Chicken-Sh*t Trump Already Trying To Weasel Out Of Debates With Clinton

Now that the general election scorecard is filled and the major party conventions are history, the next big events in the election cycle will be the highly anticipated Clinton/Trump debates. While the conventions are usually seen as self-serving infomercials, voters often regard the debates as critical opportunities to assess the candidates and make a decision.

Donald Trump

Well, it didn’t take twenty-four hours for Donald Trump to start whining about the debate process and laying the groundwork to slither away without having to confront Hillary Clinton face to face. Last night he summoned up the courage to venture out onto the Twitter machine and post this:

As usual, Trump and the GOP are trying to hide their fear by accusing everyone of conspiring against them. Trump’s paranoia is sending him into delusional fits that are precursors to a cowardly retreat, just like when he skipped out on a Fox News debate because he was too scared to face Megyn Kelly. Clearly he has a problem with strong women.

For the record, neither Clinton nor the Democratic Party had anything to do with the debate schedule. The Commission On Presidential Debates (CPD) has been managing these affairs since 1988. It is run by former members of both parties who have no affiliation with any candidate. The current schedule was released nearly a year ago (September 23, 2015), before any of the candidates were chosen. And it would be nearly impossible to find broadcast dates that didn’t coincide with a popular television program, whether it be the NFL or Law & Order or America’s Got Talent.

Trump has already demonstrated his tendency to provoke melodrama with regard to candidate debates. He turned the GOP primary debates into feral spectacles of crass immaturity and avoidance of substance. His tantrums succeeded in forcing the Republican National Committee and the media to capitulate to his will, forcing out networks or media co-sponsors that he didn’t think were sufficiently deferential to him.

What Trump means by “Unacceptable” is unclear. Is he declaring now that he is refusing to participate in the debates? Is he demanding that other terms agreeable to him are implemented? Or is he preparing his excuse for when he fails to show up like every other presidential candidate has done for over half a century? In any case he is revealing that he is a sniveling coward who would be knocked senseless were he to step into the ring with Hillary. And he knows it.

How Fox News Deceives and Controls Their Flock:
Fox Nation vs. Reality: The Fox News Cult of Ignorance.
Available now at Amazon.

So look for Trump to continue his whining up to, throughout, and following the debates (if he even shows up). And watch him try to blame his failures on the legions of imaginary enemies who are amassed to bring him down. Donald Trump is a walking psychosis who is frantically searching for a way to avoid being humiliated by an uppity woman. At times like these you realize that there just isn’t enough popcorn in the world.

UPDATE: Lyin’ Don told George Stephanopoulos on This Week that the NFL sent him a letter saying that “This is ridiculous. Why are the debates against us?” But an NFL spokesman quickly denied it tweeting “While we’d obviously wish the debate commission could find another night, we did not send a letter to Trump.”

Democrats’ Message Of Hope THRASHES Republican Fear Mongering In TV Ratings

Now that both of the presidential nominating conventions are over, we can take a look at how the American people felt about the proceedings with respect to their television viewing. The Nielsen ratings are in and they tell a story that may have an impact on the election and its results in November.

Clinton Trump

From the broadest perspective the Democrats scored a significant victory (which may explain why Donald Trump is now pretending that he had nothing to do with his own convention). The cumulative total viewers for all four nights, across ten broadcast and cable networks, during the Democratic National Convention (DNC) was 116.7 million. For the Republican National Convention (RNC) it was 100.7 million. The Democrats outright won the first three nights by at least five million viewers. On the fourth night Trump’s acceptance speech outdrew Hillary Clinton’s by a small margin of 1.6 million.

DNC RNC
Day 1 28.4 23.0
Day 2 28.0 23.0
Day 3 27.0 19.8
Day 4 33.3 34.9
116.7 100.7

The fourth night of the DNC event requires some additional analysis. It is fair to say that the night when a candidate is making their acceptance speech has particular significance. They are the star attraction at these shows and the impressions they make can have a substantial impact. Consequently, it should raise one’s curiosity as to why the Democrats won every night except the one when Hillary Clinton was making her big speech.

The answer is not especially surprising. When the numbers are broken down by network, you’ll find that Trump drew a massive 9.4 million viewers for his speech on Fox News alone. The following week, by contrast, Clinton was watched by only three million viewers on Fox. There was no similar disparity on any other network.

Clearly the people who watch Fox News were inclined to tune in to see their favorite candidate, Donald Trump. And when it came time for Hillary Clinton to speak, Fox viewers simply tuned her out, preferring to remain steeped in their own partisan stupidity. Absent this warped variable, the average viewership of the convention’s fourth night again shows a healthy lead for the Democrats.

More importantly, it shows a decidedly unhealthy tendency for Republicans to deliberately shelter themselves from the real world and wallow in a pool of purposeful ignorance. This isn’t a new development. A couple of years ago Gallup conducted a study that identified the political leanings of the viewers of each network. It showed that fully 94% of respondents identified as Republican or leaning Republican said that Fox News is their main source for news. Conservatives chimed in at 79%. And a whopping 97% of those who do not approve of President Obama pledged their allegiance to Fox. None of the respondents on the left came within 30 points of that level of extreme partisanship.

What this tells us is that Fox News is virtually irrelevant to the political debate in America. They cater to a uniform community of right-wing zealots whose opinions are locked in place. So it makes no difference that Fox viewers didn’t watch Clinton’s speech because they wouldn’t vote for her anyway. In fact, they may have just been following orders from their master. Yesterday Donald Trump sent an email to supporters telling them not to watch Clinton on Thursday:

“Unless you want to be lied to, belittled, and attacked for your beliefs, don’t watch Hillary’s DNC speech tonight.”

That’s the sort of advice that you give to juveniles you can’t trust to make their own decisions. It’s advice that cripples ones ability to understand the world around them and makes them incapable of knowing how to respond to information that isn’t pre-chewed for them by autocratic demagogues. In other words, it’s advice that Fox News viewers would rush blindly to follow. And what makes this even more ludicrous is that Trump himself declined his own advice. After earlier saying that he was not going to watch Clinton’s speech, he confessed to an audience at a rally today that “I shouldn’t be telling you this, but I watched it.”

How Fox News Deceives and Controls Their Flock:
Fox Nation vs. Reality: The Fox News Cult of Ignorance.
Available now at Amazon.

Of course he did. How else would he know what lame insults to tweet in response? Trump’s ego would never permit him to avoid anything that someone might say about him, particularly if it’s critical. As an insecure bully he needs to have constant control of his surroundings so he can strike back when he feels he’s been maligned. These ratings results prove that he’s one of the losers he’s constantly accusing his opponents of being. But don’t expect him to acknowledge it. He’s probably preparing some tweets right now to smear the lefty radicals at Nielsen who he surely believes are deliberately sabotaging his campaign.