Monday, January 23, 2017

KGET 17 NEWS INAUGURATION DISCUSSION


This past Friday morning, January 20th, I had an interesting exchange with Republican Cathy Abernathy about Donald Trump and his inauguration on KGET Channel 17's Sunrise Edition. You can access the discussion by clicking here.

Among the topics was Donald Trump's 32-40 percent approval rating. This was a great topic because, in spite of claiming that his inauguration would set crowd records, there were fewer people at Trump's inauguration than there were at President Obama's 2009 inauguration, by far ...


During our discussion Cathy Abernathy claimed the same polls that say Trump has between a 32-40 percent approval ratings are the same polls that got it wrong during the election. I want to make one thing clear here: The national polls didn't get it wrong. They got it right. Hillary won the popular vote by almost 3 million people.

What happened to the electorate was both deliberate deception and manipulation at the last minute. Consider the following ...

* The FBI's last-minute decision to release information on Hillary, while withholding damaging information on Trump, helped Trump's campaign, period. This decision skewed the outcome in states like Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania, big time. 
* Russia's and Julian Assange's Wikileaks disinformation campaign raised doubts about Hillary, which helped Trump. 
* The tracking polls weren't calibrated for those who were too embarrassed to say they were thinking of voting for Trump (yes, there's a way of doing this).

Then we have to remind ourselves (again) that Hillary Clinton won the popular vote by almost 3 million votes.
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On final thought. I was informed that one KGET 17 News viewer took exception to one of my comments in this clip. In our discussion I pointed out that if Trump's approval rating is hovering around 30-32 percent then he's cratering around the number of people (26 percent) who believe the sun revolves around the earth.

Put more bluntly, I was suggesting the people who voted for Donald Trump aren't really that smart, or don't always think things through.

If you're offended by the sun-earth inference, and you voted for Donald Trump, all I have to say is grow up. Remember you actually supported a man (who was 55 at the time) who said ...


So, no, if you voted for Donald Trump and you knew about this (and his bankruptcies, his philandering, etc.) you don't get to whine about me inferring you have no standards, or no brains.

It's really that simple

- Mark

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