
As for advertising, Republicans have provided such a target-rich environment. What’s needed is, yes, money, but also creativity. Recall the effectiveness of the attack on John Kerry on a sail board in Nantucket sound - that still sticks in my head. Democrats could actually have a lot of fun here (they need some). Great piece, Tom.
All those Democratic insiders who are going overboard in their praise of Cory Booker’s 25-hour speech on the Senate floor should ask the man or woman on the street if they can name a single topic Booker raised. Yet, I bet a lot of people remember the swift boating of John Kerry - two decades after it happened.
"Mercy!", "Please!", "I give up!"
Tommy Boy, (WTF) you asked me to cite one example. I did and you then you mocked it. Not everyone see the Abraham Accords as dead. See an excerpt from an Atlantic Council article:
"As their fourth anniversary arrives, the good news is that the Abraham Accords remain intact. Despite the Gaza war, none of the signatories have backtracked from their normalization agreements: No ties have been permanently broken, and no country has withdrawn from its commitments or closed its embassy—a powerful diplomatic signal that the relationships are enduring. Ambassadors from Israel, Bahrain, and the UAE continue to play active roles, maintaining diplomatic channels and fulfilling their duties to sustain these historic ties. Trade between the signatory nations continues, fostering economic prosperity, and security and airspace cooperation also remain largely in place".
I don't want to sound rude Tom, but appears to me that, for you, writing articles on Substack is a Contact Sport. I only respond occasionally for kicks. Keep it up. All The Best, Rick
P.S. I knew I was voting for Trump when he first stepped on the escalator June 16, 2015.
No where did I say the Abraham Accords were “dead.” In fact, if you review your comments, you are the one who pronounced their death blaming Biden for killing them.
No, the Abraham Accords aren’t dead. Neither have they achieved their goal of bringing stability to the region. The same Atlantic Council article you cite acknowledges as much: “October 7, 2023, and its implications for all of the signatory countries have shifted the posture from very open and public to very private. People-to-people ties have been limited, public celebrations have been muted, and much of the once-public diplomacy now happens behind closed doors.”
In fact, as Sarah Leah Whitson, the Executive Director of the nonprofit Democracy for the Arab World Now (DAWN), and formerly head of the Middle East and North Africa division at Human Rights Watch, wrote in 2023, “Rather than curbing Israeli abuses, the Accords emboldened successive Israeli governments to further ignore Palestinian rights. In the first year after the Accords, settler violence dramatically increased in the West Bank.”
But the point of my question was this: You trust Trump to negotiate a worldwide deal on tariffs, one that will benefit the U.S. Why? I will give you that at best the Abraham Accords might yet prove to have some benefit; so far, they have done nothing to stabilize the Mideast. And, yet, even with that uncertainty, it is the only agreement Trump has negotiated in more than four years in the White House that you can cite as evidence of his acumen in deal making on behalf of the country.
The question I raise is this: Trump’s policies largely have not served the country well. Record deficits even before the pandemic. A four-year record of seeing the economy lose 3 million jobs. Pulling out of the Iran Treaty that he now wants to renew after his earlier decision opened a path for Iran to develop a large stock of weapons-grade uranium. Turkey with its actions in Syria now pose one of the greatest threats to Israel; yet, Trump already played his losing hand when he caved to Erdogan and agreed to abandon U.S. allies in Syria leaving them to slaughter. He negotiated the U.S. - Canada - Mexico trade deal that he now calls a disaster. He negotiated tariffs and an ag deal with China in his first term that resulted in American farmers seeing a major market erode. He imposed tariffs on steel and aluminum imports in 2018, saw steel and iron mill jobs increase by 3,200 and the rest of the economy lose 75,000 jobs because of the higher prices imposed on other products - such a bad deal, that Trump was backtracking by 2019.
What’s the source of your confidence, Rick?
How's it working out? Poorly. Your guy killed it. From the Washington Times. 5/24/2021
"The White House is now dismissing President Trump’s Abraham Accords between Arab states and Israel — after candidate Joseph R. Biden in 2020 effusively praised the deals and took credit for laying the diplomatic groundwork.
The normalization pacts between Israel and a number of Arab states were at the heart of the Trump administration’s Middle East strategy, easing Israel’s economic and diplomatic isolation and building up a regional coalition of allies to confront Iran and its proxies.
Asked by a reporter last week specifically about the status of Mr. Trump’s accords, Jen Psaki, President Biden’s press secretary, responded: “Aside from putting forward a peace proposal that was dead on arrival, we don’t think they did anything constructive, really, to bring an end to the longstanding conflict in the Middle East.”
Even the Times, a strong Trump cheerleader, doesn’t say Biden killed the Accords. The article quotes Psaki say g the peace proposal was a non-starter. That turned out to be true. Psaki said the Accords didn’t do anything to end the Middle East conflict. Unarguably true, as events over the last 1 1/2 years reflect. The Accords had potential, but weren’t strong enough to survive the tests. The Abraham Accords failed by their own measures, not because of Biden, yet it’s the only evidence you can cite of Trump’s negotiating acumen.
Abraham Accords
Really? The purpose of the Accords qas to bring stability to the Mideast. How's that working?
Thank GOD trump won.
Watch this, it's only about 5 minutes. Pretty much sums up why I voted for Trump & Vance.
https://x.com/FarmGirlCarrie/status/1909482960518312211
Rick
Hanson rightly raises concerns about China, then endorses Trump’s policy of withdrawing from global relationships, leaving China to do exactly what frightens Hanson - build its own relationships by undermining the U.S. Hanson raises concerns about Iran's nuclear capabilities, the concerns that drove western allies to negotiate supervision of Iran and restrictions on its nuclear program. That's the treaty Trump withdrew from in his first term and now is scrambling to renew. Aad. Here's the question: Can you name a single agreement Trump has negotiated with a foreign interest that has accrued to the benefit of the U.S.?
It isn't that Trump is rigidly conservative, he is oligophrenic, a sociopath and unfit to serve as President of the United States under any/all circumstances. He needs to be removed from office.