Penn Jillette says tapes exist of Trump using racially insensitive language

Penn Jillette says tapes exist of Trump using racially insensitive language

Tom Arnold confirms that, and says he has also seen a tape of Trump calling his son Eric a “retard.”

I hate to admit it, but even if those tapes exist and are revealed, it probably will have no effect on Trump’s popularity. Everyone already knows he’s a racist. He started his political career by claiming Obama was born in Africa, for heaven’s sake, with absolutely no evidence to support that contention. The people who hate him hate his racism (among other things). The people that love him also know he’s a racist and either accept it or like him because of it.

The one place where this could hurt him is in the Congress. While congressmen can defend him if his racism is less explicit, they will have a difficult time defending his use of racial epithets.

Now here’s the difficult question. If outright racism is not the third rail for Trump, is anything? Let’s suppose the pee tapes are real and become public. Will that even have an effect on Trump’s supporters? I’m thinking it probably will not. He has black staffers who overlook his racism; he has religious followers who overlook his lies and infidelities. I wonder if he really is the Teflon Don.

8 thoughts on “Penn Jillette says tapes exist of Trump using racially insensitive language

  1. I’m not convinced Trump is actually a racist. He clearly talks like one and is doing his best to appeal to racists. But from a practical perspective that might be a distinction without a difference, with the possible exception that espousing racist ideas he didn’t actually believe might make him an even more loathsome human being than if he were a “true believer.”

    I grew up in and have spent most of my life in NYC. Donald Trump was a character. He got lots of media coverage, built expensive buildings with his name on them, rebuilt the Wollman Ice Rink and did cameos in movies set in NYC. There was speculation he might run for president but nothing ever came of it. I never really gave him much thought. Then came Obama.

    When I first read stories about people claiming Obama was born in Kenya and therefore ineligible to be president, I spent 5 minutes googling it. I saw that there were birth announcements in 2 Honolulu newspapers for Barack Obama the week he was born. That was pretty definitive proof to me. Then Trump joined the birther movement and I lost whatever respect I had for him. I don’t for a minute think Trump believed that nonsense, but he loved the attention. I think it was a desire for even more attention and publicity that drove him to run for president.

    He never should have been able to win. The Democrats deserve a lot of the blame for that. But at least they didn’t nominate the piece of filth. Everything fell just right for him (or wrong for the rest of us) starting with so many quality candidates splitting the anti-Trump vote allowing him to secure the nomination with a plurality. Personally, I wanted Marco Rubio, ended up voting for John Kasich in the NY primary, and in the end was left voting for Gary Johnson.

    I just hope the Dems do the smart thing and nominate a moderate of good character. Otherwise, Trump might have a chance at reelection.

  2. Trump is an absolutely wretched human being. And so are at least 30% of the country, it appears.

    Trump has exposed the myth of American Exceptionalism. We’re just lucky that we happen to be in a place with an abundance of natural resources and historically geographical protection. But appeal to the basest levels of ignorance, fear, and greed, and there’s nothing in the national character to distinguish us from every other country on the planet.

    And I don’t believe that taking money would move the needle at all. Once people decided to ignore the whole emoluments thing, it was with the explicit assumption that it was going to be open season for the Trumps.

  3. A good question, even if asked rhetorically: “If outright racism is not the third rail for Trump, is anything?” I’d say one thing is: accepting money for his campaign from a foreign national. Even accepting $1 is a felony. And there’d just be no way that Trump could get away with such a clear-cut felony.

    We know Trump must have had lots and lots of foreign cash offered to him. So what are the odds that during the entire course of the campaign the notoriously cheap Donald Trump repeatedly and steadfastly told these foreigners attempting to buy influence with him that he simply wasn’t interested and didn’t need their money? Or is it just possible that his reaction was, “Wait Ivan or Oleg wants to give my campaign a million dollars no questions asked? Great. Take the money. Just find a way to cover our traces. (Ask Manafort or Rick Gates how to do that, they’re the experts).” That seems like a conversation that just might have happened at some point in 2016. And that would, if revealed, be the third rail.

    1. You’re off here. Scoop said popularity. And he’s right this wouldn’t drop his numbers, which have hit the basement. Those that still approve would approve of him doing just about anything.

      To answer Scoops question, only pure undeniable, smoking gun evidence is literal atrocity. Video of him raping a child or killing someone Hostel style. Only something that far out would do it, and even then a large number of Trumpites would just claim fake news.

      You’re dealing with literal cultists. They have been programmed, and can no longer think freely. If he says it, it’s true. He can lie one day, and they’ll say it’s truth. The next day he gets caught, and they say it was 9th dimension chess. I first saw this in the campaign. He’d switch a position within hours, and they’d switch with him. Of course, -I- was the fool for not seeing the truth. I was an idiot, incapable of keeping up with his masterful strategy.

      There is no reasoning with it, because there is no reason in it. It’s literally a cult. They’ll follow till the end. Straight into hell.

  4. You do realize that EVERY BIT of your Trump criticism and hatred would never have happened if the Democrats had the balls to stand up to Hillary and NOT rig the primary in her favor. Or if the other option wasn’t a Socialist looking to tax the shit out of everyone in this country except him and his buddies. The Dems fixed it so the only pile of horseshit as big as Trump ran against him and the country picked to try new “shit” instead of the same old retread “shit”. I as an independent who didn’t vote for Trump nor Hillary are sick of you Liberals constantly bitching about what we have when you caused it. Blame CNN and MSNBC for saying she was a sure thing and causing a shitload of people not to get off their asses and participate in this election. Either start putting the blame where it belongs or shut the hell up already Scoop

    1. Sure, blame Hillary for not campaigning sensibly. Blame the media for encouraging complacency among liberal voters. Blame Putin. Blame the bossa nova for all I care. At this point it doesn’t matter how such a vile human being became President. It only matters that he IS President.

      I don’t think you can call me a liberal, at least not as currently defined. My liberal friends consider me a severe reactionary. I support many conservative positions, including (for example) immigration reform. I have no objection to Trump’s wall, and I would even support eliminating birthright citizenship. The Democrats are complete hypocrites about immigration, and their position is entirely self-serving. If the people sneaking into our country were future Republicans from some ultra-conservative white-ass country like Poland, they would be the ones calling to stem the tide.

      Objectively, every country needs to protect its borders from unlimited immigration, and should choose its limited number of new citizens based on the needs of the country. Without secure borders, a country is not a country at all, but simply a piece of land.

      And I agree that Europe has really fucked up in this area.

      And I’m OK with voter I.D. and other conservative positions.

      Where I attack Trump is that he is a wretched human being and a fool. There’s really no equivalence there for the Democrats now that Anthony Weiner is out of the picture. When Weiner was around, I mocked him as well. I did the same to Spitzer. And I have given Elizabeth Warren a constant stream of ridicule.

      But they are not in the news, in America’s face, day after day. And they are not President. If they were, I would be giving them the ol’ razzberry, just as I do with the Teflon Don.

    2. I’ve been reading (and contributing to) Other Crap since its earliest of days, and I have to defend Uncle Scoopy here. I think once or twice, I’ve even given him some grief for being “too political,” mostly because this is the kind of site I visit to get away from the more serious (and usually depressing) news of the day.

      Let’s get one thing 100% clear: Scoop is and always has been an equal-opportunity giver of shit. It just so happens Trump is cornering the market on political buffoonery lately, so he’s the one getting all the linkable headlines.

      Now, I do agree with yours and others’ recent comments that Trump really isn’t the problem here. It’s the political environment that produced him that ultimately needs to be addressed. In him, you had a guy who took control of the narrative instead of just conforming to the self-serving b.s. everyone is used to hearing from politicians. He made the rest of the Republican field look spineless, and con artist though he may be, an opponent who’s entry into national politics consisted of “be married to the president” and who actually decided where to live based upon where she had the best chance of winning a Senate election actually make him look sincere by comparison.

      Hopefully, the election of Trump will be a wake-up call to EVERYONE and produce some stronger candidates more willing to diverge from conventional political “wisdom,” but I doubt it.

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